Newark Factory Exposed Workers to Asbestos

Hayward Daily Review, Staff
Published September 28, 2005

A former Newark insulation factory and 17 other defunct plants nationwide could trigger asbestos-related cancer and lung disease in former workers and possibly neighbors, federal health authorities said. W.R. Grace's factories processed shiny, golden vermiculite ore dug from a company mine in Libby, Mont. Out of dozens of such factories in 22 states, only one handled more of the asbestos-contaminated vermiculite than the Newark plant named California Zonolite and Diversified Insulation. In almost 30 years, workers at the corrugated aluminum factory baked 300,000 tons of the ore. Federal health authorities say those workers, particularly ones employed from 1966 to 1983, were exposed to dust clouds of tremolite-actinolite asbestos. Symptoms of asbestos-related disease can take 25 or more years to emerge, so workers could begin showing respiratory problems this decade or later. Former workers and close neighbors to the Newark plant can contact the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry toll free at (888) 422-8737. The agency's recent reports on 18 of the largest W.R. Grace plants could prove politically difficult for federal lawmakers as Congress considers removing asbestos lawsuits from the courts and creating a massive trust fund for asbestos victims. If plant workers became ill, they would have to compete for compensation on less-certain terms than traditional asbestos workers. Dr. Richard Lemen, a former deputy director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and a 26-year public-health veteran, said the plant's indoor concentrations of airborne asbestos, as listed in the report, are reason to worry about cancer. "These are numbers in the workplace that I would be concerned about," Lemen said. "They should be brought in for a medical program to evaluate what their health status is today and be kept an eye on in the future." Tests conducted by Grace itself inside the plant in the late 1970s showed airborne asbestos averaging 45 times today's workplace standards - and three times higher than those inside a similar plant in the Southern California city of Santa Ana - with some concentrations 100 times higher. By 1983, federal scientists believed airborne asbestos in the plant was lowered to today's standards, and the plant stopped operating in 1993. Many scientists believe the current occupational standard still imperils workers, particularly for the kind of asbestos found in Libby vermiculite. Some scientists argue that Libby asbestos poses 100 times the risk of ordinary asbestos for triggering mesothelioma, a rare and almost invariably lethal cancer of the lung lining. That risk more than doubles for smokers. "If you're a former worker, the best thing you could do right now is to alert your physician that you were exposed," said James Durant, an environmental health scientist at the federal toxics agency who led the Newark study. "If you're a current smoker, you need to stop, and you need to stay current on your flu and pneumonia vaccinations." Asbestos concentrations were high enough at the Newark plant that families of workers could have been exposed to unhealthy amounts by doing the laundry. Longtime neighbors of the Grace plants in Newark and elsewhere also could have breathed life-threatening concentrations of asbestos. But federal scientists say they could not learn enough about the air emissions and weather to estimate contamination of the air and soil around the plants. The toxics agency is seeking former Grace workers and immediate neighbors from the 1960s through the early 1980s to warn them and to learn more about the plants' operations. At one Grace site in Minneapolis, for example, children were allowed to play in piles of vermiculite, and residents encouraged to take the glittering material home for use in their gardens or attics. Federal officials don't know whether that happened at Newark. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found elevated levels of asbestos in soil around the Newark plant in 2002, before conducting a cleanup there. Thousands of older Bay Area homes are believed to be insulated with asbestos-contaminated vermiculite that the plant shipped to hardware stores and insulation installers. Federal health and environmental officials warn homeowners who find vermiculite insulation in their attics to leave it undisturbed until cleanup by a professional asbestos-remediation firm.