*
Early EPA tests show asbestos in
common household products
SEATTLE (AP) — Preliminary tests have revealed the presence of
asbestos in common household products that line store shelves here, the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported.
The tests, conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency, have
found the lethal fibers in attic insulation and some gardening products.
Investigators caution that more tests need to be run, but say there may
be some cause for concern.
“There are too many flags going up about possible problems with
asbestos for us not to pay attention,” John Melone, director for the
EPA’s National Program Chemical Division, the newspaper said.
The EPA is generally unable to regulate consumer exposure to asbestos
because of a 1991 lawsuit by U.S. and Canadian asbestos industries
which led to an overturning of the agency’s ban on the microscopic
fibers.
Even so, “ban or no ban, we still have an obligation to take whatever
actions necessary to protect the public health,” Melone said.
Asbestos is a generic term for a number of naturally occurring fibrous
minerals which have been used in insulation and fire retardants. All
forms have been linked to disease, including lung cancer.
Last week, members of the EPA’s Pacific Northwest Investigative
Response Team found 10 bags of Grace’s Zonolite, which contains
asbestos, in a Seattle-area garden store.
The team also found asbestos fibers during preliminary tests in two
garden products sold locally, but team leader Keven McDermott said “a
lot more testing has to be done before we know what we really have.”
Zonolite, sometimes sold as Zonolite Attic Insulation, is a loose-fill
insulation that was poured between attic rafters, under floor boards and
behind walls.
The Boston Globe reported Monday that manufacturer W.R. Grace &
Co. knew Zonolite contained asbestos but lobbied hard to keep its
product free from warning labels and scrutiny.
The product was discontinued in 1984, but the EPA estimated a year
later that it had been installed in 940,000 American homes. Earlier this
month, the EPA warned homeowners to delay using Zonolite in
remodeling projects until more is known about the product.
Grace said in a statement Monday: “This product poses little or no risk
to human health or the environment.”
It said that research in the 1970s found that during Zonolite installation,
asbestos levels in the air were within what were then acceptable levels.
No asbestos fibers were detected in the air after installation.
Grace was the focus of the 1995 book and 1999 film “A Civil Action,”
based on a 1982 lawsuit concerning chemical contamination that was
alleged to have caused leukemia in Woburn, Mass., children. Grace
settled for $8 million.
The Columbia, Md.-based Grace also sold vermiculite — in which
asbestos naturally occurs — as insulation and as a soil enhancer for
gardens.
The company operated a vermiculite mine in Libby, Mont., for 30
years. A Post-Intelligencer investigation found that hundreds of miners
and their family members died or became ill after they were exposed to
the mineral.
“Asbestos is asbestos,” says EPA’s Paul Peronard, whose emergency
response team found lingering asbestos from the mine, which closed 10
years ago. “They all present a health hazard, and that’s enough to trigger
EPA’s concern.”
Peronard and his colleagues from the U.S. Public Health Service
question whether Zonolite contains enough asbestos to be dangerous.
“We’re testing the insulation in the homes in Libby and will be asking
other regions to check it out,” Peronard says. “We’re not saying it’s
dangerous, but we want to find out what we’re dealing with.”
Meanwhile, in Dallas, Neil Pflum, EPA’s asbestos coordinator for the
Southwest, is examining building products found in home-improvement
stores for asbestos.
Pflum says that with more than 3,000 products on the market with
asbestos in them, the research being done on consumer products is vital.
“Absolutely. It’s very important,” he says. “People just don’t know that
the ban was overturned.”
Replies
*
EA:
OK, so if, on a remodel, we see any insulation that looks similar to vermiculite it may contain asbestos...
Is that what you are saying? If so, thanks for the info.
What was the date of your posted article? A couple of weeks ago, I read another article about WR Grace and those folks in Libby, Mont. - sad situation.
Anyone : Wasn't Zonolite or something similar used to fill CMU cells for insulation purposes back in the 60s or 70s?
By the way, I never go out of my yard, never breath when I go outside, eat only organic vegetables grown in my own garden, only open doors with a hanky, and am, at this very minute wearing surgical gloves so that I can be sure that I won't be exposed to any germs or carcinogens from my computer, so I should be pretty much safe! :^)
*
The article was in today's (2/16/00) paper.
