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FILE NAME: RT Vanderbilt (RTV) DATE: 2000 June 202 DOC#: RTV 106 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION: Seattle Post-Intelligencer Article - "It didn't Matter What They Called It, It's Killing Us" MomSeattle Pets SPI MySeattlePix My account 1 l[..?.rr.*rcl)l Our network sites seattlepi com ^ Local US/World ^poits SPia^TREPORTs" B j.n t: ~ Ia &E ; Life Comics Photos \ O pinion 'It didn't matter what they called i t ... it's killing us' Generations of miners were fiber's victims HP!n Blogs [ Subscribe [ Buy Ads 1Jobs I Autos Horned . Rentals NWsource INSIDE s r \TTLEPI.COM 111V*7 mOz I nPo&wrsonafnQ. ap: top headlines 0 Obama reverses Bush abortion-funds policy Blagojevich: I'm the Thursday, June 22, 2000 Day in Pictures David Horsey Photo gallery victim of plot to raise taxes By ANDREW SCHNEIDER SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER SENIOR NATIONAL CO RRESPO ND ENT 2000 Seattle Post-Intelligencer GOUVERNEUR, N.Y. -- The tom bstones of Talcvllle and Balm at and Battling the waves and more Enter the Economic Valley Forge Premiere of 'Underworld: Rise of the Lycans' fiD U E R T IS IM S Little-known congresswoman picked for Clinton seat Obama asks lawmakers to back stim u lu s bill Vatican 2.0: Pope gets Hallesboro tell the story. Beneath them lie generations of talc m iners, and the num bers carved In the marble and granite stones show that generations here run short. Many of the men who took their living from this soft white rock died young -- In th e ir late 4 0 s and 50s. . IN THIS SECTION Asbestos confusion exposing miilions his own YouTube channel more ap: odd news f] Newspaper claims suspect transform ed into a goat Neb. woman claims she Mining has always been a By a n y name, asbestos is found needle in pork roast perilous profession, but few of these men died from caved-in shafts or runaway ore cars or any of the multitude of still a killer The verm iculite risk hits home Pink locks get Michigan girl locked out of school Tim e bandits: Pair filches Roiex watches Wal-Mart worker accused accidents that torm ent humans extracting m inerals from the earth. Far more of them died the excruciating death of suffocation -- from lungs made uselessly rigid by scarring from Asbestos protection pledged for workers Little risk for home gardeners, EPA says Don't touch verm iculite insulation, state says of rolling back prices more most read Report: More Starbucks layoffs ahead Massive credit card data breach hits local banks, credit unions deeply embedded mineral Sim s job report denied fibers, lungs with cancerous tumors, lungs filled with m uddy-yellow fluid the consistency of honey. Lungs that could no longer absorb Health warning on attic asbestos EPA: Asbestos in garden only a hazard if you handle verm iculite regularly M icrosoft shuts dow n its Aces Studio Kent woman accused of starving puppy h more life-giving air. most e-mailed m The fibers that did this are the same fibers the governm ent found this m onth In crayons. T h a t's because m ost of the nation's top crayon m akers put talc from The R.T. V anderbilt Co. m ines here in th e ir products. The Post-Intelligencer reported last month that tests comm issioned by the new spaper had found asbestos In three m ajor brands of crayons. Two weeks ago, after the Consum er Product Safety Com mission conducted Its own tests, the agency urged crayon m akers to elim inate talc from their products. The three m ajor m anufacturers agreed to do so within a year. Vanderbilt insists that the fibers in its talc are not asbestos. The Occupational Safety and Health Adm inistration agrees, despite the fact that doctors say the fibers have the sam e chemical composition and shape as asbestos. Spending even a sh o rt tim e In St. Law rence County m akes It clea r th at whatever the fibers are called, they are dangerous to miners. Many of the houses tell the sam e story as the gravestones: The Vanderbilt mine Generations of miners were fiber's victim s Pushing for asbestosis study cost doctor his job How Vanderbilt tried to discredit U.S. study A sm all group of physicians is trying to change the course of asbestos-induced disease Asbestos -- it's the killer th a t w on't die Canada