The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
www.seattlep-i.com

Virginia miners at risk from asbestos

Potential for serious health problem found, which would put workers in the same danger as those who died in Libby, Mont.

Wednesday, October 4, 2000

By ANDREW SCHNEIDER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

LOUISA, Va. -- Dangerously high levels of asbestos have been found at one of the nation's largest vermiculite mines, federal investigators told workers at the mine here yesterday.

The mine's ore is processed for use in hundreds of products sold throughout the country.

A Mine Safety and Health Administration district manager and an industrial hygienist cautioned the miners about the dangers of asbestos exposure and offered free medical testing to determine whether they have any signs of the lethal diseases caused by the contaminating fibers.

MSHA found the asbestos in samples taken during a three-day inspection of the Virginia Vermiculite mine in August.

"These findings point to the potential of a serious health problem and one that we have to be very active in trying to remedy," said Assistant Labor Secretary Davitt McAteer, who heads the agency responsible for the well-being of workers at 14,000 mines.

"We have a problem there and we're going to deal with it."

The agency cited the Louisa mine for three violations of federal health and safety regulations: failure to notify workers of the asbestos risk; failure to take action to prevent worker exposure; and failure to provide protective equipment, clothing and asbestos warning signs.

Robert Sansom is the principal owner of the mine. He was an assistant administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in the Nixon administration, from 1972-74. Several requests for comment on MSHA's action were not answered by mine management.

In March, reacting to a series of stories in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that reported the government did little or nothing as hundreds of vermiculite miners and family members from Libby, Mont., died from asbestos exposure, McAteer swore, "I will make damn sure that it doesn't happen again."

McAteer then started a program to re-examine mines where asbestos could be a contaminant. He sent inspectors to test for asbestos at the four U.S. mines that produce vermiculite: Virginia Vermiculite in Louisa; two operations in Enoree, S.C., one owned by Sansom's group and the other by W.R. Grace & Co.; and a mine in Dillon, Mont.

Vermiculite is a unique, fireproof mineral that expands tenfold when heated. The EPA has found asbestos in vermiculite garden products. The levels found presented minimal danger to gardeners who use vermiculite once a year, but those who use it more frequently could face substantial risk.

Inspectors also examined other locations where asbestos may be a contaminant, including talc mines in upstate New York, taconite steel mines along the Iron Range in Minnesota and Michigan, and a dozen quarry operations around the county.

No asbestos was detected in any of those inspections.

"We didn't find it before because our inspectors, following traditional procedures, were taking air samples at a low flow rate for a short period of time, which did not allow enough material to be collected on the filter cartridge. They weren't getting anything to analyze," Celeste Monforton, chief of MSHA's health division, said.

In the August inspection, three of MSHA's top industrial hygienists from Denver, Duluth, Minn., and Beckley, W.Va., took the samples. One of the team had been to the mine at Libby, so he knew what the contaminated vermiculite looked like.

The mine safety team collected 12 samples of ore and rock, 30 samples of the air the miners were breathing and 10 samples from air in other areas of the mine pit and processing operation.

All 30 of the miners' air samples came back with asbestos fibers detected. Four samples found asbestos higher than the 0.1 fiber per cubic centimeter of air deemed legal by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, but all were far lower than the 2 fibers per cc that MSHA regulations permit.

The 12 bulk or ore samples came back showing the presence of actinolite or tremolite. Seven of them showed asbestos at extremely high levels, several between 95 and 99 percent asbestos.

"I wouldn't want anyone I loved working there with asbestos at that level without a lot of protective equipment," Monforton said.

In routine twice-a-year tests at the mine, MSHA's regular inspectors had never detected asbestos, even though the agency had gotten reports that it was present in the ore.

"We had received complaints that workers were ordered to conceal it, cover it up, so our inspectors couldn't find it," Monforton said. "But all we had were suspicions."

The agency decided that more extensive testing was needed.

"We sent a team of very sharp people who know how to do their jobs, have the expertise to understand what they're seeing and won't put up with intimidation," she said.

The inspectors took samples from all over the mine complex and processing facility. They even scooped a quart Mason jar full of vermiculite ore from the back of a truck en route to a customer.

MSHA's findings come after years of protestations by Sansom that his vermiculite is asbestos-free and by The Vermiculite Association that all the ore outside of Libby, Mont., contains no harmful fibers.

Sansom denounced or discredited a dozen government and private studies going back to 1960 that documented cancer-causing fibers in vermiculite at the mine site:

·  Asbestos was found in dozens of samples collected and analyzed by W.R. Grace & Co. in the 1970s, when it planned to open a vermiculite mine in the same location.

·  Sixty samples of Virginia Vermiculite ore were collected in 1977 by New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine, the nation's leader at the time in the study of asbestos-caused diseases. Asbestos from 2 percent to more than 56 percent was found in the samples tested.

·  A 1979 "Threatened National Landmark Study" by the National Park Service that examined the mine's proximity to an adjacent historic district said "asbestos exists in the vermiculite deposits" and "fibers could be released within the (vermiculite) plant during processing, thereby creating a human health hazard to employees and individuals in the immediate area."