Support your local Buddists!
*
Matt, I think vermiculite is what your thinking of. I remember seeing it used in a couple of cmu constructed buildings, that was at least twenty years ago.
Chuck
*Viruses, Matt ... you have to watch out for them computer viruses.Funny, most environmental activists I've known had names. The asbestos scare was unfortunately overblown, the stuff is not safe, but it ain't plutonium neither. The people who were harmed were exposed to tons of it.
*Hey EA,Aren't those soil additives? So if you grow too much Budd and handle too much of that stuff I recommend a Hepa Filter.
*
Andrew,
Please inform us about asbestos. You seem to be the resident expert on everything. What exactly was overblown?
What caught my eye in the article is the fact that asbestos is still found in the marketplace. People can be exposed to it unknowingly.
Spay and Neuter Your Pets!
*
Up until two days ago I had never even heard of Zonolite. The two articles in the Boston Globe this week did not offer much of a physical description of the stuff stating only that it was a loose fill attic insulation containing vermiculite. Does anyone here know what it looks like? The EPA advises that you should have 3 samples from seperate areas tested at about $40.00 per sample. I have only run into loose fill insulation on several remodels, 9 times out of 10 it's fiberglass.It sounds like W R Grace has been up to their old tricks all along. At the same time they were killing people in Woburn by polluting the groundwater they were poisoning the vermiculite miners out in Libby, and fighting to keep any sort of warning off the product. Typical corporate greedmongers. I say hit them where it hurts, don't buy any of their building products. I know they make Ice and Water Shield, and I believe that they make Vicor also. We stopped using that stuff years ago, but only because the IKO Ice and Water Shield was so much easier to handle and walk on. So what do I tell a potential customer now if I look up in the attic and see loose fill insulation? "Give me three samples and $120.00 and I'll let you know if I'm interested in working on your project"? I'll be holding my breath to see how this story develops, especially when I stick my head up in the attic for a look.
If any of you folks have a physical description of this stuff please post it in this thread. DO NOT BUY W R GRACE PRODUCTS, it just might kill ya.
Scott Graupner
*About the questions above about whether or not some building material contains asbestous or not:If in doubt about what it is, have it removed / remove it yourself NOW before it gets a regulation put on it and it costs 100 times more to have it removed later(step up from a couple a guys in overalls and a truck to hazmat spacemen and government regulated removal equipment).Now, I'm not a separatist (though I DO live in Michigan) but I do worry that once a government body gets ahold of an issue it inevitably costs all of us much more.If something (asbestous, in this case) is so deadly why aren't we all already dead? We were all exposed to it growing up, as were our parents, all their lives. If there was lots of lung cancer around, in non smokers, then I'd feel a bit more concern. But like it or not we all will die of something. The link between disease and cause can be very tenuous when the gestation phase is as long as it is for cancers, etc. Even in the asbestous mines there were many workers who lived full, healthy lives. The fact that so many of them did develop the same kinds of diseases makes it apparent that that material is dangerous. But just how afraid do you want to be of your own home?Seems like Radon, Lead, Asbestous, (there's more, but that's enough) get lots of press. But the trouble they cause is so hard to confirm.We all want to avoid things that put our health at risk.We all want Big Corporations to act responsibly, and they so often do not.But each of us have a different view of where the limits of the above lie. Some smoke (really bad for you), some work with chemicals everyday (glues, paints, solvents, you name it), what are we gonna do about that?On the other hand, some of us grow organic vegitables and will not drink the tap water (you do know that the Flouride they put in the tap water is part of their mind control program, don't you?).Just had to vent on this issue. Its been a long day.Carry on.