fiercely defends in d u s try Asbestos being sold, EPA tests show Kitchen tables bear baskets full of pills -- unless the grandklds are visiting, and the pills are shoved out of reach. Fear of losing profits prom pted industry leaders to fight regulations Under the Needle: Runner tried to reach every S eattle library in a single day Massive credit card data breach hits local banks, credit unions Barrio brings the taco truck concept indoors Report: More Starbucks layoffs ahead Dinner: Seared Noodles with Ground Lamb and Bok Choy >m o re popular soundoffs Obam a's first moves shine light on secrecy The Independent: What creationists really hate is that we emerged by accident Krugman: Don't let Bushies get away with crim e Portland mayor: T screwed up1 Cleared of murder, a second life begins more Cylinders of oxygen and coils of tubing can often be found beside the bed, o r next to the best arm chair in the living room. Safety groups mostly ignore asbestos peril H elp/troubleshoot C ustom ize headlines These men have the sam e disease that has been killing the m iners and m illers of talc for years. Doctors say the cause is asbestos. Nationwide study of asbestos to begin Vanderbilt says it's anything but. "There have been m any claim s of finding asbestos in our m ines, but when we've been able to analyze those claim s, we've not been able to confirm it," said John Kelse, m anager of Vanderbilt's Corporate Risk Management Department. "There is no asbestiform -- anthophyllite or trem olite. There are transitional fibers which can be described as asbestiform , and we wouldn't argue with that. Are those things considered asbestos? No. And more im portantly, do they pose the same type of risk as asbestos? The data that we have says they do not." Kelse, who sounded weary from decades of explaining Vanderbilt's position, said yesterday he has "stacks of boxes filled with studies and reports showing the talc contains no asbestos." Despite repeated requests, this m aterial was not made available to the Post-Intelligencer. If you think your home has asbestos in it, leave it alone Mine wants piece of land trust Class-action suit targets Grace Co., insulation Asbestos-laden product still being sold In Seattle area Asbestos found in many common garden products One victim's story: *1 . . couldn't get a breath; it scared me to death almost' The Syracuse law firm of Setright & Longstreet spent years gathering depositions and other evidence on behalf of 139 talc-country m iners or the heirs of m iners who died from asbestos-related diseases. A ju ry will never get to weigh the evidence or hear the miners' stories. Last year, the New York Supreme Court ruled that the mining companies cannot be sued because state law requires claim s to be handled through w orkers' compensation. The P-I found hundreds of such claim s, in which talc w orkers were found to have work-related respiratory disabilities. Horseman in the race of his fife Asbestos bill raises ethics questions Back to intro Other coverage of asbestos issues D V E R T IS IN S A foot-high stack of the documents -- autopsy reports, medical records, pathology studies and death certificates -- show that miners, m illers and mine supervisors have died or are dying from disease caused by fibers -- m ostly asbestos -- in th e ir lungs. The depositions, m edical records and company docum ents show repeated exam ples of company doctors telling w orkers for years that they were healthy, when X-rays locked away in com pany files showed lungs filled with asbestos or tum ors. If the miners had known this medical inform ation, they could have halted the deadly exposures, doctors say. "We probably didn't believe that the X-rays showed asbestosis," Kelse said when asked why the com pany withheld the inform ation. "You can't do mineral analysis on an X-ray." Other statem ents showed Vanderbilt's continuing assurances to its workers that there was no asbestos in the talc. But interspersed are company letters and reports touting the value and variety of the asbestos-containing products it sold. Surviving is not easy While the court depositions graphically docum ent the medical plight of the m iners, the tru e m agnitude of the pain inflicted on these fam ilies is far more apparent