Prosecutors Argue WR Grace Knew For Decades Of Libby, MT Asbestos Risk - To Date, 1,200 Dead Or Ill

[hatrack]

Reporting from Missoula, Mont. -- For 27 years, W.R. Grace & Co. operated a vermiculite mine in Libby, Mont., producing bags of puffy white granules that were marketed all over the U.S., perfect for insulating attics and aerating gardens and potting soil. The trouble was, the vermiculite contained small quantities of asbestos, a cancer-causing fiber that could, even in tiny quantities, fatally lodge itself in the lungs. The material posed a risk not only to mine workers, but also to those who touched the workers' clothing or used the high school running track and community ice-skating rink, both built with asbestos-laden mine tailings donated by the company.

That was the Maryland-based chemical company's "secret," federal prosecutors alleged Monday as W.R. Grace and five of its former executives went on trial here in a case that environmental law experts describe as the most significant criminal prosecution the U.S. has ever filed against an alleged corporate polluter. "There's never been a prosecution in the United States where so many people have been sickened or killed as a result of environmental crime," said David Uhlmann, formerly the Justice Department's top environmental-crimes prosecutor and now a professor at the University of Michigan Law School.

Raw vermiculite from Libby was processed at sites around the country, including several California locations -- Newark, Santa Ana, Glendale and Thermal among them. Many of the sites were subsequently found to be contaminated and have become part of the massive wave of lawsuits that forced W.R. Grace into bankruptcy reorganization in 2001. The company last year announced plans to settle the claims.

An estimated 1,200 Libby residents died or developed asbestos-related diseases from the asbestos fibers that permeated nearly every corner of the small town at the base of the Cabinet Mountains, Justice Department lawyers say. Prosecutors say W.R. Grace officials were secretly armed with studies that documented the dangers but insisted for decades that their product presented no generalized health hazard. By 1976, the indictment says, the company had data that showed that 63% of all its employees who had worked 10 years or more in Libby had lung abnormalities. Six years later, a Harvard University researcher concluded that an "excessive number" of former W.R. Grace employees had died of lung disease. But his findings were kept under wraps.

EDIT

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-montana-asbestos-trial24-2009feb24,0,5879847.story

[seemslikeadream]

1. Oh yea they knew alright

bastards

[Cleita]

2. What's really sad is that Libby sits in a beautiful forest setting and you

would be hard pressed at first glance to know what lays beneath, not to mention the pollution of the streams and waterways by the mining industry.

[tom_paine]

3. Bet a Bushie Criminal is presiding. Grace will get off scot-free.

Maybe a small wrist-slap...for Plausible Deniability and to keep the sheep confused amnd docile.