EPA: We knew asbestos was in the wood chips

Libby landscaper Allen Olsen shows the possibly asbestos-contaminated wood chips he  uses in his nursery.
(Photo credit: Matthew Brown/ AP)

File this under "one step forward, two steps back": after years of work cleaning up the federal Superfund site of the former W.R. Grace vermiculite mine in Libby, Montana, and recently receiving $300, 000 in green jobs money to train asbestos abatement professionals in Atlanta, Georgia (see my July 13 post), the EPA recently admitted that they had known for three years that the people of Libby may have been buying, selling and handling wood chips and assorted lumber products made of wood from an asbestos-contaminated forest near the former vermiculite mine.


Well.


I can honestly say I didn't see that coming. I feel a little foolish, after all my excitement about the green job creation (asbestos abatement is a relatively high paying job and the result of abatement is good for property values, so what more can you ask for?) in Atlanta.  


Read Matthew Brown's article on the news about the EPA keeping this a secret for three years and tell me what you think about the EPA's actions (or inactions) in Libby: disappointing but understandable? Logical? Insane? Don't know enough to answer yet?


In case you're curious about how one contaminates wood with asbestos, here's an excerpt from the article:

Many of the trees processed at the mill before it was shuttered last decade came from the forests around the around the W.R. Grace mine.

EPA testing results last year showed trees up to eight miles from the mine site were riddled with asbestos. Some areas close to the mine had trees with hundreds of millions of fibers per gram of bark.

Officials also have speculated that the asbestos in the wood chip piles could have come from contaminated dust from the vermiculite mine. Residents say large quantities of dust routinely settled over Libby when the mine was still in operation.