·  In February, the P-I had ore samples taken from a rail siding in Louisa analyzed. The location was where Virginia Vermiculite ore was loaded into rail cars. Tremolite and actinolite asbestos were detected, but Sansom said "that ore was probably planted there by our enemies," and again insisted there was no asbestos in his ore.

The mine agency's health boss says the findings have broad implications.

"The potential danger from exposure to this asbestos goes well beyond the mine," Monforton said. "We are concerned about exposure to the environment, to those people who have been using waste rock from the mine for years around their homes and businesses, and to workers in companies elsewhere in the country who are exposed to this vermiculite in products they're making and selling."

MSHA has notified OSHA, EPA and the Consumer Product Safety Commission about the amount of asbestos found in the Virginia mine.

"Once the ore gets off mine property, we no longer have jurisdiction over it," McAteer said. "Anything else that is done is in the hands of other agencies."

Industry analysts estimate that Virginia Vermiculite is selling about 100,000 tons of vermiculite a year from Virginia and South Carolina operations, and his principal customers are makers of construction products, such as drywall, plaster and fireproofing, and horticultural companies that use it in planting operations and soil enhancers.

"The tragic lesson that we learned from the vermiculite miners in Libby is all the proof that anyone should need that exposure to asbestos, if not controlled, will result in asbestosis, mesothelioma and lung cancers," Monforton said. "Those who contract these diseases will die. If that isn't reason to halt these exposures then nothing is."

In their briefing on the inspection results, the miners at the Virginia facility were told the difference between the MSHA and OSHA standards.

"We'll tell them at even under the OSHA standard of 0.1 (fibers per cubic centimeters of air) they still estimate that some level of asbestosis and cancer will occur. And we'll try to encourage them to have an X-ray and lung function test," Monforton said.

MSHA has taken the unusual step of offering to pay for medical screening -- X-rays and lung function tests -- of the two dozen current workers and as many former employees of Virginia Vermiculite as the agency can find.

Dr. Carol Jones, who heads the agency's office of standards, said the MSHA is trying to pin down the best approach to lowering the limit for asbestos.

"We are very aware that something must be done," Jones said. "The risk from the existing level is extremely high. It's just terrible."

Even the more stringent OSHA level anticipates an additional 3.4 cancers per 1,000 people. The MSHA limit is estimated to result in 68 additional cases of cancers per 1,000 people exposed.

"When you have a carcinogen like asbestos, you want to have no exposure at all," Jones said.

McAteer said the difficulty of making MSHA's exposure limit as safe as OSHA is not an easy process, and he's concerned about "the agency's inability to keep up with the newer science and technology."

"That's an absolute failure that's quite unfortunate and terribly sad," McAteer said. "But if you look at the regulatory making process for the federal government right now, it is a very difficult, tremendously burdensome processes fraught with delays and blockages and litigation brought by industry to slow down the matter of regulation. It's not simply the matter of saying we have to change this."

Monforton said the agency is worried about the miners and can't offer them much.

"If the miners want it, we will bring in a mobile testing unit and do the testing at any time and at any place. We'll do it at the mine or in the Wal-Mart parking lot, any place they're comfortable. This is really all we can do for them," Monforton said.

"We will give these poor guys every thing we can. They have to make the decision of whether they want to work there or not. It's their lives we're dealing with here."

The new technique used in the Virginia Vermiculite inspection was spawned from frustration among MSHA's health staff, who couldn't understand why no asbestos was being identified in their repeated samples at other mines even through the agency knew miners were being sickened by asbestos-related diseases.

"Since the Libby issue surfaced we have been involved in an examination of where, why and how we take samples," McAteer said. "Our problem is that we didn't apply better science and smarter sampling to the overall process, and we're trying to do that now."

One major change occurred in March.

"Our test results just didn't make sense," said Chris Findlay, an industrial hygienist and analyst in MSHA's headquarters.

"I'm reviewing the database of the test results and all I see is a stream of non-detects -- NDs -- no asbestos. Something is not right."

By this time MSHA had gathered much anecdotal information on workers contracting asbestos-related diseases from these same sites.

"We were seeing not only what the Seattle P-I was writing but also reports from union health officials, local doctors and some of the miners themselves. There was a serious inconsistency in the facts that we could not accept," Monforton said.

Before coming to MSHA, Findlay had worked with the Defense Department.

"In DOD we collected samples at a higher flow rate. The inspectors (in MSHA) were following the procedures in old handbook, a much lower rate. It didn't make sense. The more samples you collect the more asbestos you'll get for analysis," he said.

An e-mail to all MSHA offices in March suggested that the air flow in the vacuum pumps be more than doubled and a new, more effective collection filter be used.

"There is no doubt," McAteer said, "that if were able to apply these new techniques earlier we would, without question, have reduced exposure that led to illnesses and we would have done a better job protecting the workers.

"The reality is that we didn't. I can't fix that, but what I can fix now will be fixed."

He added, "We are examining all mines with the potential for asbestos contamination the same way we've done Virginia Vermiculite."

A team of six MSHA inspectors is in South Carolina today using the new technique to collect samples at Sansom's other mine and that of his competitor, W.R. Grace.

"We don't know what they will find. But we do know there is asbestos in the Virginia mine and the workers are being exposed to it," Monforton said.

"This is not Libby, where it's way after the fact. These are real bodies, real miners, still working today. We won't ignore what's happening."