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Libby Asbestos Risk Assessment Due Next Year

By Beacon Staff

The Environmental Protection Agency plans on issuing a Human Health Risk Assessment for its decade long cleanup in Libby sometime in 2014, according to senior toxicologist Deborah McKean. The assessment will determine the next steps in the Superfund cleanup that has hung over Lincoln County since 2002.

This year, EPA officials are determining two values that will help complete the risk assessment: a cancerous Inhalation Unit Risk value and a non-cancerous Reference Concentration.

“When you do a risk assessment, you need to find the measurement of exposure and the toxicity of the compound,” McKean said. “This will help determine the exposure risk in Libby and Troy. This will help us make decisions on what else needs to be done.”

For years, asbestos-laden vermiculate was mined near Libby by the Maryland-based W.R. Grace & Company. The mine closed in 1990, but the effects of the poisonous asbestos have lasted for years. According to the Center for Asbestos Related Disease, also known as the CARD Clinic, some 2,000 current orr former residents of Lincoln County have been diagnosed with asbestos-related diseases and at least 400 have died. Libby was declared an EPA Superfund site in 2002 and in June 2009, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson named the town the agency’s first and only Public Health Emergency resulting from an environmental disaster.

According to the EPA, the Inhalation Unit Risk value is a measurement of how much Libby Asbestos must be inhaled to have a cancerous effect. The Reference Concentration is an estimation of how much someone can be exposed to Libby Asbestos and not be effected.

“Once we get all of the final data, that document can be finalized,” McKean said.

McKean said the Human Health Risk Assessment would be issued before the end of 2014. It will include risk assessments for different groups in the population, including adults, teenagers and children. It would also look at exposure risk from different activities in the Libby and Troy area, including housework, playing in a yard or school, walking, bicycling, working in an office or working outside. The risk assessment starts with data collection and evaluation, before going into the toxicity and exposure assessment and finally the risk characterization.

The completion of the risk assessment could mean one of two things for Libby; it will either signal the beginning of the end of the EPA cleanup or the beginning of even more work in Lincoln County.

“It will help us determine if any additional cleanup is needed or if institutional controls need to be put in place,” she said.