The case against Grace

Who knew what and when they knew it

The Eschenbach Study, the Hamster Study, the Enbionic Review, the Monson Mortality Study …

One after the other, the details spill out of eight separate probes in the 1970s and 1980s that held evidence of the depth of asbestos poisoning in Libby.

The federal government built much of its case around those studies in a 10-count criminal indictment released last week against W.R. Grace and seven senior employees.

The company and the seven men are charged with conspiracy, wire fraud, obstruction of justice and violating the Clean Air Act.

Important documentation revealing the hazards of Libby's asbestos-laced vermiculite was suppressed by Grace and its top executives in a conspiracy that spanned more than 20 years, the U.S. District Court indictment alleges.

One of the most incriminating accounts in the indictment is a proposed epidemiological study attempted by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health in 1980.

It was never completed because Grace officials squelched it.

In a letter to Dr. Daniel Banks of the occupational health institute, Grace attorney Mario Favorito, one of the seven defendants, questioned the need for a study of Grace's Libby vermiculite mine.

"We believe that any study at Libby will amount to nothing more than yet another verification of what is already known, viz., that excessive exposure to asbestiform material is dangerous to health," Favorito wrote to Banks. "NIOSH must reconsider whether it is in anyone's best interest for it to expend scarce public funds in such redundant pursuits."

In the course of fighting the study, another Grace memo outlined a chilling strategy to thwart the investigation. Among the tactics were:

. "Obstruct and block, possibly even contesting in the courts. As I understand it, we'd lose and this is not exactly the image we try to project."

. "Be slow, review things extensively and contribute to delay …"

. "Attempt to apply influence via congressmen, senators, lobbyists or others to get it turned off."

In addition to Favorito, Grace executives Jack Wolter and Henry Eschenbach knew the lengths Grace went to stop the federal study, court documents allege.

Bob Wilkins of Libby, who died two years ago of asbestos disease, remembered similar memos when he was interviewed by the Daily Inter Lake in 2000. Wilkins also remembered talking to Banks about the study when he was president of the mine union. Banks planned to bring in a lab on location with five technicians.

Banks was abruptly transferred to another job and later denied ever having talked to him, Wilkins recalled in the 2000 interview.

Wilkins and his son, Don, pleaded with county and state officials to take a look at the documentation the elder Wilkins had compiled. Their pleas got no response at the time.

The Wilkinses believed there's enough documentation to show that company officials knew there were health problems as early as the mid-1950s when Zonolite owned the mine. Grace took over the mine in 1963 and operated it until it closed in 1990.

One of several "overt acts" outlined in the indictment was the 1977 Hamster Study, in which Grace and its alleged co-conspirators contracted with Dr. William Smith of Fairleigh Dickinson University to conduct animal toxicological studies on Libby vermiculite. The contract, however, prevented the doctor from publishing the results in science publications without Grace's permission.

The Hamster Study revealed that 10 hamsters died of mesothelioma, a tumorous cancer, after exposure to tremolite asbestos fibers found in Libby vermiculite. The indictment claims Grace hired a consultant to remove statements in the study that linked the tumors to asbestos. The results were never published.

Favorito, Eschenbach and Wolter were allegedly involved in the Hamster Study cover-up.

In the Monson Mortality Study, Eschenbach, who at the time was director of health, safety and toxicology for Grace's Industrial Chemicals Group, hired Harvard University doctor Richard Monson to conduct a mortality study of Libby mine workers from 1950 to 1981.

Monson collected 66 death certificates and reported to Grace that an excessive number of miners had died of cancer of the respiratory system, including mesothelioma.

When Eschenbach later sent a memo to Favorito, Wolter and then-Libby mine general manager William McCaig, he stated: "Our major problem is death from respiratory cancer. This is no surprise."

The indictment alleges further suppression of information surrounding the 1977 Enbionics Review, another probe that linked the Libby mine with asbestos disease. Two of that study's goals were to develop a way to track improvements in miners' health as a result of better dust control at the mine, and to determine the risk of developing cancer from asbestos exposure.

Once again, Eschenbach weighed in with an internal memo, warning such a study would become public and shouldn't be undertaken unless "they [Grace] are prepared to deal with that situation."

Eschenbach nevertheless hired Enbionics to conduct the study. Among Enbionics' conclusions was the fact that asbestos disease linked to the Libby mine spanned all age groups.

"There are a number of quite young individuals with obvious asbestos disease in Montana," the study stated.

The federal government accuses Grace and Eschenbach of failing to disclose results of studies such as the Hamster Study, Enbionics Review and the Montana Mortality Study to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as required by the Toxic Substances Control Act.

In a March 1983 submittal to the EPA, Eschenbach not only said Grace's vermiculite products didn't create a substantial risk, but also stated they had "no reason to believe there is any risk associated with the current uses of Libby vermiculite-containing products."

It wasn't until 1992 that Eschenbach gave the EPA results of the 1977 Hamster Study. The indictment alleges he had a history of not submitting all the information the company was supposed to share with the EPA.

One of the earliest studies involved Eschenbach himself gathering information about the lung health of Libby miners sometime prior to 1976.

His own findings, revealed in a memo to Wolter, showed 63 percent of Libby miners with over 10 years of service tested positive for lung disease.

When Libby doctor Richard Irons told Grace in 1979 he wanted to conduct a health study on Libby miners and their families - particularly about the effects of take-home dust - it was Eschenbach who once again squelched it. He sent a memo to Libby mine managers noting: "Irons is turning the screw … we either play the game his way or he is going to blow the whistle."

Mine manager William McCaig responded to Irons' request by telling Grace executives that uniform and shower policies to control the dust were unwarranted "since adverse effects cannot be definitively proven."

Since the dust issue was largely dismissed from 1977 on, Grace failed to provide workers with measures that could have minimized take-home dust, the indictment alleges. Meanwhile, in 1984 Eschenbach wrote another memo to Grace senior managers, alerting them of a study about dogs that contracted mesothelioma from asbestos dust brought home by workers.

The conspiracy charge spans 42 pages of the 49-page indictment. After that, shorter accounts detail three counts of violations of the federal Clean Air Act, two counts of wire fraud and four counts of obstruction of justice.

In its final charge of obstruction of justice, the federal government alleges that in 2002 - long after studies had documented the asbestos health hazard - Grace gave misleading information once again to the EPA, saying Grace's expanded vermiculite, which was used in Zonolite attic insulation, "poses no risk to human health or the environment … there is no credible reason to believe that ZAI has ever caused an asbestos-related disease in anyone who has used it in his/her home."

That same year the EPA decided the health hazard from attic insulation warranted removing it from Libby homes, and crews began systematically cleaning Libby homes. Cleanup will continue until about 1,400 homes are cleaned.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com