Environmental Matters in the Commonwealth of Kentucky

We all probably have heard about the asbestos problems plaguing workers of W.R. Grace and the residents of the town of Libby, Montana arising from mining vermiculite ore.  Like you, I did not think the asbestos issues touched upon my local community.  I was just plain wrong.  I went to Covington Holmes High School, which is located across the Licking River from the W.R. Grace site in Wilder, Kentucky.  I also passed this Superfund site on a daily basis going to lawschool at Salmon P. Chase College of Law without knowing about the dangerous Zonolite manufacturing operations conducted there for 40 years.   

Vermiculite ore was first extracted from Libby, Montana and developed into the multi-use material Zonolite by a local mining engineer in 1919.  In 1963, W. R. Grace acquired the Zonolite Company and marketed the material under a trade name Zonolite.   W.R. Grace hailed Zonolite as a wonder material, especially for insulation.  Zonolite was processed in Wilder, Kentucky for forty years from 1952 until 1992.  The former W. R. Grace plant is located at 112 North Street in Wilder, Campbell County, Kentucky.  According to U.S. EPA, the former Zonolite manufacturing site was originally owned and operated by the Zonolite Company, and was later purchased by W. R. Grace & Co. in 1960.  

W.R. Grace manufactured vermiculite products at this location from 1960 until the plant closed in December 1995.  U.S. EPA’s investigation found that during the period that W.R. Grace operated the Zonolite facility in Wilder, vermiculite ore from the Libby, Montana mine was used as raw material. This raw material contains high concentrations of asbestos fibers.  U.S. EPA estimates that W.R. Grace buried approximately 35,000-40,000 tons of asbestos-containing waste at the Wilder site.

Vermiculite is a shiny mineral, similar to mica, which pops like popcorn when heated. The puffy product, as light as cork, was once a popular form of building insulation and remains an ingredient in potting soil. Vermiculite itself is harmless: The problem is that the layers of igneous rock where it is found almost always contain asbestos, exposure to which has been definitively linked to several fatal lung diseases for more than 70 years.  The vermiculite deposit outside Libby, Montana is particularly dangerous because it is laced with tremolite, the most toxic form of asbestos.  

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), a federal public health agency, considered ways that people could be exposed to asbestos from the former manufacturing plant in Wilder, Kentucky site or ways that people could have been exposed in the past.   ATSDR believes the following groups of individuals may be potential exposure victims:

·         Currently live near the former W.R.Grace plant;

·         Worked at the plant between 1952 and 1992; (The Wilder plant stopped processing asbestos-contaminated vermiculite in 1992.)

·         Lived in a household in which someone worked at the plant between 1952 and 1992; or

·         Lived near the plant for any period between 1952 and 1992.