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An annotated archive of information about asbestos in the
NYCOSH website and elsewhere on the internet. For the latest
news, links to additional information sources and laws about
asbestos on the internet, go the the main asbestos links and news page.
See also
The Deadly Truth About
Asbestos, a chronology of what the owners of asbestos
companies knew about asbestos and when they knew it.
Click on any headline to see more on the subject.
April 12, 2001
Asbestos manufacturing
companies -- which incurred billions of dollars in liabilities
as a result of an epidemic of asbestos-caused disease and
property damage -- have tried every year since 1977 to pass
a bill in Congress that would relieve them of some or all
the cost of their actions. This year is no exception.
On April 4 Rep. Michael
Collins (R-GA) introduced a bill that would give asbestos
companies a one-dollar tax refund for every dollar that
the companies have ever lost as a result of their asbestos
operations. The bill (HR 1412) is identical to last year's
HR 4543, which died last December in the closing days of
Congress. The new bill has 75 sponsors, including 31 Democrats.
April 12, 2001
Spurred by the news accounts of asbestos in crayons,
the Research Triangle Institute, which, among other things,
certifies analytic laboratories to do asbestos identification
work, took a look at the crayons, and it found that the
crayons did indeed contain material that strongly resembles
asbestos in structure and composition, but which does not
meet the official U.S. criteria to be categorized as asbestos.
This material is apparently responsible for an epidemic
of asbestosis in and around Gouverneur, N.Y., where asbestos
has never been officially identified as a contaminant of
the talc that is mined there. The asbestos-disabled miners
and residents in Gouverneur have never been exposed to "asbestos"
that meets the federal definition.
Based on its examination
of the asbestos-like material in the crayons, RTI recommended
that the federal government revise the official definition
of asbestos. At present, the official definition of asbestos
is based directly on the commercial definition of asbestos,
which recognizes only six specific fiber types, and categorizes
all other mineral fibers (many of which are chemically identical
to "asbestos") as not being asbestos. The RTI
report notes that government's failure to regulate non-commercial
forms of asbestos has a "serious impact" on the
"health and well being of people exposed to these products."
Fix flawed asbestos testing
If he gets the job, here's
the first order of business for Dave Lauriski, who has been
nominated by President Bush to oversee the Mine Safety and
Health Administration: Change the rules that prevent modern
technology from being used by his agency to determine the
presence of asbestos fibers. The method now used by the
MSHA — and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration
(see the same day's Letters
to the Editor) — is not adequate to determine the
presence of the fibers, according to reviews released this
week by the U.S. Department of Labor and the Environmental
Protection Agency. — From and editorial in the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, March 29, 2001
A
safety blast for asbestos agencies; We must do a better job,
reports say; change doubtful under Bush
The inspectors general of
the U.S. Labor Department and the Environmental Protection
Agency are calling for their agencies to do a better job
of protecting both workers and the public from deadly exposure
to asbestos. — Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 27,
2001 — — Click
here to view the Labor Department Inspector General's
report, "Evaluation of MSHA's Handling of Inspections
at the W.R. Grace & Company Mine in Libby, Montana,"
which is a  document.
For information about reading PDF files, click
here.
Cancers caused by inhaling asbestos dust will kill up to 12,000
New Zealanders, mostly building workers, says a study.
"The asbestos cancer
epidemic has started," two Auckland Medical School
researchers report in an article published in the New
Zealand Medical Journal. — The New Zealand Herald,
Nov. 28, 2000
Waterside
workers yesterday slapped an immediate ban on handling asbestos
in all Australian ports.
The Maritime Union of
Australia's outgoing national secretary John Coombs told
a remembrance service in Sydney for the thousands of workers
killed by asbestos there was no need to import the deadly
product. — The Age (Melbourne) Nov. 25, 2000
Auto mechanics are being exposed to dangerous levels of
cancer-causing asbestos used to line brakes and are not
informed of the risk.
— Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Nov. 16, 2000
The
Labor Department has become the second Cabinet-level agency
to start an investigation of how the government failed in
its duty to warn miners in Libby, Mont., that they were
being exposed to lethal levels of asbestos.
The investigation could
force a re-examination of federal policies governing asbestos
exposure that have put at risk tens of thousands of workers
who mine or handle vermiculite, talc and other contaminated
minerals. — Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 20,
2000
October 26, 2000
The DeWine-Hyde Asbestos-Company
Tax-Relief bill is the center of a fierce Capitol Hill
lobbying battle between asbestos companies. Lobbyists
who are backing the bill are making headway, signing
up new congressional co-sponsors every week, but they
may not have enough support to pass the bill before
Congress adjourns.
The bill, which is
supported by lobbyists for asbestos companies Owens
Corning, W.R. Grace, U.S. Gypsum and Armstrong, would
give tax refunds to the companies on taxes that they
paid as far back as the first decade of the 20th century.
Existing law gives all companies tax refunds for product
liability losses, but only on taxes paid during the
10 years prior to the loss. It is estimated that the
bill would give the companies $2.2 billion by 2011.
October 13, 2000
The DeWine-Hyde Asbestos-Company
Tax-Relief bill may have gained strength in Congress
as a result of the decision by Owens Corning, one of
the bill's chief beneficiaries, to file for bankruptcy
on October 5, 2000. The bill (S.2955/H.R.4543) also
came in for sharp opposition by the American Public
Health Association (APHA).
According to the Wall
Street Journal, congressional Republicans "are
debating whether to try to insert a bailout plan for
Owens Corning and other former asbestos manufacturers
into this year's final tax bill in this session's few
remaining days." If the bill is attached at the
last minute to an omnibus tax bill, it will be voted
on with no debate, according to Capitol Hill observers.
October 3, 2000
A 50,000-member organization
of public health professionals writes to Congress in
opposition to asbestos-company tax-relief legislation:
".... Contrary to its supporters' claims, the bill
is not an efficient legislative vehicle to ensure compensation
for the victims of the asbestos companies' decades of
malicious negligence. In fact, the bill has no requirement
that the money refunded to the asbestos companies must
be used to compensate asbestos-injury victims. Instead,
all of the refunded money could be used to pay the cost
of fighting asbestos-liability claims and to compensate
property owners with financial asbestos-related losses.
Not only could the companies use the money to pay 'related'
expenses that would not benefit people with asbestos
injuries, the bill's lack of a time limit for the companies
to pay asbestos-related expenses would mean that the
companies could simply put it aside indefinitely as
an interest-free loan ....."
September 15, 2000
The DeWine-Hyde Asbestos
Company Tax Relief Bill picked up 12 additional sponsors
in the House of Representatives during the first two weeks
of September. The bill would allow companies to receive
tax refunds to make up for money that the companies have
lost as a result of asbestos-related product liability (See
NYCOSH Update on Safety and Health, August 31, 2000). Its
sponsors are now poised for quick action on it, in part
because key individuals and organizations, whose opposition
has helped stop other asbestos-company bail-out legislation,
have declared that they are neither for nor against the
tax relief bill (HR4543/S2955).
August 31, 2000
A new piece of asbestos
bail-out legislation is on the fast track in both houses
of Congress. Congressional sources tell NYCOSH that the
bill has wide support and has a good chance of passing
this year as part of an omnibus tax bill.
The bill, which was introduced
in the Senate minutes before the Congress began its summer
recess on July 27, would give asbestos companies a tax
credit to offset losses resulting from asbestos-injury
claims. The tax credits would be retroactive, in the language
of the bill, to the year that a company "was first
involved in the production or distribution of products
containing asbestos." If a company ever lost money
as a result of its asbestos operations, it would be eligible
for a refund of taxes paid going back to the second decade
of the twentieth century, explained a staff member of
the House Judiciary Committee.
