On December 3, 2006, The Salt Lake Tribune ran a detailed story about escalating hazards to health due to Asbestos in vermiculite, which can cause mesothelioma. Vermiculite is an ore which has put the lives of those who have worked to extract it in danger, as the byproduct of extraction of the ore is dust which contains Asbestos.
Mesothelioma and vermiculite exposure lawsuits have become more and more common.
In downtown Salt Lake City there ran, for decades, a plant that processed vermiculite. For years, unbeknownst to the workers at Intermountain Vermiculite, they were exposed to the dangers of Asbestos in vermiculite they worked with. Asbestos health hazards and the link to mesothelioma are well documented. Voluminous studies have shown a
link between fatal lung ailments, such as mesothelioma, and Asbestos in vermiculite. Mesothelioma is an aggressive form of cancer whose symptoms can take decades to show.
Vermiculite was once a prized commodity for its use in attic insulation, soil conditioning, and as a cement additive. Due to increasing research and information about mesothelioma and Asbestos exposure, an alarm has been taken up by a number of public health officials scrambling to inform people about the
Asbestos hazards to health that are inherent to vermiculite.
The Environmental Protection Agency launched an inquiry into Asbestos health hazards posed by vermiculite extraction after a series of newspaper articles began to appear in 1999 around Thanksgiving. The articles concerned a cluster of almost 200 people dealing with lung disease in a northwestern Montana mining town. The majority of the people where identified as having worked at W.R. Grace's Zonolite processing plants and vermiculite mine. The EPA determined that the vermiculite being treated on W.R. Grace's premises contained tiny bundles of Asbestos. So far, the EPA efforts to cleanup these Asbestos-contaminated vermiculite sites have cost $173 million. And according to top EPA officials, such as Bill A. Roderick, the Acting Inspector General of the EPA, there is still much work to be done.
To find out more about vermiculite problem and the efforts being made to remedy it in Salt Lake City, Utah as well as Libby, Montana, please follow this link to the article "Asbestos dangers remained hidden for decades," which was published in The Salt Lake Tribune.