sitting across a kitchen table. If Norman Rockwell w as still searching for im ages that capture the spirit of the nation, Herb and Margaret Conklin would be great models. An A m erican flag hangs from a pole in a drivew ay covered with w hite tailings from the mine. Behind the pristine, carefully kept house are two large, dilapidated barns. Conklin is one who did not die young. But his later years have been filled with suffering. "I w orked in the m ines for 30 years to the day," says Conklin, who is 77. He ran a rock crusher, drove ore cars, fixed heavy m ach in ery . A doctor in 1990 to!d Herbert Conklin, 77, nght, that he had taicosis, a n incurable condition. Conklin and his wife, Margaret, 72, had noticed the problem in 1987 Conklin worked at the Gouvem eur T a lc C o , a subsidiary of R T. Vanderbilt Co. in Balmat, N Y., for 30 years. A bowl of medicine is a constant reminder of his illness Renee C. Byer/P-I "I did about everything th at could be done at the mines and all of it in dust so heavy you som etim es couldn't see 10 feet," he recalls. "They^claimed the dust was safe, * My account OUR AFFILIATES p non-asbestiform . Vanderbilt called it non-flbrous, nothing that would harm us. They posted signs on the bulletin board saying the governm ent doctors, the guys from NIOSH, were wrong, that it w asn't dangerous," he says. He recalls a late afternoon in one of th e buildings aw ay from the dustiest areas of the mine and mill. "The sun had dropped low enough to sh ine though one of the dirty windows," he says, "and the sunbeam cutting across the room was thick with fine particles of dust. "It scared me because I knew there w as asbestos in th at dust. The company knew it and they tried to hush it up every tim e the governm ent mine inspectors cam e up." He and other m iners interviewed were critical of mine inspectors for being too cozy with Vanderbilt. "They always called two or three days before they cam e out to tell the company they were on the way and for the next two or three days we shoveled, sw ept and wet down all the dust we could find," Conklin said, fingering a brown pill bottle. It was 1978 when he realized ju st how much he had been harmed. "I w as clim bing up a ladder to w ork on the roof of the barn and all of a sudden, I couldn't breathe. I ju st held on knowing th at the asbestos had gotten me," he says, patting the hand of his wife of 53 years. The Conklins' lives and future changed. The 35 cows that he and Margaret had m ilked twice a day, and were to provide enough to live on when he retired, were soon sold. He lowers his head, raises his thick glasses and rubs his eyes. Margaret clutches his arm a little tighter. Conklin says he's not going to let anger burn him out, but the anger is always there. "It was wrong. If Vanderbilt didn't care enough about its workers, why did n't the go vernm ent step In? Everything got tied up over w hat the com pany called the fibers. It d id n 't m atter w hat they called it, it was dangerous. "It is killing us." Fingers tell the tale About a mile away, on the main street of Edwards, down from the one store and tiny cafe, two other Vanderbilt veterans sit in an im maculate living room and com pare notes on life in the mine. Charlie M inckler spent alm ost half of his 65 years w orking for Vanderbilt. Bill Fuller, who is 68, did more than 26 years at the same company and at St. Joe's, a zinc mine across the road. As a yellow canary looked on from its cage, Charlie Minckler, 65, of Edwards, they trie d to recall th e yo u n g m en they N . Y , worked at the Gouvem eur T a lc C o , a subsidiary of R.T. started at the m ines with decades earlier. Vanderbilt C o . in Balmat, N . Y , until 1989, when he underwent a After a litany of "H e's dead," "H e's gone," quadruple heart bypass Minckler, who worked m the mine pit, knew he had a lung disease by the and "Nope, he passed also," the men became quiet. curving of his fingernails, Renee C. Byer/P-I "I guess I 'm lucky," M inckler says in a soft but raspy voice. "Of the 52 guys I began with at the mine, all but three are dead and m ost of them died young, in th e ir 40 s and 50s. "Cancer took a bunch of them. The rest ju st couldn't breathe." They talk about other acquaintances who m ust use tanks