It could be the beginning of the end or just the beginning of more work in the decade-long Superfund cleanup in Libby. The Environmental Protection Agency is currently drafting new toxicity values for Libby Amphibole Asbestos and senior toxicologist Deborah McKean said it could help determine how much more work needs to be completed in Lincoln County.
An independent science advisory board is reviewing new air toxicity values and comments are expected in the coming weeks. One group opposed to the new values is W.R. Grace & Co., which believes the new values will lead to unnecessary cleanups across the country.
“This helps us make decisions on whether additional cleanup is needed or decide that what we have done is sufficient and our cleanup is over,” McKean said.
For decades, asbestos-laced vermiculate was mined near Libby by Maryland-based W.R. Grace & Co. The mine closed in 1990, but the effects of the poisonous asbestos have lasted for years. The asbestos dust has sickened more than 1,700 people and killed 400. The EPA’s cleanup began in 1999 and has cost more than $400 million.
The draft toxicological review was released by the EPA in April and is under review by a science advisory board. The draft includes a baseline, noncancerous value for airborne asbestos. According to McKean, at 0.00002 fibers per cubic centimeter, it is unlikely that even sensitive populations would experience adverse effects from a lifetime of exposure. The draft also includes a cancerous value, a level of exposure where adverse effects are possible after a lifetime of exposure, which is 0.17 reciprocal fibers per cubic centimeter. The current standard is 0.23 fibers per cubic centimeter.
McKean said the values in the draft report were not going to become a new standard for air quality. Instead it would be used in future human health assessments in Lincoln County and in places around the country where Libby asbestos was processed or used.
But the owners of the shuttered vermiculite mine say the EPA’s proposed values are unnecessary and will cause expensive and unnecessary cleanups around the country. Karen Ethier, vice president of environment, health and safety for W. R. Grace, wrote in September that “this toxicity assessment is on the frontier of asbestos science.”
“The results are inaccurate,” Ethier wrote. “Grace is concerned not only about how these numbers will be applied in the field, but also about misperceptions the numbers will create.”
The company urged the EPA to update the draft, a request that drew ire from Montana’s Washington D.C. delegation.
“W. R. Grace, in my opinion, knew what it was doing when it traded profit for the lives of people who worked there – like the miners who came home and hugged their children and contaminated them,” wrote Sen. Max Baucus in a press release last week. “The fact that they’d try to block these standards is further evidence that this company thinks it can turn a blind eye to the worst public health disaster in U.S. history.”
McKean said the numbers the EPA came up with in its most recent report are based in science. She said the EPA would consider all comments.
“Any scientific review or endeavor is subject to a number of opinions and we understand that W. R. Grace believes it’ll cause unnecessary cleanups,” she said. “(But) both numbers have scientific justification.”
The science advisory board was expected to give the EPA its final comments about the toxicity values in the coming weeks. After that, the EPA could create another draft or move forward with the initial numbers. McKean hoped the new values would be ready sometime in late 2013 and 2014. From that, the EPA will be able to determine if additional cleanup is needed in Libby or if institutional controls need to be put in place.