By Cary Shimek
I
t can be eerie at a Superfund site. That point was driven home for UM scientist Tony Ward in 2006 while working on forested land surrounding the closed W.R. Grace vermiculite mine five miles east of Libby. It was one of the hottest days of summer, and Ward – along with research partners Julie Hart and Terry Spear from UM’s Montana Tech – was dressed head to toe in a white hazardous material suit with little ventilation. A guard hired by the Environmental Protection Agency unlocked the gate blocking Rainy Creek Road to admit the scientists to the property, and they drove up the blacktop toward the summit of Vermiculite Mountain, where the mine is located. After a few miles the trio parked and – looking a bit like escapees from the Apollo Program – began to cut and stack firewood in the hot sun. “There is nobody there, and it’s just very strange,” Ward says. “You look out, and it looks like a regular Montana forest. But it’s actually loaded with asbestos fibers everywhere. It’s very odd being up there, because you can’t see the asbestos. “It all looks so normal.” The mine was founded in the 1920s after it was discovered that vermiculite “popped” when heated, creating a material with air pockets suitable for insulating buildings and conditioning soil. The mine boosted the economy of Libby for 70 years and at one time produced more than 80 percent of the world’s vermiculite.
Research reveals another public health threat from asbestos By Daryl Gadbow
However, this mineral wealth was laced with a particularly nasty form of asbestos that breaks down into needlelike fragments that can become airborne and inhaled by people, leading to diseases such as lung cancer, asbestosis and mesothelioma. The mine became a volcano of pollution amid the scenic landscape, sickening hundreds of miners, their family members and others. More than 200 deaths in the area have been attributed to mine activities, and in June 2009 the EPA announced that the Libby asbestos site constituted the nation’s first Public Health Emergency. Besides the human toll, the mine dusted the surrounding forest during its decades of operation, and the UM researchers wanted to know if the trees were safe to harvest – especially in an area where many people depend on wood as their sole source of heat in the winter.
UM researcher Tony Ward demonstrates how to take a bark sample to search for asbestos.
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