Libby, part 2

earlier in the saga, the EPA posted Q&A about the earlier suit: Q : Can Grace sue me to recover money it is required to pay EPA for cleanup of my property?

A : Yes. Grace has the right to sue you, but the court must first decide to what extent you may be held responsible. EPA provided No Action Assurances to owners of residential and business properties in Libby. These assurances indicate that EPA will not seek the cost of cleanup from you. The No Action Assurance will tell the court that EPA does not believe you should be held responsible for those costs.

So, the EPA won't screw you out of money to pay for this??? What in god's name do they think funds the EPA? My taxes. Oh, okay - so EPA won't see restitution from the residents - they get it from me! Grace being able to sue a homeowner to recoup money they need to spend to cover their illegal/unethical activities which caused the homeowner to get asbestosis(read: lung cancer)? How much more obscene can you get?

Libby, part 1

Well, a bit delayed with posting ... From February... W.R. Grace was back in the news with a new lawsuit. This is the owner of the vermiculite mine in Libby, Montana. The stupendous point of this is that the defendants in the suit are the Grace executives, not the company. This is the first time the EPA has tried this. They - unlike OSHA - are allowed to directly bring suit against individuals. Actually, I’m not sure OSHA is even allowed to sue anyone, just implement fines. I’m sure the rest of the legal community is waiting with baited breath (assuming we don’t have asbestosis, of course). The company did ban smoking at the mine in 1978 — smoking compounds the dangers of asbestos, doctors say — and also issued respirator masks to workers. But showers that the miners could have used at the end of their shifts before heading home were ruled out, because they might have overly worried people. In the largest judgment after trial (in 2003) in the history of the federal Superfund law, the Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency announced that the District Court of Montana has ordered W.R. Grace & Co. to pay over $54.5 million to reimburse the federal government for the costs of investigation and cleanup of asbestos contamination in Libby, Montana. There is asbestos all over the entire town. Usually asbestos abatement brings an image of workers in Tyvek suits & respirators working behind plastic sheeting. This abatement is somehow supposed to be the entire city of Libby.

Bitrex

Good heavens, this stuff tastes gross! Last night's class on respirators ended with a call for volunteers to go through a qualitative fit-test with a filtering face-piece respirator. How do you know if it's a respirator or a dust mask? If it says NIOSH, it's a respirator. There being only 6 people in the class, it's not as though one can hide in the back of the room. No one seemed to be leaping at the opportunity, so I volunteered. I guess there's benefits of being the oldest student - I'm pretty immune to most things that embarrass my younger classmates. I've never done qualitative fit testing before, only the quantitative method. They used bitrex as the sensory stimulus. They asked if I knew what it tasted like, simply to avoid having to check. I got a whiff of it once, being in close proximity to someone getting this done. Blech. Since we weren't waiting 1 minute for each of these activities (reading, turning head, lifting chin, etc), I was getting one whopping huge amount of bitrex pumped into the Bag On Head. They're looking kind of curious - I'm not sure why. The whole point is to demonstrate that even an N95 (read: not an N100) is perfectly capable of protecting against this stuff. Then ... wham. The standard bug-eyed, open mouth, sounds of disgust and grabbing for the hood. An hour later walking through campus with some classmates, I licked my lips only to realize it was still there. I think recommending employees rinse their face should be required, whether or not they fail. I failed on the step requiring someone to bend over. I'm not toooo surprised. It wasn't fitting really well under my chin. I was actually surprised it fit as well as it did. I'm curious about what size I was wearing - despite being a woman, I have a fairly broad face. I wear a size Large for full-face respirators, and depending on the manufacturer either Medium or Large for the half-face fitted ones. Yet another reason to offer multiple sizes to employees and make them try on more than one size. Of course you have them, because you're required to (1910.134 Apdx A - first point made) - but you should make them try more than one. Curiously, a rep from 3M told me that different chemicals are used in different countries. Not a surprising statement, eh? But ... apparently there is a distinct difference in sensitivity to some of the compounds. Americans have a lower sensitivity to one of the sweet-smelling chemicals, presumably due to the high sugar content of our regular diets.