DEAR TEXAS SUPREME COURT, WOULD YOU ASK THE PEOPLE OF LIBBY, MONTANA TO RECONSTRUCT A DOSE?
PBS (PUBLIC BROADCASTING SERVICE) TO BROADCAST A 90 MINUTE DOCUMENTARY ON ASBESTOS ON TUESDAY AUGUST 28, 2007 @ 10:00PM, but please check your local T.V. listings, OR GOTO PBS.org.
In the small town of Libby, many hundreds of people are sick or have already died from asbestos exposure. “Libby, Montana” takes a long working day’s journey into a blue-collar community, and finds a different reality — one where the American Dream exacts a terrible price.
In Libby, 70 years of strip-mining an ore called “vermiculite” and marketed as the wonder material “Zonolite” exposed workers, their families and thousands of residents to a toxic form of asbestos, creating what the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has called the worst case of industrial poisoning of a whole community in American history. That this poisoning continued for more than 30 years after W. R. Grace knew of the dangers — as charged in criminal indictments going to trial this fall — is made patent by the film even as the company raises a curious no-denial defense. But don’t weep only for Libby; an estimated 35 million homes in the U.S. contain Zonolite insulation.
Mineworkers say they were told the dust was no more dangerous than field dust and felt relieved they weren’t mining notoriously toxic asbestos. BUT THEY WERE MINING NOTORIOUSLY TOXIC ASBESTOS!!! Even as respiratory problems in the town mounted, often misdiagnosed as heart or other unrelated ailments, the true scale of the health crisis, especially the degree to which it had crept into the lungs even of Libby’s children, remained hidden just below the surface…
Even in pro-business Montana, how could state officials continue to cover for a company that declared bankruptcy to avoid liability claims as it allegedly spirited away billions of dollars???