of oxygen to make it through the day. ''Once they get on that oxygen, they w on't be around m uch longer," M inckler says, shaking his head sadly. As the two old friends used their precious breath to tell stories, they com pared notes on the private anguish of being unable to su ck in a chest full of air. "I used to be able to mow m y law n In 20 m inutes," M lnckler said. "Now, if I'm lucky and it's not too hot, it can take four hours." Fuller doesn't even try to do anything strenuous. "I can't w alk to the w indow w ithout stopping," he says, "and th at's no way for a man to live." Like Conklin, they target their anger at both Vanderbilt and the governm ent. "We know why Vanderbilt lied about the danger. It would be bad for business and no one would work for them ," says Fuller. "But what about the government? W hy don't they care? This asbestos, or whatever Vanderbilt w ants to call It, Is not a secret. The graveyard s are filled with proof that those fibers are dangerous." What sparks their fury more than anything, they say, is that company doctors hid the Illness from them . Bill Fuller, 68, who worked in the talc pit o f the Gouverneur T a lc C o , inhales from a portable medical device that forces oxygen to his lungs, helping him to breathe. H e u ses the appliance every six hours. Fuller has an incurable lung disease, and sa ys h e "can't walk to the window without stop p ing " Renee C Byer/P-I treatm ent. "It w a sn 't as if they d id n 't know," M lnckler said. "Hell, ju st look at our fingers. They're clubbed. Everybody's are like that. It's a sign the lungs aren't working." Clubbing, a bulbous distortion of the fingertips and nails, is caused by a prolonged state of Inadequate oxygenation. Asbestos specialists say it's rare today and usually only found when there has been poor medical treatm ent or no "They knew we were sick. We took company physicals every year," Mlnckler says. "They knew whose lungs were shot, but they wouldn't tell us and they w ouldn't send us to a specialist." Local doctors miss signs Most of the asbestos disease cases w ere not reported to w orkers by com pany d octors o r diagnosed by other physicians in the county. When deteriorating health and increasing difficulty breathing forced the miners and m illers to seek other opinions, usually at their own expense at medical centers far outside St. Lawrence County, physicians often quickly diagnosed asbestosis, lung cancer and other significant respiratory im pairm ent. One local doctor did find the disease, and suffered for his efforts. Dr. G eorge W ineburgh, a radiologist, stood up fo r the sick m iners. He showed that scores of patients diagnosed as suffering from emphysema actually had asbestosis. Even though the state health departm ent confirmed his findings, by the end of his first year on the job, Wineburgh found him self fired as the radiologist at a com m unity hospital in the heart of talc country. (See accompanying story.) 'Asbestos by any standard' Dr. Jerrold Abraham is director o f environm ental and occupational pathology at U pstate Medical U n iversity in Syra cuse and has fought the battle over asbestos in talc for years. His cluttered office in the crowded, re d -b rick pathology departm en t Is probably one of the world's largest storehouses of knowledge on the health effects of the fine white powder. Dr. Jerrold Abraham , a pathologist at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, N . Y , has fought the battle over asbestos in talc for years. Renee C Byer/P-I the slivers of organs of miners. The two room s house an eclectic accum ulation of volum inous file folders, overfilled cabinets, floor-toceiling shelves brim m ing with medical charts, death certificates, studies on talc going back to the 1920s, and hundreds of slides with "It doesn't bother me that Vanderbilt can get away with not calling the fibers what they are -- asbestos," Abraham says. "What should bother everyone is that Vanderbilt and the governm ent say they're not harm ful." V a n d e rb ilt's Kelse, who acknow ledges that Abraham is "a good pathologist," says, "Vanderbilt has never said that overexposure to our talc o r anyone e lse 's talc is safe. It isn 't. T alcosis is different from asbestosis. But there's not much