MPR: In Search of Asbestos

In Search of Asbestos
By Tom Scheck
September 15, 2000

The Minnesota Department of Health says it will do a larger search for anyone who may have been exposed to asbestos from vermiculite at a North Minneapolis plant. The health department says it will expand an earlier search done by the Environmental Protection Agency to include 2,000 to 3,000 homes within a quarter-mile of the former plant.

WHITE AND YELLOW TARPS cover seven piles of dirt

EPA investigator Leo Rosales and four other EPA investigators have been going door to door, asking for permission to search yards and driveways for the material.
(MPR Photo/Tom Scheck)

next to the former W.R. Grace plant. EPA investigators covered these piles because they contain tiny pieces of vermiculite. Vermiculite contains microscopic pieces of potentially deadly asbestos. During the plant's operation, between 1936 until it's closure in 1989, workers processed the mineral into insulation. Scrap vermiculite was placed outside the plant and that's what worries EPA investigators, the state Department of Health and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

EPA investigator Leo Rosales says people in the neighborhood took home the vermiculite to use in their driveways, flowerbeds and yards. If the hazardous fiber becomes airborne and is inhaled, it becomes embedded in the lungs leading to health problems decades later. Rosales says the EPA is worried that many people could have been exposed to asbestos because they parked cars in vermiculite covered driveways or gardened in contaminated dirt.

"That's what we're concerned about, that could make it airborne over and over again, with cars running over it it could become airborne, so that's why we have to address this problem as soon as possible," Rosales says. Rosales and four other EPA investigators have been going door to door this week, asking for permission to search yards and driveways for the material. He estimates 20 percent of the homes within a quarter mile of the plant have the vermiculite in the yards.

At the Logan Community Park, which is four blocks from the former plant, Kristi MacKay watches her 19-month-old daughter play on the jungle gym. Mackay lives eight blocks from the plant and is scared that her family may be exposed to asbestos.

"She plays with rocks, she puts things in her mouth; we walked by that plant and I would like to be a little bit more informed at what exactly we should be looking for," MacKay says.

IF YOU THINK YOU'VE BEEN EXPOSED

See your doctor immediately, asbestos fibers become embedded in the lungs. So complications can develop years after asbestos exposure.

Call the Health Department's Division of Chronic Disease Prevention and Control at 651-215-0916.

Quit smoking immediately, if you smoke and have been exposed to asbestos you're chances of getting lung cancer are 90 times greater.

Get a flu shot; it reduces respiratory infections.

Source: Minnesota Department of Public Health.

The health department's Buddy Ferguson says his office will also start going door-to-door next spring to conduct health assessments in the neighborhood. He says the state also has the names of some of the former workers at the plant. That means investigators could interview thousands of people who either lived near or worked at the plant. He says the project could cost millions of dollars.

"In the case of the workers, the people who were actually in the plant, there isn't much doubt that they were exposed to asbestos and are at increased risk, we know that already from the work that's been done in Libby, Montana," says Ferguson. "It's less clear if people around the neighborhood or used the material for fill or some other purpose would be at risk."

Ferguson and EPA officials say this is the first time investigators have examined the health exposure at vermiculite processing plants. The EPA's Stuart Hill says a mine in Libby, Montana mine sent contaminated vermiculite to more than 200 processing plants throughout the country including the plant in North Minneapolis.

"We don't have a lot of historical background from which to work so we're doing everything for the first time here," acknowledges Hill. "We certainly know that vermiculite was given away here; we don't know that it was given away in other communities."

The EPA hopes to start cleaning up some of the contaminated sites next month.

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