People of Libby have been hoodwinked by the EPA
Guest Commentary:
Mr. Henline does indeed point out one of my concerns. However, there is a much larger point, a point which is immensely important in Libby, the study of Libby Amphibole asbestos exposures and the resulting deaths and disease. It has been my failing that I have not been able to explain it well enough. I apologize. I will try one last time, as follows. In so doing I will play just a small bit loose with the science, but you should get the idea:
Paul Peronard and Chris Weiss must be shaking their heads at the proclamations that Libby is 100,000 times safer based upon ambient air measurements. Paul wrote to me after his testing and his confirmation of my experimental testing that tremolite does not float in air by saying “this stuff drops like a rock”. What was discovered in El Dorado, Calif., and then in Libby, was that the heavy, dense tremolite fiber does not float in air. It is not a gas, a fume or an aether. It does not sublimate or mix in air. It is not held aloft by Brownian molecular motion in any significant fashion. It is, in short, a rock. We all know from our childhoods what happens to a rock when we throw it in the air.
On the other hand 95% of all earthly asbestos, chrysotile asbestos, does indeed behave in air a lot more like a gas, a lot more like a fume, a lot less like a rock. When all this testing began it seemed logical, based upon the best knowledge we had, that we should measure calm ambient air to see how much asbestos was in the air, to see what kind of dose people were being exposed to.
Nobody ever thought that all asbestos wasn’t equal. So our scientific literature became all confused. It is a horrible mess, to tell the truth. A researcher’s results from measuring chrysotile applied to all asbestos! No one differentiated. The results were of course confused, yet stated in the literature as if it were a physical law of the universe.
This went so far as to lead people all over the world to think all asbestos is equal, that it all floats in the air like a gas. EPA even installed this mantra as their operating dogma, “all asebstos is equal”.
All asbestos is not even close to being equal, as few should know better than the people of Libby.
In the case of tremolite everywhere in the world, and in the case of Libby Amphibole, calm ambient air measurements simply do not work. At all.
One would have a better chance of counting the boulders ejected into the air by a volcano than gathering meaningful information from calm ambient air measurements. The result is always the same with ambient air measurements, no matter where you measure for tremolite. The results are zero fibers or as close to zero fibers as researchers’ imaginations lead them to believe. Every tremolite epidemic area of the world is perfectly safe as measured by ambient air measurements, including Libby, and they always have been. All of what I say here is exacerbated further by the use of PLM for counting (which is a different but nearly equal mistake).
It is only when you put on personal monitors and do aggressive air testing that one begins to see what people are actually exposed to and why. It is only then that one can begin to determine whether or not a place is safer, and why.
Ambient air measurement is not a method that should ever be used with Libby Amphibole asbestos. Never.
Dr. Berry’s comment, as was Ted Linnert’s similar attitude of paternal edict and many others before them, has lead to Libby being hoodwinked, just exactly like El Dorado County was hoodwinked before Libby. Hoodwinked because those involved, for the sake of expediency and hoping for a positive note, wish to impose a science upon the people, a science that simply does not exist and never has existed.
- Terry Trent is a biologist and asbestos researcher .