MISSOULA – A former federal health official says top managers with W.R. Grace & Co. stymied government efforts to study the health effects of Libby vermiculite.
“We had been very frustrated by the delay that they had caused in our getting the study under way,” said Kathleen Kennedy, who formerly was an epidemiologist for the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health.
The Missoulian newspaper’s Web site reported Kennedy’s testimony Tuesday in the Grace environmental crimes trial in U.S. District Court in Missoula.
Kennedy said she was assigned to study the vermiculite mined at Libby, by request of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. That agency said several workers at a South Carolina plant were diagnosed with abnormal accumulations of bloody fluid in their lungs. The workers had been exposed to, among other things, Libby vermiculite.
Kennedy said that when she and her research team contacted the Columbia, Md.-based Grace and explained the study, they met with resistance.
“They told us that they did not want us to do it,” she said. “They did not give us any documents.”
On cross-examination, lead Grace attorney David Bernick said numerous government agencies, including Kennedy’s had already studied the potential hazards of Libby vermiculite, which contains a particularly harmful form of asbestos.
Grace stalled, Bernick suggested, because the company didn’t agree with the thrust of Kennedy’s study and thought it was plowing the same ground.
“You knew that workers at Libby had been overexposed historically. You knew that there was health surveillance data gathered. You knew that the mine was inspected by the Bureau of Mines,” Bernick said. “There were a whole series of inspections that took place during the 1960s.”
After those studies, Grace took steps to control the amount of asbestos released at the Libby mine, Bernick said.