The Environment

More than 10,000 people a year die from asbestos disease, 5,000 of them from asbestos-caused lung cancer. It is precisely people like these, those most seriously harmed and dying from asbestos disease, that the Senate leadership has claimed to be helping with its series of asbestos trust fund bills. Few proposals have lived up to that claim, but the current proposal is perhaps the cruelest of all to date.

The Specter-Leahy Asbestos Bill allows residents of Libby, Montana, home of the notorious W.R. Grace vermiculite mine to sidestep the Byzantine criteria for assistance in the bill, and receive a guaranteed award of $400,000. The provision is notable, not so much for its special attention to the people of Libby, who by all accounts deserve the assistance, but in the absence of such care for any of the hundreds of communities around the country that received and processed thousands of tons of asbestos contaminated Libby vermiculite for decades.

The U.S. Senate's latest scheme to limit the liability of asbestos makers would cut benefits dramatically to people dying of the fatal asbestos cancer, mesothelioma, and pre-empt laws in 12 states, and court customs in at least 8 more, that guarantee a speedy trial to terminally ill plaintiffs.

Poor air quality costs Californians more than $521 million a year -- a price paid in hundreds of trips to the emergency room, thousands of hospital admissions and millions of missed school days.

As the Texas legislature considers controversial asbestos legislation that would restrict the legal rights of people injured by asbestos, hundreds of Texans continue to die of asbestos diseases each year.

A six-month EWG Action Fund investigation into asbestos in America uncovered an epidemic of asbestos disease and mortality that affects every state and virtually every community in the country. Asbestos kills 10,000 Americans each year, 2,500 more than skin cancer, and that number appears to be increasing. While most of these individuals are workers exposed decades ago, asbestos is not yet banned and more than 1 million people are currently exposed to asbestos on the job. As long as asbestos continues to be used in consumer products and remains available in millions of buildings and homes, it will continue to kill and injure thousands of innocent people for decades to come.