Literature Round-Up
Bluish clay-like crocidolite ore covers 200 square kilometres of three country villages in south-western China. Local people used this material to fill potholes in the unpaved road, paint their houses and produce stoves and tubes; children play with piles of the blue asbestos ore. The effects of these exposures have been reported in the paper Asbestos related diseases from environmental exposure to crocidolite in Da-yao, China. 1. Review of exposure and epidemiological data by S Luo, X Liu, S Mu, S P Tsai and C P Wen, Occupational Environmental Medicine 2003, Vo. 60, pp 35-42, 2003:
"Although the commercial use of crocidolite has been officially banned since 1984, the incidence of mesothelioma has continued to show a steady increase particularly among peasants ... from a public health standpoint, the most important issue is the complete avoidance of further exposure to asbestos."
The authors of Occupational Characteristics of Cases with Asbestos-related Disease in The Netherlands by Alex Burdorf, Mohssine Dahhan and Paul Swuste, Annals of Occupational Hygiene, Vol. 47, No. 6, pp 485-492, 2003 conclude that:
"The majority of cases with asbestos-related diseases had experienced their first asbestos exposure prior to 1960. For cases with first asbestos exposure after 1960, a shift was observed from the primary asbestos industry towards asbestos-using industries, such as construction, petroleum refining, and train building and maintenance. Due to the long latency period, asbestos exposure from 1960 to 1980 will cause a considerable number of mesothelioma cases in the next two decades."
Unfortunately for the townsfolk of Libby, Montana, their town has become a classic example of the devastating effect that "the unchecked exercise of corporate-state power" can have. It has been called, by an official of the Environmental Protection Agency, "the most severe human exposure to a hazardous material this country has ever seen." In the papers Corporate-State Irresponsibility, Critical Publicity, and Asbestos Exposure in Libby, Montana in Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 16, May 2003, pp 625-632 and Juxtaposition in Environmental HEALTH Rhetoric: Exposing Asbestos Contamination in Libby, Montana, in Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp 313-336, 2003 author Steve Schwarze examines how Libby "fell through the cracks":
"More than 200 human deaths have been attributed to a vermiculite mining operation that ran for most of the 20th century a few miles outside of Libby. The vermiculite deposit contains tremolite, a highly toxic form of asbestos, and the mining, milling, and distribution of vermiculite products exposed hundreds of workers and potentially thousands of Libby residents to asbestos for decades."
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September 10, 2003