difference in the X-rays." Abraham peers over the top of his glasses at a dozen m icrophotographs spread atop a long table. "These are fibers from the m ill at Vanderbilt mine," he says, holding a photo up. "This is from the lung of a Vanderbilt m iner," he says, reaching for another. "They're identical. Anyone can see that. My findings in reviewing the autopsy lung tissues of these m iners show disease attributed to asbestos by any competent medical standard. You get OSHA and the m ine Inspectors to say why they don't believe it's asbestos." Vanderbilt fights hard "Our position," Kelse said yesterday, "has alw ays been ju st call the stuff what it is. W hatever the health effect that's dem onstrated as a result of o verexpo sure to these fibers, you regulate it and control It to avoid those health problems." But regulation is precisely w hat Vanderbilt has been fighting for decades. In a 1983 letter to the Departm ent of Labor, lawyers for Vanderbilt challenged OSHA's acceptance of NIOSH's determ ination that asbestos in th e ir m ine w as trem olite and w as harm ing the health of the m iners. OSHA's decision "portends disastrous econom ic consequences," the letter said. "If such talcs are going to be considered as asbestos both the paint and ceram ic tile industries will elim inate the use of talc" and Vanderbilt will be forced out of business, the letter predicted. A note to Vanderbilt employees May 27, 1988, said: "We are certain that the aspect of labeling our product as asbestos as required by the OSHA regulations would lead to a rapid loss of our business. The public panic o v er asbesto s Is such th at our operation could not su rvive the stigma attached to such a label." About the sam e time, then-com pany president Hugh Vanderbilt came to the m ine to rally the m iners. A portion of his speech is v ivid ly etched in the m inds of the m iners who heard it. Bill Fuller w as there. "I've ne ve r seen a nicer dressed, m ore w ell-spoken man in m y life ," he recalls. The m ine captain gathered all of the da y-sh ift m iners and m illers in the carpenter shop. V anderbilt, attired in a dark su it and tie, stood before the talc-sm eared miners and told them not to worry about the debate over defining the fibers in the talc as asbestos because everything w as under control. The m iners' depositions differed on how much m oney Vanderbilt said he had spent -- hundreds of thousands or m illions -- but all agreed that Vanderbilt then told his workers, it would be OK, th at if all else failed, he had a se n a to r in h is back pocket, and he m ade a show of patting his wallet. He said none of them had to w orry about their jobs. Documents touted asbestos Neither Abraham 's works, W ineburgh's X-rays nor the repeated studies by NIOSH investigato rs has dim inished V a n d e rb ilt's insistence that there is no asbestos in its talc. But going back years, Vanderbilt's own docum ents tell a different story. In a Jan. 2, 1975, le tte r from V anderbilt to the G eorgia Pacific Corp. in Portland, th e sales office w rote th at "in assu m ing the business of the International Talc Com pany, we will continue to m arket five fibrous asbestiform talcs/' and then w ent on the list them. The letter concluded by saying Vanderbilt would "label bags containing these products with an asbestos caution label as follows: CAUTION -- PRODUCT CONTAINS ASBESTOS FIBERS. AVOID CREATING DUST. BREATHING ASBESTOS DUST MAY CAUSE SERIOUS BODILY HARM." "At that tim e there was no one here at Vanderbilt that had good mlneralogical expertise or a full understanding of what OSHA's regulations were all about," Kelse says. "The people here didn't understand that there are two varieties of trem olite and they assumed that m eant that the com pany w ould have to label som e of Its talc products as asbestos-containing. "Then they hired a m ineralogist who said, 'W hat are you doing?' So the company stopped" the labeling. International Talc, which mined from the sam e area that Vanderbilt mines, sold at least seven different products called Asbestine. Court documents show they contained as m uch as 50 percent asbestos. Court docum ents show that prior to the advent o f O SH A in 1972 and the agency's concerns about asbestos as a risk to