ST. LOUIS – A federal warning is set to go out to millions of home and business owners whose attics and walls may have insulation that could cause lethal exposure to asbestos.
The Environmental Protection Agency plans to announce on Wednesday that vermiculite insulation should be handled as if it contains cancer-causing asbestos. The warning comes after two years of the agency’s being pressured by Congress, public interest groups and its own employees.
The presence of the material is not cause for “needless anxiety,” says Stephen Johnson, assistant administrator of the EPA’s Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances, in a press statement prepared for the announcement. But, he said, “It is important that people be informed so they can identify the product and properly manage it.”
The recommendations for handling the material were hammered out by scientists and regulators from the EPA and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a health research division of the Centers for Disease Control.
Among the recommendations:
•Property owners should not disturb vermiculite attic insulation; any disturbance has the potential to release asbestos fibers into the air.
•Homeowners should limit the number of trips to attic space and shorten the length of those trips. People should not store boxes or other items in attics if retrieving the material will disturb the insulation.
•Children should not be allowed to play in an attic with open areas of vermiculite insulation.
•Homeowners should never attempt to remove the insulation. Instead they should hire professionals trained and certified to safely remove the material. The same applies to remodeling or renovation projects that involve the insulation.
The agencies warn that the “insulation can sift through cracks in the ceiling, around light fixtures or around ceiling fans.” The cracks should be sealed, they recommend.
Vermiculite is a natural mineral that when heated expands into accordion-shaped, feather-weight pieces of material usually tan-gold in color. It is flameproof and absorbent, which makes it useful as insulation and in garden products.
Vermiculite is still mined in South Carolina and Virginia.
But the insulation that the agencies are most concerned about is called Zonolite. It came from vermiculite ore in a now-closed, 80-year-old mine that was last owned by W.R. Grace & Co.
The mine is in Libby, Mont., a tiny town near the Canadian border where hundreds of miners and their relatives have died of asbestos-related diseases.
In the material being released this week, the agencies warn: “If you removed or disturbed the insulation, it is possible that you inhaled some asbestos fibers.”
The exposure can cause asbestosis, lung cancer and a fast-killing cancer of the linings of the lungs, heart and other organs called mesothelomia. Disease symptoms can take years to surface after exposure.
The agency advises those who may be concerned to see a pulmonologist, a physician specializing in lung diseases.
A small pamphlet will be issued to the public. It will be distributed through major hardware store chains, local libraries and will be available on the EPA Web site: www.epa.gov.
The publication’s size belies the scientific efforts and political and bureaucratic wrangling that thwarted every earlier effort to issue a meaningful public warning.
In August 2000, Dr. Hugh Sloan, an assistant U.S. surgeon general who has now retired, urged that the public be told about Zonolite.
“Even minimal handling (of Zonolite) by workers or residents poses a substantial health risk,” Sloan wrote in a letter requesting help from the director of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health.
For almost two and a half years, the EPA first ignored and then played down the risk from vermiculite insulation.
It became a battle of old science and beliefs foisted by the asbestos industry against the results of the latest testing and studies coming out of the EPA’s efforts to clean the town of Libby.
In a briefing paper prepared for the announcement, the EPA acknowledges that the agency first learned that Zonolite was dangerous in 1978. Two studies, in 1982 and 1985, confirmed that the material was hazardous. It could harm the miners and their families in Libby as well as others manufacturing and installing the material throughout the country.
Nevertheless, the agency “decided not to pursue vermiculite as a priority.”
For decades, the government determined that material containing less than 1 percent asbestos posed a minimal risk. However, this standard was established when most manufacturers used far greater amounts in their products, and in most cases that asbestos was chrysotile. The asbestos fiber found in the vermiculite and in some talc and taconite iron ore is tremolite. The latest research done on victims from Libby has shown tremolite to be far more toxic and dangerous at levels smaller than 1 percent.
Contractors working for the EPA headquarters over the past two years tested attics with Zonolite for asbestos and, in most cases, the levels of the deadly fibers were at less than 1 percent.
However, other EPA investigators in Libby and elsewhere measured asbestos fibers released into the air – the breathing zone – when Zonolite was gently disturbed. They found dangerously high levels. This more realistic test is a far more accurate indicator of the hazard, the scientists and health experts said.
They concluded: “Disturbance of vermiculite attic insulation containing asbestos concentrations below 1 percent can produce concentrations of asbestos fibers” and exceed government safety limits, according to EPA documents.
More graphic evidence of the dangers of the tainted vermiculite is clearly visible in the graveyards and hospitals near Libby, Portland, Ore., Seattle, Minneapolis and other communities where Zonolite was processed into insulation.
More than 20 years of testing by government agencies, the Canadian military and W.R. Grace has shown that Zonolite insulation rapidly releases dangerously high levels of airborne asbestos fibers with the most minor disruption.
In the upcoming announcement, the agencies say they have no idea how many homes and businesses contain the toxic material. However, numerous documents from the EPA and other government agencies estimate that between 12 million and 35 million structures may be involved.
The mine at Libby was the world’s largest supplier of vermiculite for 80 years. Much of the expanded vermiculite was sold as insulation. It also has been used in wallboard and other construction products, in cement coatings on steel beams for fireproofing, as packaging material, as well as an expander for nursery and lawn products and animal feed.
Investigators for the EPA and Justice Department have collected Grace invoices that show that the dangerous ore was sent to more than 700 locations throughout North America. The internal conflict within the EPA against the public warning was often heated. Many, even at the agency’s headquarters, believed the public must be told of the potential danger. Others dreaded the agency’s doing so, fearing that the public would expect the government to pick up the cleanup tab, which one EPA manager estimates to be more than $10 billion.
Grace has always insisted that there was nothing hazardous in the insulation. The printing on the Zonolite bags found in many attics 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 show the company was well aware of the asbestos in the insulation and the health hazards it presented.
For example, throughout the 1970s, there were repeated discussions between Grace’s lawyers and its sales and marketing managers over the need for, and the impact of, warnings to customers about the asbestos in the products.
Grace Executive Vice President E.S. Wood wrote in an internal memo on May 24, 1977, that he 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.
“We believe that a decision to affix asbestos warning labels to our products would result in substantial sales losses,” he added.
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(c) 2003, St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
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AP-NY-05-18-03 1724EDT
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