A dangerous lie

by Paul Peters

What the EPA knows—but won’t say—about the Libby cleanup.

In November 1999, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported the news that 192 people had died and another 375 had been sickened by exposure to asbestos from WR Grace & Company’s Libby vermiculite mine, which closed in 1990. The ill effects were not limited to miners, but struck down many who had never even been to the mine. The newspaper posited that Grace executives, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other government agencies knew the dangers of the mine, but did nothing to stop exposure. The EPA began its cleanup of Libby almost immediately afterward.

Dr. Gerry Henningsen, Gordon Sullivan, Abe Troyer and Clinton Maynard say the worst thing anyone could possibly say about the Environmental Protection Agency’s cleanup of Libby: That after six years of abatement, at a cost of $110 million, and with Montana’s one-time shot at an expedited Superfund cleanup spent, exposure to asbestos, which has now killed approximately 300 and sickened 2,000 in Libby, continues.