Questions Persist for Asbestos-ravaged Libby, Montana

May 24, 2010 - Gayla Benefield and Eva Thomson are sisters who have grown used to death. For two decades, they have watched asbestos from a nearby vermiculite mine strangle their parents, Thomson’s husband, an aunt, several in-laws and numerous neighbors and friends.

The sisters’ town, Libby, population 3,000, has emerged as the deadliest Superfund site in the nation’s history.

Health workers tracking Libby’s plight estimate that at least 400 people have died of asbestos-related illnesses — from W.R. Grace mine workers and family members who breathed in the dust they brought home in their clothes, to those who played as kids in waste piles dumped by the company behind the community baseball field. Some 1,500 locals and others who were exposed have chest X-rays revealing the faint, cloudy shadows of asbestos scarring on their lungs.

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EPA declares health emergency in Montana

July 3, 2009 - Health officials say as many as 200 people have died and another 1,000 residents – nearly 50 percent of the population of this small city -- have been sickened by asbestos-related illnesses.

Last month the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared a public health emergency in Libby and the surrounding area as a result of contamination created by asbestos mining in the region during the last century, and announced it will spend about $130 million to clean up the contamination and provide medical care in the region.

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EPA declares health emergency in Montana town

June 17, 2009 - The Environmental Protection Agency for the first time has determined there is a public health emergency in a contaminated community, targeting a Montana town Wednesday for immediate federal attention.

The announcement by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson involving Libby, Mont., will not result in an evacuation, but will require an extensive, home-by-home cleanup and better health protections for residents with asbestos-related illnesses. The EPA will invest at least $125 million over the next five years in the ongoing clean up.

Jackson called Libby a "tragic public health situation" that has not received the recognition it deserves from the federal government for far too long.

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Montana asbestos trial opens

February 23, 2009 -

A federal prosecutor told jurors Monday that W.R. Grace & Co. knew for years that its products posed serious health hazards to residents of Libby, Mont., but the company hid the risks from workers and government regulators.

In opening statements at a major environmental crime trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kris McLean said the company and its executives conspired to keep those hazards a secret.

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Asbestos Contamination in Stratford, Connecticut Raises Concern

September 15, 2008 - In 2007, the EPA proposed excavating no less than 24 contaminated sites around Stratford, including recapping the softball field again.

Locals who live near the field, however, are highly concerned that recapping the field might heighten the risks of asbestos cancer. Residents are worried that attempting to clean up these sites will only disturb asbestos dust and scatter it around town.

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Contamination at Illinois Beach State Park

July 25, 2007 - Nearly a decade ago, the Chicago Sun-Times first exposed asbestos pollution at the park near Zion. Now, according to a letter from a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official, "significantly elevated" levels of the most toxic form of the known carcinogen have been found there.

The far north suburban beach remains safe, federal and state authorities said in interviews. But an April 24, 2007, letter from an EPA official to a federal health official in Chicago raises concerns. In the letter, Brad Bradley, a U.S. EPA project manager, cites "concerns regarding the safety of human use of the beaches."

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Sacramento Community Grapples with Truth of Asbestos Contamination Threat

May 17, 2007 - In the fall of 2004, agents from the Environmental Protection Agency descended on El Dorado Hills in respirators and protective suits and headed for a town park. There, they began playing as children would—tossing baseballs, kicking soccer balls, biking, and running. All the while, they took air samples, and all the while they were quietly watched by the citizens of El Dorado Hills.

The civic leaders of El Dorado Hills had spent many months trying to stave off these tests, scrambling to protect the community not from potentially toxic substances, but from the epa's potentially toxic information.

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EPA Searching for Toxic Asbestos Contamination in Salt Lake City

April 26, 2007 - Is there toxic asbestos contamination in your yard? The Environmental Protection Agency wants to find out. The agency needs people to help out if they are familiar with two old processing sites in downtown Salt Lake City.

Twenty years ago a company called Intermountain Products made insulation from vermiculite in that building. There was asbestos in the vermiculite, and the EPA wants to find out if anyone knows whether any of the toxic mineral was carried off site.

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