Health warning on attic asbestos

Š2000 Seattle Post-Intelligencer Asbestos-contaminated vermiculite insulation in millions of homes across the country poses a "substantial health risk" to anyone who works in the houses' attics, an assistant U.S. surgeon general has warned.

The insulation comes from the now-closed vermiculite mine in Libby, Mont., operated for decades by W.R. Grace & Co.

"Internal company documentation and recent testing of residential insulation material reveals that even minimal handling by workers or residents poses a substantial health risk," Dr. Hugh Sloan of the U.S. Public Health Service wrote last week in a request for help from other federal health experts.

Among the documents to which Sloan referred is a risk assessment conducted by Grace health experts while the mine was still open.

The company experts estimated 30,000 additional lung cancers would result from exposure to asbestos by those "involved in the application of our products."

Grace, asked for comment about the memo on Friday, did not respond.

The brownish-pink vermiculite from Libby was sold for use in garden products, fireproofing, cement mixtures and a score of other consumer products. But the vast majority of the ore was heat-treated until it expanded like popcorn. Then, marketed as Zonolite insulation, it was stuffed between rafters and inside walls in millions of homes from coast to coast.

Nobody is sure how many homes contain Zonolite. Estimates range from 2.5 million to 16 million.

"It sold like mad," said Stephen Sheeran, who was a salesman for Grace in Michigan and eventually a sales manager for the company. "Millions of bags of that stuff from Libby was sold in Michigan as attic fill insulation," Sheeran said.

"They couldn't get it fast enough. Most of the homes in Flint are filled with it."

In Washington state alone there are at least 53,505 homes with Zonolite, according to lawyers who have filed a class-action suit seeking to order Grace to warn homeowners of the dangers.

Hazard alert

In his letter to Linda Rosenstock, the director of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, Sloan said recent investigations documented that even casual handling of the insulation can generate airborne exposures up to 150 times the level considered safe by OSHA for workers.

Sloan asked NIOSH to examine the risk to nursery, construction, insulation and other workers who use vermiculite end-products and to issue a nationwide warning, a "hazard alert," cautioning workers of the potential dangers of these products. He also asked NIOSH to update earlier studies on the asbestos-tainted vermiculite to examine the progression of asbestos-related disease, and to determine whether tremolite, the predominant type of asbestos found in the ore, is more toxic then earlier believed.

In November, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that hundreds of miners and members of their families were killed or sickened by asbestos contamination from the now-closed Grace mine in the tiny northwestern Montana town.

In December, the newspaper reported that Grace shipped millions of pounds of the tainted ore to 60 processing plants throughout the United States and Canada, causing workers at many of those plants to become ill and die of asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma.

Further investigation showed the number of plants processing or selling the ore was more than 250.

The fact that millions of homes may be filled with Zonolite has Sloan and the other health experts concerned.

Eventually, old insulation has to be replaced. Remodeling, rewiring and a score of other home renovations could disturb the old Zonolite. Tests have shown that even installing a light fixture or ceiling fan through an attic floor insulated with Zonolite can generate dangerous levels of airborne asbestos.

Dr. Henry Anderson, the chief medical officer and epidemiologist for the state of Wisconsin, said Friday that he agrees the public must be warned.

"In order to safeguard public health, it is essential that homeowners with Zonolite insulation, and those contractors who may be called upon to work on it, be warned about the presence of asbestos in the product," said Anderson, who has been studying the health effect of asbestos for more than 25 years.

Company's awareness

Grace has always insisted that there was nothing hazardous in the insulation. As the P-I reported earlier this year, the printing on the Zonolite bags said: "Contains no harmful chemicals" and "masks, gloves or special (safety) equipment" were not needed.

But thousands of pages of Grace correspondence, memos and reports obtained by the P-I show the company was well aware of the asbestos in the insulation and the health hazards it presented.

Throughout the '70s, there were repeated discussions between Grace's lawyers and its sales and marketing managers over the need for, and the impact of, warning customers about the asbestos in the products.

"We believe that a decision to affix asbestos warning labels to our products would result in substantial sales losses," Grace Executive Vice President E.S. Wood wrote May 24, 1977. He added, "The risk of liability to customers is heightened by the decision not to label our products."

Grace made the decision not to label products, taking the position that tremolite fibers that contaminated the vermiculite could go unnoticed.

Only through the use of "elaborate techniques not commonly recognized or employed in the scientific community for detection of asbestos" in their potting soils and fireproofing could the tremolite asbestos fibers be detected, another 1977 memo reported.

"For this reason, we are taking the position with all but authorized government authorities that our mixed products are 'non-asbestos' products."

Action needed

Wood anticipated that the Consumer Product Safety Commission would take action to protect the public.

He predicted "a high risk that our products will be banned in several significant uses," and cited the Zonolite attic insulation and horticultural vermiculite.

Yet the safety commission took no actions against Grace products then, nor has it since.

Grace documents reveal that the company felt it could defend itself by showing that even the high exposures its own testing found were within the limits that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration set for workers.

That may have been true at the time, but those exposures and the levels found after testing contaminated homes this year are 150 times greater than OSHA's present worker-exposure level, court papers show.

Most of the thousands of studies done on the health effects of asbestos exposure centered on the worker being exposed hundreds of times a year for dozens of years. But studies by NIOSH, the Environmental Protection Agency and private medical investigators in the '70s and '80s cautioned that "single bursts" and "peak episodic" exposures to humans can cause cancer and asbestosis.

Grace documents from 1977 showed that the company was aware of reports that "even brief exposures, presumably at high levels, can later produce mesothelioma," a fast-killing cancer attributed only to asbestos exposure.

"The hazards of these (high, short-term) exposures is aggravated and worsened when the release or disturbance occurs in an enclosed space such as an attic," Anderson added.

Even though OSHA was made aware that thousands of workers where handling the contaminated vermiculite at factories and work sites throughout the country, there is no indication in public records that it ever weighed in on the asbestos hazard contained in some vermiculite.

Last week, William Corcoran, Grace's vice president of corporate affairs, said the company still maintains that the attic insulation and other vermiculite-based products presents no health risk to consumers.

Late Friday, Grace distributed a statement about some of the products it manufactured during the '70s and '80s.

"It was well known to regulatory agencies and many of our customers that minute quantities of naturally occurring asbestos were in our products. We are making this announcement to make sure that everyone hears the facts from Grace," said Paul Norris, the company's chairman, president and CEO.

But the statement addressed only spray-on fireproofing sold by Grace and didn't discuss the insulation at all.

While EPA headquarters, OSHA and CPSC have done nothing to publicly address the asbestos hazards from the insulation, which is apparently contaminating millions of homes, class-action suits have been filed across the country to order Grace to notify home owners of the potential dangers.

Mike Black of Spokane is one of 19 lawyers from six law firms who have filed suit in five states.

"This is fairly clear-cut," Black says. "We have shown the court that asbestos-contaminated Zonolite is dangerous, that Grace knew that and concealed it and that people throughout the country are being exposed to potentially lethal levels.

"We are asking the court to require that Grace warn people who may not know of the dangers."

A hearing is scheduled for next month in Spokane.

"In the balance are the lives and property of thousands of class members who are currently unaware of the substantial risks which Grace has heretofore concealed," the suit said.

P-I senior national correspondent Andrew Schneider can be reached at 206-448-8218 or andrewschneider@seattle-pi.com

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