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Welcome to Libby, Montana, the Town That Was Poisoned
After an epidemic of asbestos-related deaths, one woman is fighting for justice in the Rocky Mountains
Dean Herreid’s lungs are gradually being destroyed. When he coughs, as he frequently does, his long, wheezing splutter sounds so painful it makes you wince. Herreid lives in Libby, a tiny Rocky Mountain town in Montana that is isolated, beautiful and toxic. Scores of men in this rough-edged, blue collar town have been killed off, poisoned with deadly asbestos from the local mine.
But Herreid is not elderly and he was never a miner. He simply played baseball as a child on a field near the mine and, years later, has developed a lung disease that is destroying the life of this 44-year-old father of two young boys. There are many others like him.
Horrifying stories are emerging at a criminal trial where the corporate giant WR Grace, which owned the mine, is accused of knowingly allowing not only its miners but the entire town to breathe deadly Asbestos Dust. The US government calls it "the worst case of industrial poisoning of a whole community in American history".
Asbestos was present in the air and the piles of mineral ore around the Libby mine and processing plant, now long closed. But it also laced the slag that WR Grace donated to four schools to make running tracks and an ice rink in the 1970s, and was mixed with other materials to make two junior baseball pitches.
Out of a population of 2,600, at least 200 have died from Asbestos Exposure, more than 1,000 are ill and new cases are being diagnosed at a rate of one a week.
A quarter of these are former miners and a further quarter belong to their immediate families, but the other 50 per cent had no direct connection with the mine. Some have faint spots on their lungs, others have full-blown cancer.
After hundreds of private lawsuits, the US Justice Department has indicted the company and put five senior executives on trial, alleging that they knew the risks, conspired to cover them up and impeded investigators, thereby obstructing justice. The trial in the nearby city of Missoula will last four months.
"If you took a hot knife and stabbed me through the chest, that’s what the pain feels like," said Herreid. "Sometimes I can barely breathe."
The teacher and part-time fire chief was diagnosed in 2005 with pleural plaque, a progressive, excruciating lung scarring caused by the needle-like asbestos fibres. "I had been exposed to it because it was put down on the baseball field where I played between the ages of eight and 12," he said. Most of those affected are in their 60s and 70s. But there are hundreds under 50 suffering from lung disease or Mesothelioma Cancer. The youngest is only 13. The rate of lung disease in Libby is between 40 and 60 times the national average.
The town was built on logging, but in 1919 vermiculite was discovered in a mountain and found to be an excellent material for loft and wall insulation, fire-proofing and soil conditioner. When WR Grace bought the mine in 1963 it was producing 80% of the world’s vermiculite and Libby was proud of it.
But naturally occurring amid the mineral were traces of a dangerous form of asbestos. Even short-term exposure can send minuscule, hook-like, glassy fibres into the lungs that pierce the lining with each breath and never come out.
"Miners went to work and they came home dusty; it was a badge of honour, really," said pioneering Libby campaigner Gayla Benefield. In a town like Libby it was accepted that logging and mining were dangerous work.
"A miner knew if he was killed his family would be taken care of," she said. "But they never thought for a moment they were harming their children or their wives. Then people started coming forward with lung problems who had nothing to do with the mine."
The dust the miners brought home was breathed in by their families, eventually causing them to sicken and die.
At the trial last week, prosecutors cited victims ranging from a Libby family who started a tree nursery on land bought from Grace that was riddled with asbestos, to the assistant at the chiropractor’s who helped miners out of their dusty clothes, to people who simply went fishing.
The ageing defendants sat sullenly as pulmonologist Dr Alan Whitehouse told the jury that although the mine closed in 1990, he is still diagnosing Libby area patients with asbestos-related diseases at the rate of one a week. And because it takes between 15 and 30 years to become detectable, "I don’t think we’ll see the last of these until 2030 and maybe longer," he said.
Prosecutors have compiled millions of pages of documents and x-rays of diseased lungs they say prove that WR Grace knew in the 1960s that the dust was killing its miners, and that they gradually became aware that it was also poisoning families and threatening the whole community, but they suppressed it, ignored it and later covered it up – something that Gayla Benefield had been trying to tell the authorities for years.
Benefield’s extended family has been devastated. She nursed her father, a miner, as he died from lung disease, then watched her mother die slowly from exposure to the dust he brought home.
"My father was only 59 and he could not have walked from the car into this cafe," she said over breakfast. Benefield, 66, has been diagnosed with the disease, though her symptoms are mild so far. Her two sisters rely on tanks of oxygen to help them breathe. She runs through a mind-boggling toll of uncles, in-laws, nephews, grandchildren, cousins and aunts who are ill, dying or dead from pleural spots, lung disease or absestos-related cancer.
Children used to play in piles of vermiculite left lying around the town. Clouds of dust hung in the air from the processing plant. "It’s the most gruesome death you can imagine," said Kimberly Rowse, a local nurse. "It takes every effort to get a little air. Eventually they are gulping like a fish out of water."
Gayla Benefield sued WR Grace after her mother died in 1985. She persuaded others to sue, gathered evidence and made a noise. At the time this upset many in conservative Libby, where people relied on Grace and traditionally despised complainers and environmentalists. Everyone now knows someone who is affected.
These days Benefield finds herself compared to Erin Brockovich, the California legal clerk who defeated a power firm that contaminated drinking water, and inspired the eponymous film that made her a celebrity.
Lawyers for WR Grace deny all the charges and say the company did its best to protect Libby. Some residents reason that the executives did not set out to poison their children, but are guilty of willful negligence. Others believe greed and corporate loyalty trumped all.
At the second-hand shop, Ida Templin, 74, comes in looking for a fold-out cot to put next to her husband’s hospital bed when he goes in next week for treatment for his asbestosis. "He likes to hold my hand when he’s going to sleep," she said.
Jack Templin, 77, a former logger, is outside in their van, hooked up to a 50-gallon tank of oxygen so he can catch his breath. One of their grandchildren has a lump on the lung. "Grace knew all the time, they just called it ‘the dust’. Mass murder is what you would call it," said Ida.
WR Grace has gone bankrupt under the weight of 100,000 asbestos-related claims, mostly from plant workers around the US where raw vermiculite from Libby was processed. It has agreed to settle. Now Libby waits for the verdict in the criminal trial. If convicted the executives face up to 15 years in jail.
"This trial is about justice more than money. They have been found guilty at civil trials, but they have never apologized. They have never accepted responsibility, morally or legally," said Gayla Benefield. "They never said, ‘We made a terrible mistake, what can we do to help?’ It’s tragic."
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