DEP Press Advisory on Deer Hunting Cancellation, October 2, 2001

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

Libby, Montana: America's version of Chernobyl?

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ASSOCIATED PRESS

Bobby Whitefield stands outside his home near Libby, Mont. Whitefield moved from Texas to Libby despite reports of death and illness linked to asbestos contamination in the area.

or jumped as children from ropes means that mortality rates still ■ The small town is into fluffy piles of vermiculite, or are expanding, decades after the played on the high school running world first realized asbestos could the latest asbestos track or the elementary school ice rink, both filled with mine tailings. crisis to come to At the grocery store, you’re Annual claims for work-related asbestos exposure hit 50,000 last light — it’s also likely to run into one or two Libby year — more than double the rate residents with oxygen boosters of the mid-1990s — with medical one of the worst slung over their shoulders, con­ nected to plastic tubes running and environmental cleanup cases into their nose. claims projected to reach $200 bil­ The ones who can’t get to the lion in the United States by 2030. By KIM MURPHY store sit home next to their oxy­ Libby is the latest asbestos cri­ LOS ANGELES TIMES NEWS SERVICE gen tanks. They struggle to get a sis to come to light — exposed less breath of air in lungs that can’t ex­ than two years ago by a group of LIBBY, Mont. — The legacy of pand anymore, they cough until residents, their lawyers and the industrial poisoning in America is they vomit, they peer from behind Seattle Post-Intelligencer. It also a. grim one: There are the copper oxygen masks through eyes filled — in the way asbestos disease has mines of Butte, that created a poi­ with fear. They wait for their chil­ afflicted much of an entire town sonous pit more than a mile wide dren to show signs of the disease. ~ is one of the worst. and 1,800 feet deep. There is Many already do. Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River, once Asbestos — the invisible, deadly so polluted it caught fire. There is

sr Adwanffi fiber that laces the vermiculite at New York’s Love Canal. But for Libby — seems a problem from sheer human misery, there rarely the past. Many people assume it has been anything like Libby. has been banned. Wrong on both At least 200 people have died be­ counts. And the fact that asbestos cause they worked at the Zonolite Mountain vermiculite mine, or had a husband who worked there. lurks in the lungs for up to 40 years before sickening and killing ai -2)0 oi FbQiilofS NYC-WTC_000152505