In addition, the IH community
must consider whether a ban of this type is necessary
in the United States." — The American Industrial
Hygiene Association Synergist, Aug. 2000
Lee Joireman was 21 and
trying to get money for college. He worked as a laborer
hauling tons of tremolite-laced vermiculite ore from the
boxcars to the ovens at the Western Vermiculite Co., a
Zonolite processing plant on Ash and Maxwell streets in
Spokane. Thirty-six years later, the 23 months he spent
on the dusty job killed him. — Seattle Post Intelligencer,
July 22, 2000
A detailed rebuttal of
the Ashcroft-Hyde asbestos company bail-out bill. For
the complete House Judiciary Committee Report on H.R.
1283 click
here.
The Justice Department
declared the Clinton administration's opposition to the
bill in an 11-page critique that was sent to Judiciary
Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (R-IL) on March 8. As the
Justice Department letter explains, the bill "would
deprive asbestos victims of fair compensation, including
victims who are demonstrably sick as a result of exposure
to asbestos." In addition, the bill "would transfer
costs now borne by defendant [asbestos] companies –
who have been found legally responsible for the harm caused
– to asbestos victims and taxpayers,"and it
would "delay and worsen, rather than accelerate and
improve, compensation to the sick."
For the full text
of the Justice Department letter, click
here.
The asbestos industry
and the House Republican leadership rammed the Ashcroft-Hyde
bill through the House Judiciary Committee on March 16
after two Democrats were absent from the crucial vote
that sent the bill to the House floor by a 1-vote margin.
The bill, which would immunize asbestos mining and manufacturing
companies from paying damages to at least two-thirds of
the people who have been injured by asbestos, passed 17-16.
The full House could vote on it as early as next week.
The bill could have been
defeated 18-17, but two Democrats who had pledged opposition
to the bill were not in the hearing room when the vote
was taken, even though both of them were in the Capitol
building.
Asbestos
manufacturer bail-out catches flack in Congress
A grassroots campaign
to kill the Ashcroft-Hyde asbestos manufacturer bail-out
bill is getting the attention of members of Congress,
setting the stage for a series of close votes during the
first half of March.
Congressional observers
note that stopping H.R.1283 will be difficult, because
the House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), has put it
on a short list of must-pass items and because the bill
was introduced by Henry Hyde (R-Ill.). It is thought that
Hyde, as the powerful chair of the House Judiciary Committee,
is in a good position to overcome bipartisan objections
and move the bill to the House floor.
But the spontaneous movement
against the bail-out of GAF and other asbestos manufacturers
has come close to neutralizing the combined clout of Hastert,
Hyde and the asbestos lobbyists. For the full story, click
here.
The
asbestos manufacturers' bail-out bill: The best legislation money can
buy?
The Ashcroft-Hyde
bill -- widely known as the "Asbestos Manufacturers' Bail-Out
Program" – stalled in Congress last November as a result
of an outpouring of opposition from labor, consumer, environmental
and medical groups. But, thanks in large part to a $4-million
lobbying campaign by the owner of asbestos manufacturer GAF Corp.,
the bill's sponsors plan to bring up an amended version soon.
Upstate New York Asbestos Hazard
- 3-part Seattle Post-Intelligencer series (June 2000), which
begins: "The tombstones of Talcville and Balmat and Hailesville
tell the story. Beneath them lie generations of talc miners,
and the numbers carved in the marble and granite stones show
that generations here run short. Many of the men who took
their living from this soft white rock died young -- in their
late 40s and 50s." The series includes a detailed and disturbing
history of OSHA inaction when faced with evidence that the talc
mined in New York contains asbestos and causes asbestosis among
the miners and members of their families. To access any of its
three parts, click on one of the links.
Part
1: 'It didn't matter what they called it ... it's killing us'
Part
2: Pushing for asbestosis study cost doctor his job
Part
3: How the company tried to discredit U.S. study
W.R.
