Mine's lasting scars on a Montana town

Asbestos: The EPA is cleaning up Libby after more than 200 residents have died from diseases related to the mineral.

LIBBY, Mont. - When Bob Dedrick had a routine chest X-ray before a gall bladder operation, the doctor returned with the results and a question.

"Where do you live?" the doctor asked.

"Libby, Montana," Dedrick said.

"That explains it."

This small town of 2,800 residents in remote northwestern Montana has become shorthand for a public health disaster of tragic proportions - and lingering questions of corporate and governmental culpability.

The scarring that the doctor saw on Dedrick's lungs identified his hometown as clearly as a local accent, signaling that he, too, had inhaled the microscopic fibers of asbestos that swirled through Libby for decades. An estimated one-third of area residents have the tell-tale signs of asbestos-related lung disease, and more than 200 have died from it.

Crews in full biohazard gear have become a common sight in Libby as workers try to eradicate the lingering asbestos that was released into the town as a byproduct of a long dormant mining operation. A flood of lawsuits and legislation before the Senate seeks to sort out who will take responsibility for Libby's slow devastation.

Every Memorial Day residents hold a ceremony in the town cemetery to erect a cross for each victim - 206 as of this year.

"I call up my buddies to go fishing, and they tell me they have to go to a funeral," says Gordon Sullivan, who owns a photo studio.

Beyond the number of victims, what sets Libby apart from other cases of asbestos contamination is that residents with no direct connection to the mining operation - which was shut down in 1990 by its last owner, Columbia, Md.-based W.R. Grace & Co. - are falling ill.

"I just lived here," said Dedrick, 72, a retired construction worker.

He has developed asbestosis, caused when fibers of asbestos are inhaled, lodge in the lungs and cause scarring and hardening of the tissue, which makes breathing increasingly difficult. The first victims here of this disease were those who at some point since 1923 had mined Vermiculite Mountain or worked in its processing operations.

The mountain, about seven miles outside of town, contains the world's largest known deposits of vermiculite, the ore widely used in insulation and potting soil. To the town's great misfortune, though, the mountain was also laced with asbestos. As a result, all the vermiculite extracted and processed in Libby - which at one point produced 80 percent of the world's supply of the ore - was contaminated with toxic asbestos.