Asbestos Mesothelioma--The Damage Continues

December 13, 2008

Belvidere Mountain, VermontAsbestos made the news recently—big time—regarding a tentative settlement of $140 million to be paid to by W.R. Grace, the company that mined asbestos and produced Zonolite—a do-it-yourself home insulation. The company faced a class action suit brought by hundreds of people who had used the insulation and developed asbestos related illnesses.



Zonolite was manufactured and marketed by the WR Grace Company as a convenient and effective insulating product that would help homeowners reduce their heating and air conditioning bills. It came in brown bags ready to pour into the space between walls and joists, in attics—pretty much anywhere insulation would be necessary. So, it was considered to be a win-win product—effective and easy to use. But Zonolite contained vermiculite which came from WR Grace's mine in Libby, Montana. That particular vermiculite contained a rare and dangerous type of asbestos fiber called tremolite. Just the briefest of contact with this substance can potentially cause serious health problems down the road.



Dan, a volunteer fireman, used Zonolite several years ago. "I used it in all my cores in my block cellar," he said. "We must have used 100 bags or more. We poured it all in to the walls. It wasn't cheap, but I thought let's spend the money and do it right." That was more than 13 years ago. He is now having breathing problems and thinks it could be related to the asbestos insulation.



"I'm 54. I've never smoked, never had any health problems," he said. "I've been a fire worker and construction worker all my life, so I'm pretty tough. But I have shortness of breath and breathing difficulties now. All the Zonolite is downstairs in the cellar—but we have the furnace down there and there's a lot of air circulation from the cellar. You put a hole in the wall and this stuff just comes pouring out like water. And then the dust is in the air everywhere."



At the time Dan purchased the Zonolite insulation he would have had no way of knowing how dangerous it was. W.R. Grace had prepared an asbestosis warning label for Zonolite in the 1970s, but never released it. W.R. Grace stopped selling Zonolite in 1984. It wasn't until Dan started doing some research on the Internet in 2008 that he found out about Zonolite, asbestosis and asbestos mesothelioma.



The Belvidere Asbestos Mine in Vermont: A New Study Shows Local Residents have Higher Rates of Lung Disease, than People who do not Live Near the Mine.



WR Grace is just one of several mines in the country that produced asbestos and are the focus of lawsuits and massive, multi-million dollar clean-up actions. The Belvidere asbestos mine in Vermont is also facing lawsuits and clean-up costs estimated in the hundreds of millions.



Worse still, a new study has found that people who lived near the former asbestos mine had a higher rate of an asbestos-related lung disease than those who didn't. And this has residents of the towns that were studied, namely Albany, Belvidere, Craftsbury, Eden, Hyde Park, Irasburg, Johnson, Lowell, Montgomery, Newport Town, Troy, Waterville and Westfield very worried. And rightly so.



The Belvidere mine produced chrysotile asbestos between the early 1900s and 1993. Chrysotile asbestos is a fibrous mineral, which the Health Department's own studies have shown causes lung cancer, mesothelioma and asbestosis in workers exposed to it.



This latest study by the Vermont Health Department looked at the health records and death certificates of people living in the 13 towns located within 13 miles of the Belvidere asbestos mine. They concluded that the residents who lived near the mine had higher-than-normal rates of contracting or dying of asbestosis.



Is the Evidence of Asbestos Mesothelioma Being Buried?



The report, which was originally released in November, was revised on Wednesday, December 10, 2008, to show that people living in the towns around the Belvidere mine did not have a higher incidence of lung cancer, contradicting the conclusions originally made by the researchers. And, meetings set to take place the second week of December, in Vermont, to address the concerns of the residents, have been cancelled due to legitimate weather concerns. However, they have not been rescheduled.



Under these types of circumstances, people very often feel they have no other course of action than to seek legal help. And that may be exactly what happens with the Belvidere mine. Because it is very hard to believe that the owners of the Belvidere mine were not aware of the dangers the asbestos posed to people working at the mine, and living near it. Just as WR Grace knew about the dangers of Zonolite.