Have you been exposed to asbestos today? Americans have learned recently that asbestos exposure is far more widespread - and serious - a problem than originally thought.

We've known for years that asbestos endangered builders and miners who worked with it in shipyards, steel mills, and other work environments, as well as in asbestos mines.

But only recently have we learned that many more people have been exposed to asbestos than previously known.

The small town of Libby, Montana, depended for years on the jobs at the W.R. Grace vermiculite mine. But the mine is closed now, and the town is paying a tragic price for those jobs.

According to an alarming investigation series by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, at least 192 people have died from the asbestos in the mine's vermiculite ore, and another 375 people have been diagnosed with fatal diseases caused by this silent, invisible killer. And now W.R. Grace, which knew all along that its mining practices were killing the town, wants to be let off the hook for this tragedy.

According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer series, W.R. Grace was fully aware from the time it bought the Zonolite vermiculite mine in 1963 why the people in Libby were dying. But for the 30 years it owned the mine, the company did not stop it. Thousands of pounds of asbestos were spewed each day from the mill stacks, blanketing the town and contaminating its air and water. The unprotected miners and workers would inhale the asbestos, then unwittingly spread this hazard to their children and families when they arrived home covered in this toxic dust. The fall-out has been nothing short of disastrous.

Besides the abovementioned deaths and illnesses, every month another 12 to15 people from Libby are being diagnosed with asbestos-related diseases such as asbestosis, mesothelioma and lung cancer. And because it takes anywhere from 10 to 40 years from the time a person is exposed to dangerous amounts of asbestos for the diseases to reveal themselves, the killing in Libby will go on. Why the Fairness in Asbestos Compensation Act is Unfair to the People of Libby.

Worse, for decades, millions of pounds of asbestos-laced vermiculite ore were shipped from the W.R. Grace Co. mine in Libby to at least 51 processing plants throughout the country.

There, the ore was heated until it expanded to many times its size -- making it a commercially viable additive for potting soil, house insulation, and other consumer products. The workers who unloaded and processed the dusty cargo had no idea the ore contained tremolite, a highly toxic form of asbestos - W.R. Grace never told them. Nothing in the proposed legislation can erase this environmental catastrophe.

"Asbestos - Aisle 8"

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer series, together with several court cases against asbestos makers, have brought the current dangers of consumer asbestos use to light. "Environmental Protection Agency investigators are scouring store shelves to see if consumers are unknowingly buying asbestos, and the lethal fibers have turned up in some of the products they have tested," begins a February 14, 2000 Seattle Post-Intelligencer article.

The thought is frightening. Store shelves. It seems that some producers of consumer products like potting soil and house insulation have been using asbestos in their products, without notifying consumers and, in some cases, the workers who manufactured it.

But wait, wasn't asbestos banned? The answer is yes and no. Several government entities including the Environmental Protection Agency have the authority to regulate asbestos-containing products. From 1979 to 1989, the Environmental Protection Agency worked to craft a comprehensive ban on asbestos products. But the ban was only in effect for a short time. Members of the asbestos industry challenged the ban in the courts, and in 1991 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned most of the ban -- allowing many products containing asbestos to be produced.

And that ban wasn't all the asbestos industry fought. Producers like W.R. Grace Co., the specialty-chemicals company featured in the book and movie A Civil Action, opposed the placement of warning labels on products that contained asbestos. "We believe that a decision to affix asbestos warning labels to our products would result in substantial sales losses," says one internal Grace memo written in 1977.

Grace sold loose-fill insulation under the product name Zonolite until 1984. It has been estimated that hundreds of thousands of homes contain this product.

It's not clear what health costs consumers will pay as a result of using asbestos-laced products. The Environmental Protection Agency says that more testing is needed to determine the extent of the problem. We do know that asbestos exposure causes these diseases: pleural disease, a thickening of the lining of the lung; asbestosis, a scarring of the lung tissue; mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lung or abdomen; and lung cancer. All of these diseases are devastating. Most are fatal.

Adding Insult to Injury

ATLA, organized labor, and consumer groups are vigorously opposing the Fairness In Asbestos Compensation Act (H.R. 1283 and S. 758), which, by screening out as many as 80% of those injured by asbestos from the right to go to court, is anything but fair to asbestos victims and which provides no compensation or assurance of any.

ATLA testified against H.R. 1283 in July (click here for a summary of this testimony). A Senate hearing on Sen. Ashcroft's S. 758 was held on October 5. ATLA president Richard H. Middleton, Jr., testified against this bill. His testimony and statement can be found here.

ATLA will continue to vigorously oppose these measures, which assure not one penny of compensation to even one asbestos victim, while shielding from liability an industry responsible for the injury or death of millions of workers and consumers.