*Scott,Zonalite looks like vermiculite.kk
*Asbestos does not "cause" cancer. The link is that the small sharp fibers can embed themselves in tissues lining the lungs and cause bleeding sores, which in turn can become cancerous. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember hearing that a direct link to cancer has never been proven in the case of asbestos.I think the closest researchers could get was saying there were strong likelyhood that exposure to asbestos over time could lead to cancer.Don't get me wrong here, I'm not advocating the use of asbestos,it's just that in one science class or another, I'd got the impression that the asbestoa scare has been over blown.Does anyone have any info that conclusively proves that exposure to asbestos IS harmful? Curious and looking for more info...Jeff.Thanks
*Here is a recent article on asbestos and cancer.Rich Beckman
*Rich:The article was interesting reading. It does seem to confirm that asbestos causes cancer (as an auxiliary topic). Actually the article was actually about a monkey virus called SV40 that is (was?) contained in polio vaccine between 1955 - 1963. OK, cool. That means I was probably "inoculated" with SV40. I'm sure I'll lead a much fuller life knowing that.EA, Ted, Chicken Little, John Q. Hammons, or whatever your name is:If Zonolite insulation contains a carcinogen, thanks for that information. You could have just come out and said it using your real name. However, it seems your message is that we are unknowingly being exposed to carcinogens in our modern environment. So, wow, that's an amazingly innovative theory you came up with!!! (TIC)You made your debut here with some irrelevant thread on grass seed. Now you want us all to get on your band wagon because there are carcinogens in our environment? If you are here to get someone to "Support your local Buddists" or "Spay and Neuter Your Pets" or whatever else the cause of the day is, why don't you go back to one of your AOL chatrooms and converse with some teenagers! They have young, impressionable minds that aren't cluttered with things like making a living!This is the BREAKTIME FINE HOME BUILDING forum. We, here, are pretty much just trying to learn how to build better houses! If you have value to add, please do so - if not, your i guest user welcome is worn out, so leave!
*I saw something on TV several years ago. I remember some "expert" saying that there are 14 confirmed cases of asbestosis in the US. Of course, I don't know how you become an expert or where the data came from.I'll avoid things like playing blindfolded on the yellow line or even bungie jumping. I'm just not all that afraid of the thousands and thousands of things on the hazardous substances list. We bought several bags of fine sand for sand blasting. There is a warning that sand may be a carcinogen (sp?). Avoid everything and you will die anyway.When I got certified to test for Radon, I did a little calculation during the class they give designed to scare you into believeing that Radon is worse than rat poison. I don't remember the numbers and am too lazy to look it up but at the danger level, you had to drink something like six liters of water every day for 75 years to increase you chances of cancer to 1 in 10,000. This is something we should be afraid of?
*It's guys like this (EA) who give liberals like me a bad name. This preachy alarmist stuff is counterproductive.Risk management is about weighing harms versus benefits, not scare tactics. Everything carries some degree of risk in excess, it's not like all substances are divided into Column A "Deadly" and Column B "Safe." For example, don't eat rat poison. To take another step, smoking cigarettes will not kill you on the spot (like rat poison will), or perhaps ever (look both ways before crossing the street!), but most agree quitting is a smart move. Radon -can- cause cancer, and if you can mitigate it with reasonable steps you should. But I hate seeing houses where the folks spent a chunk of change installing radon venting and yet don't have working smoke detectors.Asbestos is a problem only if inhaled, and in significant amounts. "Environmental activist," the people who really care do more to look out for others than to draw attention to themselves.
*Hi Ryan, the more of your posts I read the more I see that you and I think a whole lot alike. Dont know if thats good or bad :-} Chuck
*As long as I'm shooting my mouth off:I have a theory about activists. It applies to those I agree with and those I don't.I figure everyone craves a certain amount of conflict and hardship. It's something we need as much as we need food, shelter, love, and companionship.Most people get their fill of conflict from daily life. I argue with my wife, I worry about paying the bills, I disagree with the guy at the lumberyard over the quality of his plywood. At the end of the day, my conflict and hardship quota is met.If you don't get enough conflict and hardship, you crave it and have to find it somewhere. That's one reason I find seniors to be difficult to get along with. After you retire, have some money in the bank, and your conflict and hardship intake drops, you become disagreeable and argumentative. Of course this doesn't apply to all seniors, but it seems to apply to about 10% which is enough to allow me to unfairly generalize and create a stereotype that I will consider to be true in all cases.The same phenomenon applys to young 20 somethings who have no worries and movie stars... for the same reason. These groups need conflict and grab onto any fight that comes by.Now there is a group that is not elderly, 20-something, or movie stars that are also activists. This group has an unusually high conflict and hardship quota. This is a mental disorder and should be treated with therapy.The most common causes that meet crazy people's conflict and hardship quotas seem to be: Environmental Activism, Gun control, and roof venting.I will be submitting my thesis to the Journal of Talk Show Psychology early next week.
