Montpelier, VT - On January 30, 2009, members of the Vermont Senate Economic Development Committee (SEDC) listened to witness testimony related to the recent publication of a state Health Department report on asbestos. The report was the result of a study designed to determine if there existed an increased incidence of asbestos-related disease amongst Vermont residents who lived within a 10 mile, 13 town radius of what once was an active asbestos mine. The mine, owned by Vermont Asbestos Group (VAG) was closed in 1993 after an over 100 year history of asbestos production in the towns of Eden and Lowell.
Health Department researchers studied the occurrence of asbestos-caused diseases in the affected towns between the years 1994 and 2006. According to researchers, the examined data indicated that there was, indeed, an increased risk of asbestos-caused illnesses for individuals who resided in proximity to the VAG mine. These subsequently published findings resulted in an immediate outcry amongst many of the citizens who lived in the study area.
Numerous critics assailed the asbestos report, challenging the science behind the findings, as well as condemning the report for its immediate negative impact on property values in the area. Witnesses at the senate hearing testified that the report had already resulted in a $60 thousand decrease in a recent Eden town reappraisal, and that the economic damage was only going to get worse.
Witnesses at the hearing were particularly vocal about the fact that Health Department officials had backtracked on the scientific findings of its asbestos study, admitting that the statistical data was flawed, and as a result, the nexus between residing near the VAG mine and an increased incidence in asbestos-caused disease was less certain.
Senate House Majority Leader, Floyd Nease, represents the town of Eden, where the VAG mine is located, and in an aired interview on Vermont Public Radio, Nease stated, "The health Department bungled its study. The state said there was a higher rate of lung cancer deaths among people living near the mine, but then they had to retract that finding because of a data error."
Leslie White, a resident of Eden, testified at the hearing that she had done the investigating the Health Department should have done. White conducted her own independent research on asbestos-caused disease amongst residents in the area, and it was her discovery of additional relevant data that caused the Health Department to partially retract its findings.
"I feel very violated that the information was out there, and that I had to go get it," said White. "And these are the people that are trying to protect us, it just doesn't seem right," White continued, "I think there has to be a full retraction of this health finding."
The statistical issue in question is the report's inclusion of the asbestos-caused death of an area resident, a death Ms. White contends was much more likely the result of the man's years-long employment in the shipbuilding industry, an occupation that typically exposed workers to high levels of asbestos fibers. Once inhaled into the lungs, asbestos fibers can remain undetected for 20-50 years before leading to respiratory diseases such as asbestosis and the far more dreaded malignant pleural mesothelioma-an aggressive and incurable form of lung cancer.
As a result of the now questionable Health Department's conclusions about the VAG mine and asbestos-related disease, the SEDC is considering the issuance of a formal senate resolution that would officially call into question the findings of the Health Department's asbestos report. "Too little, too late," said Nease, "the economic damage has already been done."
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