Asbestos Dangers Known Centuries Ago, but Battle Continues

This is Part 4 of a four-part series on an asbestos-tainted insulation called Zonolite, a killer that lurks in the attics and walls of millions of homes.

SEATTLE (Nov. 29) -- Invisible fibers were killing people long before a Roman scholar reported that the slaves who worked in the asbestos quarries died far younger than those who didn't touch the wondrous, fireproof mineral.

The scholar, Pliny the Elder, was also a military commander and author of 70-plus books, but the merchants who mined, milled and sold asbestos did all they could to discredit his discovery and pronouncements that the fibers were harmful.

Now, 2,000 years later, not a lot has changed. Industries that still handle asbestos, or are defending themselves from tens of thousands of lawsuits from former workers who were sickened or killed on the job, still insist it couldn't be from their material.

Early on, the EPA saw the need to ban asbestos in this country, and 21 years ago the agency did just that.

But the ban was short-lived. The powerful Canadian asbestos industry -- which remains one of the world's largest producers of the killer mineral -- sued the EPA almost immediately. Within months, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned it on technical reasons. So, as it had almost a century before, the use of the fireproof mineral flourished, as did the number of people felled by asbestos-related disease.

Granite chronicles of the deadliness of asbestos can be seen in workers' graveyards near the vermiculite mine at Libby, Mont., in tiny towns along the string of taconite mines in upper Minnesota, and near Michigan's auto plants, Boeing's aircraft factories in Washington, talc mines in New York and shipyards on all coasts.

What can only be guessed at is the unknown number of asbestos-caused diseases like mesothelioma, lung cancer and asbestosis in people exposed to asbestos from vermiculite insulation in their attics or walls or other consumer products they handle daily.

Senator Has Championed Victims

These are among the victims that most worry U.S. Sen. Patty Murray. Since 2001, the Washington Democrat fought hard to get America to join the majority of Western nations and ban the mining, importation or use of asbestos in this country.

She held tear-wrenching hearings with miners from vermiculite, taconite and talc mines testifying in barely a whisper about the asbestos that was close to succeeding in killing them. Widows and daughters told of the always excruciating, lingering deaths of their loved ones. And physicians and scientists spoke in uncharacteristic bluntness, set aside technical jargon and seemingly spoke from their hearts on why asbestos must be banned.

But almost uniformly, year after year, Senate Republicans either ignored Murray's efforts or openly opposed them. Reporters asked the opposition repeatedly how they could not support legislation that would clearly save lives. But no official answer was offered.

Some Senate staffers -- those who do the behind-the-scenes, but vital, machinations that get legislation to the floor for a vote -- privately admitted that corporate campaigning against the proposed ban was intense and consistent.

They pointed to generous lobbyists for the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the automotive industry and the very vocal Sand and Gravel Association.

The why was simple, senior staff members privately said, explaining that billions of dollars were in play. Insurance and actuarial firms projected that trial lawyers will eventually file suits on behalf of almost 1.5 million people injured or killed by exposure to asbestos. That could cost the industries that sold or used asbestos in their products as much as $300 billion in settlements.

But Murray kept hammering away, and she worked hard to get Republicans to finally weigh in. In 2007, she got the U.S. Senate to pass a ban on asbestos.

At first, the public health community and families of asbestos victims cheered, but a line-by-line reading of the words in the actual ban was different from the language that everyone seemingly signed off on. The ban really wasn't what was expected or needed.

"It was tragic," Linda Reinstein, a mesothelioma widow and co-founder of Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, told AOL News last week.

"The original language was to ban all asbestos-containing products, but somehow, after we all read what the legislation called for, it was changed," said Reinstein, who had fought for the ban since Murray started her fight.

The change sounded minor. Rather than banning products with any asbestos, the legislation permits asbestos-containing materials with just 1 percent asbestos by weight.

"It sounds so simple, even insignificant, but 1 percent means a 100-pound bag of play sand could contain 1 pound of asbestos fiber," said Reinstein, who heads the national asbestos patient education group.

Those inside the Senate who closely followed the ban insist that Murray wasn't aware of the change until some of her strongest supporters expressed outrage.

So now we have a ban that still permits products containing dangerous amounts of asbestos to be imported and sold in this country. Many lawyers representing industry interests have written in their law firm's blogs and in speeches that all is well.

Murray, who was just re-elected to another term, has not disclosed what, if anything, she'll do to strengthen the faulty legislation.

A Family Immersed in Zonolite

For those government regulators who refuse to take action on any toxin until they can see the bodies stacked up, Raven ThunderSky and her family stand as the poster children for the hazards from Zonolite.

She has asbestos-related lung disease, and her parents and four siblings have died of mesotheliomia or asbestosis.

Beyond the number of deaths in a single family, though, what makes this tragedy more meaningful from a public health perspective is that Zonolite was the only asbestos to which the family could have been exposed.

Lawyers defending companies against asbestos claims almost always insist the plaintiff wasn't sickened or killed by their asbestos. For the ThunderSky family, Zonolite was the only asbestos around.

The family lived in the Poplar River First Nation reserve, in the isolated reaches of Manitoba, 220 miles north of Winnipeg. In the 1950s, the Canadian government used Zonolite mined in Libby to insulate more than 600 native homes.

ThunderSky found government records that 46 bags of Zonolite were used in the attic of her tiny family home back when she was a little girl. She and her deceased sisters often played in the fluffy material, having no clue it was lethal.

She became an outspoken advocate for Canadians affected by Zonolite. Time magazine referred to her as "Manitoba's Erin Brockovich," noting that she led a crusade demanding that the country remove the insulation from as many as 300,000 homes.

In January, Canadian Courts urged that a Grace settlement offer approved of $6.5 million by the U.S. Bankruptcy court be raised to $8 million for personal injury victims reportedly exposed to Zonolite. The initial offer would pay lawyers almost $3 million and give as little as $300 to claimants to cover the estimated $10,000 charges to remove the asbestos. Many Canadians did not file a claim in time to qualify for any amount.

And so far, for ThunderSky:

"I have never received a dime from W.R Grace or the Canadian government for the deaths of my sisters and parents," she told AOL News in an e-mail Sunday.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For more than a decade, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Andrew Schneider has followed the saga of the tiny town of Libby, Mont., the asbestos-tainted vermiculite that was mined there and W.R. Grace, the company that shipped the lethal ore throughout the world. Schneider broke the story while with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and followed it in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and The Baltimore Sun. Schneider and David McCumber authored "An Air That Kills." In this four-part report, AOL News' senior public health reporter examines the government's history of neglect in informing the public about the dangers of a killer that lurks in the attics and walls of millions of homes.