Grace knew all along that asbestos from its Libby, Montana, mine
was sickening workers and their families -- but said nothing.
Only now, a decade after the mine closed, are the town's residents
learning the painful truth. -- Mother Jones, May/June 2000
Two
prominent doctors have resigned from the American College of
Chest Physicians after raising questions about whether
the organization went behind the backs of its members to endorse
controversial legislation backed by the asbestos industry reported
the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on May 1, 2000.
AFL-CIO
says 'No' to Ashcroft-Hyde asbestos manufacturers' bail-out bill.
A new tide
of opposition to Ashcroft-Hyde is developing, galvanized by a
vehement letter of opposition, sent to members of Congress by
the AFL-CIO, stating, "we are concerned
that the AFL-CIO's position on these bills has been . . . . willfully
misrepresented by some to mean that we are somehow not really
opposed to either or both versions of H.R. 1283. Nothing could
be further from the truth. The AFL-CIO believes these bills would
slam the courthouse door shut on hundreds of thousands of poisoned
workers to the benefit of the companies that poisoned them."
What's wrong with the Ashcroft-Hyde Asbestos Manufacturers'
Bail-out Program (H.R.1283)
A factsheet
explaining the worst aspects of the ironically entitled "Fairness
in Asbestos Compensation Act," a proposed law written by
and for asbestos manufacturers.
Uncivil Action:
A town left to die
Tiny Libby, Montana.,
depended for years on the jobs at a W.R. Grace vermiculite mine.
But the mine is closed now, and a report in the Seattle Post
Intelligencer shows the town is paying a horrible price for those
jobs. Almost two hundred miners, their wives and children, and
other townspeople have died and another 375 have been diagnosed
with fatal illness from asbestos the mine released into the air.
No one stepped in to stop the dying. Now the town wonders when
it will end, and if the town's children are still at risk. The
full story of corporate coverup and official neglect ran last
year in installments during November and December. Click
here
to see
the complete text.
Asbestos
probe reveals ploys: Removal companies owned monitoring businesses
and falsified results, feds say. Twelve people and two businesses have admitted
breaking federal laws in what U.S. Attorney Daniel French calls
"the largest criminal investigation and prosecution of the
asbestos industry in the United States." -- Syracuse Online,
February 25, 2000
Asbestos
manufacturer bail-out bill stalled by activist outrage
On Nov. 2,
1999, an outpouring of opposition
from labor, consumer, environmental and medical groups succeeded
in postponing congressional action on the Ashcroft-Hyde bill,
which would effectively immunize asbestos manufacturers from
having to pay damages to workers who have been hurt or killed
by asbestos.
Urgent
action needed to kill the Ashcroft-Hyde asbestos manufacturers'
bail-out bill
The Ashcroft-Hyde bill, which
effectively immunizes asbestos manufacturers from having to pay
damages to workers who have been hurt or killed by asbestos,
nearly slithered its way through Congress before asbestos victims
knew anything about it in late October 1999. But the word got
out, and now the stealth legislation is catching some major flack.
Asbestos
companies are close to winning from Congress what they can't
win in court
A major new threat to the
health and welfare of workers was looming in the U.S. Congress
in mid-October 1999. The culprits this time were asbestos manufacturers,
who were hoping to pass a law that will virtually immunize them
from paying damages to workers and consumers who have been hurt
or killed by their negligence.
Florida Supreme Court rules that Owens
Corning willfully withheld information about the danger of working
with the company's asbestos products
"It would be difficult
to envision a more egregious set of circumstances . . . . a blatant
disregard for human safety involving large numbers of people
put at life-threatening risk." Opinion No. 92,963, August
26, 1999
The “This page was last updated on” line just below reflects the date on which this page was transferred to this redesigned website. The information in this page (as opposed to the design) was last updated on July 3, 2001.
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