My family moved to Libby, Montana in the 1970's when I was still young. I spent the largest part of my childhood growing up in this tiny, mountain town.

  The city only had about 2,000 people in it and you had to drive about 90 minutes on Highway 2 to get to a city of any real size. There was almost no crime, despite (or because of) the fact that guns were everywhere. No matter where you were in town, if you went 10 minutes in any direction you were in middle of the wilderness. It wasn't unusual for people to hunt deer without ever leaving their front porch.

 It wasn't a perfect town by any means. There was few good paying jobs. The school system was mediocre. The people who lived there were often rednecks.

  But the water, the land, and the air were pristine. Everyone who visited called it "God's Country".

 So you can imagine how surprised I was when I learned that Libby, Montana is now listed as a toxic Superfund site by the EPA.

  First and foremost, Libby is a logging town. Everyone there, no matter the sex or age, knows how to use a splitting mall and a chainsaw. Chances are that someone in your family worked in the forest or at the St. Regis logging mill (until it closed). You either cut trees or you worked for the Forest Service. A rare few taught at the schools or worked behind a bar.

 However, there was one exception - the Zonolite mine.

 In its heyday, the mine produced 80 percent of the world's vermiculite. It was the area's largest employer from 1924 to 1990. At times its largest stack spewed 10,000 pounds of asbestos each day, according to W.R. Grace figures.

As the dust settles

 The first I heard about the dangers of zonolite was when the movie, Libby, Montana, showed up on the recommended list of my Netflicks.

  But the story had been broken several years before.

 First, it killed some miners.

Then it killed wives and children, slipping into their homes on the dusty clothing of hard-working men.

Now the mine is closed, but in Libby, the killing goes on.

The W.R. Grace Co. knew, from the time it bought the Zonolite vermiculite mine in 1963, why the people in Libby were dying.

But for the 30 years it owned the mine, the company did not stop it.

Neither did the governments.

 W.R. Grace is a multi-billion dollar conglomerate.

  In 2005 they were indicted by the Justice Department and the EPA for knowingly endangering the residents of Libby. But W. R. Grace had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2001.

  But before W. R. Grace filed for bankruptcy they took time to hide funds.

 In May 2002, the Justice Department intervened in Grace's bankruptcy, the first time it had entered this type of case. The federal charges alleged that before Grace filed for Chapter 11, it concealed money in new companies it bought. Justice Department lawyers said Grace's action was the "fraudulent transfer" of money to another of its companies to protect itself from civil suits.

"Grace allegedly removed billions of dollars of assets against which parties who were injured or damaged by Grace's asbestos-containing material had claims," the Justice Department told the court.

view from the mine

 The EPA began investigating the site in 1999, but W. R. Grace obstructed the investigation for nearly two years.

 This isn't the first time that W. R. Grace has found itself the subject of a civil lawsuit. Grace paid $8 Million to eight Woburn, Massachusetts families after children died of leukemia from drinking well water contaminated by a W. R. Grace factory.

 Approximately 1,200 residents of Libby have been identified with some sort of asbestos-related abnormality. That's right. About a third of the people who have lived in Libby these past few decades.

  More than 200 people have died from the asbestos in the mine's vermiculite ore, although the number could be much higher. Another 375 people have been diagnosed with fatal diseases directly related to the asbestos.

 There have been hundreds of civil actions against W. R. Grace, but the district court is only allowing one civil actions every three months. Given the amount of time involved, the asbestos is taking care of the plaintiffs almost faster than the courts.

 Throughout Lincoln County are families torn apart by asbestos, but none has paid a higher price than the Bundrocks. Six of the family's seven members have been diagnosed with asbestos-related disease.

Arthur Bundrock worked at the mine for 19 years. He died last summer on the front lawn of his house, having left his oxygen bottle inside.

[...]

  The main illnesses caused by airborne asbestos are mesothelioma, or cancer of the pleural lining of the lung; cancer of the lung itself; and asbestosis, a thickening and scarring of the lungs.

The microscopic asbestos fibers are so small they hang suspended in the air for extended periods. When inhaled, they can penetrate, then irritate the lung. The lung cannot remove an asbestos fiber that has speared into its tissue. It cannot be coughed out or washed out of the tissue by blood. So the area around the fiber becomes inflamed, and eventually the site becomes scarred.

Over a period of years it becomes impossible to take a deep breath. The tissue changes from the elasticity and thickness of a balloon to that of a thick orange peel. When breathing is restricted, oxygen cannot get into the lungs and carbon dioxide and other impurities cannot get out.

 At this point you may be wondering how such a huge percentage of the people in Libby could have gotten contaminated.

  I can answer that.

  My family had a two-story log house in Libby that sat on two acres at the edge of town. The only access to the attic was through the closet in my bedroom. I used to notice a fine layer of dust on some of my shirts and a small pile of dust directly under the access panel.

   Our attic was filled with zonolite, tailings from the mine. It seems that zonolite makes great insulation. W. R. Grace, instead of paying to dispose of the tailings, offered them to anyone in Libby who wanted to shovel it into their pickup truck and drive away with it. Grace, of course, never bothered to mention that it was dangerous.

 According to the last news I've read, the legal action against W. R. Grace continues. Executives at Grace could face 15 years in prison.

  The EPA continues clean the hundreds of contaminated homes in Libby, one at a time.

  The zonolite continues to exist in 15 to 35 million homes and businesses throughout America and the world.

 At my class reunion I asked some classmates about the issue. Their response was that it was no big deal.

  If you know people from small, isolated, mountain towns, this response shouldn't surprise you.