Vol. 73/No. 22      June 8, 2009

Grace operated a giant vermiculite mine in Libby. Asbestos occurs naturally where vermiculite is found. Airborne asbestos causes mesothelioma, or cancer of the pleural lining of the lung, cancer of the lung itself, and scarring of the lungs, called asbestosis. It may take from 10 to 40 years from the time of exposure for the symptoms to appear.

Attorneys for Libby residents blame poisoning from tremolite—one of the most toxic forms of asbestos—for 2,000 cases of illness and 225 deaths in and around the mining community.

“No matter how the federal trial turned out, W.R. Grace is guilty of what they did to Libby,” stated Gayla Benefield, a long-time activist on behalf of asbestos victims, in a May 13 phone interview with the Militant. “The company knew when they bought the mine in 1963 that asbestos dust from the vermiculite ore was killing miners and people in Libby.”

Benefield lost both her parents to the asbestos-related disease. Her father worked in the mine. “The biggest thing for me is for people to know the story of Libby and for people to understand that the men went to work not knowing they were bringing that poison home to their families,” she said. “It was tragic when they found out.”

Benefield said miners were dying at a lower rate from the 1920s to the 1950s. But then “in 1955 the Zonolite Company, who owned the mine at the time, began to use a different process to mine the ore and production was stepped up,” she said. “Before the mine was closed in 1990, it provided 80 percent of the world’s vermiculite.”

Dust from the mill stacks covered mine buildings, the mountainside, and when the wind blew from the east, the town of Libby.

In 2001 the Environmental Protection Agency moved a Libby high school, a middle school, and an elementary school to the top of its cleanup list after mine tailings from the Grace mine were found on two running tracks and a skating rink.  
 
Asbestos sickening workers
Benefield said from the 1950s to the 1970s it was very obvious that the asbestos dust was sickening miners and that workers at the Libby lumber mill began to get just as sick as the miners. Tree debarkers became ill as tremolite fibers were found embedded in the tree bark in the logging areas.

“W.R. Grace did not tell miners the company’s own annual chest X-rays were showing evidence of asbestosis,” Benefield said.

A Post-Intelligencer investigation in 1999 reported that at least 192 people had died from asbestos in the mine’s vermiculite ore, and at least another 375 people had been diagnosed with fatal diseases caused by the asbestos. Since 1984, more than 187 civil actions had been filed against Grace on behalf of Libby miners and their families, with 120 cases pending.

Benefield said that settlements in the civil trials came with gag orders. “They offered $20,000 to $50,000 at first, but when it became known that it cost $500,000 just to die of this disease, W.R. Grace raised the compensation. They offered me $605,000 for my mother’s death. But I wanted a guilty verdict and refused, so it could go to trial and I wouldn’t be gagged. I was awarded $250,000 after Grace was found guilty.

“We were collateral damage to the company, victims of industrial murder. I wanted that guilty verdict.”

A number of companies in the U.S. have been under bankruptcy protection in the face of half a million asbestos and mesothelioma injury claims that had been filed by 2004. Some 50,000 were filed in 1998 alone.  
 
 
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