Libby Montana, Andrew Schneider, EPA and The American Citizen

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“Nobody told us it was deadly”: It is the comment made again and again by former employees and townsfolk, but Grace Company officials knew the deadly dead of asbestos on the human body, actually for thousand of years it has been known how debilitated the miners of asbestos were becoming, after exposure to the minerals containing asbestiform varieties of asbestos rock.

I have followed with much interest the assiduous detective work of Mr. Andrew Schneider from the firs article published by The Seattle Intelliger Newspaper, more than 10 years ago. The horrible fate of the town of Libby, Montana, one of the most beautiful places in the United States, the lack of human decency with which Grace Company conducted for decades business, before being shut down by the Environmental Protection Agency have been devastating to many.
I will come back to the topic, but for the time being I would like to share here
the latest developments in the life or those who survived, so far the lung diseases associated with the exposure in the mine, and by the people living in the town.

At point is the fact that as a natural occurring mineral, with a lamellar morphology, a metamorphic rock, there are acicular crystals of tremolile, caught in between the sheets of the rock, which are freed by the process of exfoliation in order to obtain the final insulating material: vermiculite (sold under the name Zonolite) and present in hundred of thousand of houses, spread throughout the United States. In these houses the Zonolite was dumped in the attics, as a thermal insulation. The sub-micronic (microscopic) needle like fibers of tremolite can fly thru the smallest of orifices and become airborne and respirable in the rooms of the house. Due to the physical aspect of the crystals, once inhaled the fibers continue their journey inside the lungs, until they reach the mesothelium, the lining of the lungs, where it can produce a tumor, called mesothelioma. Other lung diseases caused by asbestos are lung cancer, and the chronic occupational disease by the name asbestosis, all incurable, a debilitating medical conditions. Even people who never work in the mines, or the processing of the rock into the expanded form, were exposed to the deadly form of asbestos, that was carried by wind , and deposited over 6 miles area, including the city, located downwind from the mine. In the train station of the town, the mineral dug out from the quarry by trucks, was shipped to several expansion plants spread throughout the country, contaminating the railroads, the train employees, and workers at the satellite expansion plants.

http://www.aolnews.com/killer-in-the-attic/article/libby-montana-declared-public-health-emergency-after-decades-of-asbestos-exposure/19733491?ncid=AOLDSN00280000000026

I’ll be back with more, so far …You got enough info, I think.