*In college I took every Psych. and Sociology class I could (excluding those that required a term paper) so I could develve farther into the human psyche and develope stratagies to pick up chicks.You sir, are a genius!I've found a new hero today.Jeff
*I respect your admiration for what Ryan has had to say, but what did you get from his post that pertains to picking up chicks?Approaching senior status, Steve
*Hey, I married the woman in the seat next to mine in Psych 101.
*Wonderful!Steve
*
Early EPA tests show asbestos in
common household products
SEATTLE (AP) -- Preliminary tests have revealed the presence of
asbestos in common household products that line store shelves here, the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported.
The tests, conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency, have
found the lethal fibers in attic insulation and some gardening products.
Investigators caution that more tests need to be run, but say there may
be some cause for concern.
"There are too many flags going up about possible problems with
asbestos for us not to pay attention," John Melone, director for the
EPA's National Program Chemical Division, the newspaper said.
The EPA is generally unable to regulate consumer exposure to asbestos
because of a 1991 lawsuit by U.S. and Canadian asbestos industries
which led to an overturning of the agency's ban on the microscopic
fibers.
Even so, "ban or no ban, we still have an obligation to take whatever
actions necessary to protect the public health," Melone said.
Asbestos is a generic term for a number of naturally occurring fibrous
minerals which have been used in insulation and fire retardants. All
forms have been linked to disease, including lung cancer.
Last week, members of the EPA's Pacific Northwest Investigative
Response Team found 10 bags of Grace's Zonolite, which contains
asbestos, in a Seattle-area garden store.
The team also found asbestos fibers during preliminary tests in two
garden products sold locally, but team leader Keven McDermott said "a
lot more testing has to be done before we know what we really have."
Zonolite, sometimes sold as Zonolite Attic Insulation, is a loose-fill
insulation that was poured between attic rafters, under floor boards and
behind walls.
The Boston Globe reported Monday that manufacturer W.R. Grace &
Co. knew Zonolite contained asbestos but lobbied hard to keep its
product free from warning labels and scrutiny.
The product was discontinued in 1984, but the EPA estimated a year
later that it had been installed in 940,000 American homes. Earlier this
month, the EPA warned homeowners to delay using Zonolite in
remodeling projects until more is known about the product.
Grace said in a statement Monday: "This product poses little or no risk
to human health or the environment."
It said that research in the 1970s found that during Zonolite installation,
asbestos levels in the air were within what were then acceptable levels.
No asbestos fibers were detected in the air after installation.
Grace was the focus of the 1995 book and 1999 film "A Civil Action,"
based on a 1982 lawsuit concerning chemical contamination that was
alleged to have caused leukemia in Woburn, Mass., children. Grace
settled for $8 million.
The Columbia, Md.-based Grace also sold vermiculite -- in which
asbestos naturally occurs -- as insulation and as a soil enhancer for
gardens.
The company operated a vermiculite mine in Libby, Mont., for 30
years. A Post-Intelligencer investigation found that hundreds of miners
and their family members died or became ill after they were exposed to
the mineral.
"Asbestos is asbestos," says EPA's Paul Peronard, whose emergency
response team found lingering asbestos from the mine, which closed 10
years ago. "They all present a health hazard, and that's enough to trigger
EPA's concern."
Peronard and his colleagues from the U.S. Public Health Service
question whether Zonolite contains enough asbestos to be dangerous.
"We're testing the insulation in the homes in Libby and will be asking
other regions to check it out," Peronard says. "We're not saying it's
dangerous, but we want to find out what we're dealing with."
Meanwhile, in Dallas, Neil Pflum, EPA's asbestos coordinator for the
Southwest, is examining building products found in home-improvement
stores for asbestos.
Pflum says that with more than 3,000 products on the market with
asbestos in them, the research being done on consumer products is vital.
"Absolutely. It's very important," he says. "People just don't know that
the ban was overturned."