workers, Vanderbilt capitalized on the fact that its talc products contained asbestos. T a lc's long history Talc has been mined and milled in St. Lawrence County since 1878, when Henry Palmer opened Am erica's first talc mine, on a farm near Talcville. By the end o f W orld W a r II, the county w as honeycom bed with deep shafts and pits, som e m om -and-pop operations, others producing thousands o f tons of minerals.' The m iners dug not only talc, but zinc, lead and other m inerals. The one com m on fiber throughout the mines was asbestos. Y et V anderbilt continues to say It Isn't so. In 1942, the Saranac Laboratory docum ented that anthophylllte, trem olite and four o ther fibers w ere plentiful In the m ines. A book published by Vanderbilt in 1966 to celebrate its 50th anniversary described the im portance of the talc and asbestos m ixtures that it sold. The deposition of Frederick Kuehi, a m ining engineer who worked for International Talc for 27 years and ended up a general manager, talked of the mine that Vanderbilt bought having various types of asbestos that were mined depending on w hat the custom er needed. The trem olite portion went m ostly into wall tiles and paints, he said. If you wanted a fibrous ore you mined the veins that contained more anthophyllite, Kuehi said. In 1993, Arthur Rohl, a m ineralogist with Mount Sinai School of Medicine and consultant to OSHA, testified that all the talc m ines of St. Lawrence County contain asbestiform m aterial. His studies of the Gouverneur Talc Mines found that the ore contained 60 percent trem olite, anthophyllite and a sm all am ount of chrysotile. Effects continue today The effect that Vanderbilt, the asbestos Industry, the Am erican Mining Congress and the National Stone Association had in the '70s and '80s on OSHA's definition of asbestos continues to have ram ifications today, well beyond the sickened talc miners. The Consumer Product Safety Com m ission announced last week that it had found trace am ounts of anthophyllite asbestos in crayons. But the two labs who did the governm ent's analysis also found much larger quantities of what O SHA's laboratory in Salt Lake City called "transitional fibers." Scores of labs across the country, testing crayons for local and state agencies, found the sam e fibers and called them asbestos, as defined by the Environm ental Protection Agency. Unless or until OSHA decides to revisit the asbestos debate, the agency m ust follow the decisions the Industry pressured it to m ake in 1980s. Since OSHA's laboratory does the analysis for the Mine Safety and Health Adm inistration, this may be skew ing the results of sam pling done by mine inspectors. With rare exceptions, OSHA's analysis of MSHA's testing reported no asbestos detected in sam ples from talc m ines in New York, taconite m ines in Northern Michigan and M innesota and verm iculite m ines in Virginia and South Carolina. Davitt McAteer, M SHA's director, said in a January interview that he and his technical staff are m ystified at the apparent contradictions between no asbestos being found and reports from unions, physicians and miners them selves of significant asbestos-related diseases among the work forces at these mines. Meanwhile, conditions have im proved som ewhat at Vanderbilt. Better ventilation has been installed, and some workers have newer protective gear, although the dust is still a m ajor concern. As the m iners in New Y ork's talc country continue to do w hat th e ir fathers and grandfathers did for more than a century, they still must wonder if their stories will end differently. P-I senior national correspondent Andrew Schneider can be reached at 206-448-8218 or andrewschneider@seattle-pi.com P-1 reporter Carol Smith contributed to this report. Home I Contact Us |About the P-I I Front Page I Corrections I P-I Jobs Home Delivery j E-edition |RSS |Mobile Feeds I P-I Reader I Submit News : NIE 101 Elliott Ave. W. Seattle, WA 98119 (206) 448-8000 Home Delivery: (206) 464-2121 or (800) S42-0820 seattlepl.com serves about 4 m illion unique visitors and 45 m illion page views each month. Send com m ents to newmedia@seattlepi.com Send investigative tips to iteam@seattlepi.com 1996-2009 Seattle Post-Intelligencer Term s of Use/Privacy Policy