Libby, Montana, a town plagued with asbestos hazards from W.R. Grace’s nearby vermiculite mine, already has the highest mesothelioma rate in the nation. But in a new report, physicians are forecasting an epidemic of mesothelioma—a deadly cancer caused by asbestos exposure—in years to come. The report is authored by Dr. Alan Whitehouse and Dr. Brad Black of Libby’s Center for Asbestos Related Disease, or CARD Clinic, along with three other physicians and is published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine. The CARD clinic has documented more than 200 asbestos-related deaths in Libby (including 31 mesothelioma cases), and currently treats around 2,000 asbestos injury cases.
The new journal article discusses eleven cases of mesothelioma, some of which involve patients with no direct exposure to asbestos aside from time spent in Libby. One of the problems with mesothelioma is that even a brief period of exposure may cause the disease to appear decades later. Thus, town residents exposed in the 1970s or earlier are just now being diagnosed. According to Dr. Whitehouse’s report, “the extent of the epidemic of environmental mesothelioma due to exposures based at Libby will probably not peak for another 10 to 20 years.” This is because the source of Libby’s asbestos crisis –the W.R. Grace vermiculite mine near Libby—was operated by Grace from 1963 until 1990.
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