50 Years Later, Asbestos Exposure Destroying Lives -------------------------------------------------- Published February 21, 2003 Terry and David Thiele share boyhood memories of burying themselves up to their necks in the pile of scrap ore outside the northeast Minneapolis factory. Mary Mattera and Glen Martner say they played in the same vermiculite with their sisters nearly a half century ago. For some 40 years, kids played at that pile. Nobody told them that microscopic asbestos fibers in the ore could embed in their lungs. No one knew that, decades later, the tiny toxins would link their lives in a slowly unfolding nightmare. At least nine people who played in the pile, as well as two of their parents, are dead or sick from asbestos-related respiratory diseases, according to lawyers and family members. When the Minnesota Department of Health finishes a survey of 6,000 neighborhood residents, the toll could rise. Discovery of the illnesses is stirring anger and anxiety among scores of present and former residents who played in the ore, who spread it along base paths of a ball field, or who put in their driveways and gardens. Some of them have disabling lung ailments. Some have abnormal X-rays. Others worry they'll be next. "It's kind of like having a bomb strapped to you," said David Thiele, 51, of Faribault, who has lung scarring but no symptoms. "You just don't know when it's set to go off." The Western Mineral Products Co. operated the plant between Madison and Jefferson Sts. for decades, heating the vermiculite to 2,000 degrees until it popped into granules, which it sold as Zonolite attic insulation. W.R. Grace & Co. bought the Montana vermiculite mining operation in 1963 as well as dozens of processing plants nationwide, including the one in Minneapolis. Now-bankrupt Grace calls it "a real tragedy" that many of its workers were sickened or killed by asbestos-related illnesses. Grace executives blame inadequate science that failed to alert regulators to the need for tougher exposure limits. Grace executives also have said that nearly all of the asbestos contaminant was eliminated during processing, and that they have yet to see proof that anyone in the neighborhood has gotten sick from the pile. However, interviews with Twin Cities lawyers, public health experts, the victims and their family members show the evidence is mounting. One telltale sign may be the mesotheliomas. In 1998, Mr. Mattera's sister, Karen Asmussen, died at age 57 of the disease, a rare, fast- moving cancer of the lining of the lungs that is almost always caused by asbestos exposure. Mr. Mattera said that while living nearby from 1948 to 1958, Ms. Asmussen walked through dust from the plant to and from school and played in the pile during visits to her grandmother's home a block away. When Ms. Asmussen's husband hugged her on Valentine's Day in 1997, Mattera said, her sister felt the first pain from what was soon identified as a tumor in her chest. Ms. Asmussen's son, Guy, of Isanti, said doctors removed one of her lungs but the cancer spread to the other one. "She was connected to a (oxygen) tank for the last four months of her life," he said. "Towards the end it was miserable, terrible," Mr. Mattera said. "It was just painful to breathe." Mr. Martner, a retired engineer in Fontana, Calif., said he and his sister, Carolyn Ellingson, played in the pile when their family lived across the street from the plant from 1948 to 1956. Ms. Ellingson, a San Francisco artist, died last spring of mesothelioma at age 64. "When Carolyn was very sick and went into the hospital, the doctors suspected right away that it was asbestos-related," Mr. Martner said. "Everybody that played in that is at risk . I have a mass on my lung." Elwin Thiele, 78, and his wife, Jacqueline, 76, lived across the street from the plant for 48 years. Hastings lawyer Rick LaVerdiere said their three children -- David, Terry, and Lynette Nickelson -- played in the scrap pile. Mr. LaVerdiere said all five of the Thieles have calcified plaque in the lining of their lungs -- a condition that usually appears only if "someone had a tremendous amount of exposure to asbestos over a long period of time or a long time ago." He said Elwin and Terry Thiele also have asbestosis -- a more advanced asbestos disease that restricts breathing, sometimes lethally. "It's incredible," Mr. LaVerdiere said. "You've got an entire family, and the only known exposure was living near the plant and being in the piles as children. That kind of evidence says that even non- occupational exposure to their products can produce disease." Elwin (Tip) Thiele, a retired cabinetmaker, was rushed to a hospital earlier this month with severe chest pains. He was informed that his lungs were deteriorating and was given pain-killing morphine during a two-day hospital stay. "It seems like it's closing in on me," he said after another doctor's visit last week. Terry Thiele, 56, a retired phone technician, estimates he played in the pile 50 times. He said his doctor first noticed a shadow on his chest X-ray 13 years ago. Now, he said, the scarring on his X-ray "looks like a patchwork quilt" and his asbestosis frequently leaves him short of breath. Peter Stasica of Coon Rapids said his 38-year-old brother, Jeff, who frolicked with him on the pile 30 years ago, has "tumors all over his lungs." John Dordan, 55, of Milaca, said he played in the pile and in the boxcars that carried raw asbestos to the plant, where his father worked. He said his father died of an asbestos-related disease, and his doctor says he has a "blotch" on his chest X-ray. Public health experts say the northeast Minneapolis situation appears to be shaping into a smaller-scale version of the horrors that have ravaged Libby, Montana, where the ore was mined for more than 60 years. Published reports say more than 200 miners have died and more than 800 other people have lung diseases. The Environmental Protection Agency has conducted major cleanups in both Libby and northeast Minneapolis over the past three years. The neighborhood exposures in Minneapolis surfaced in early 2000, when public health officials learned that Harris Jorgensen, who had played on the scrap pile as a child, had died of lung cancer in 1991 at age 44. Jorgensen got a court settlement from W.R. Grace, though the firm admitted to no liability. Aubrey Miller, then a Denver-based epidemiologist with the US Public Health Service who was assessing the damage in Libby, said that Jorgensen's case "told me we've got a big problem all over the country. That's when we went crazy, started informing other regions, started looking into where this stuff was sent." Most of the nation's asbestos exposures can be traced, in part, to researchers' failure to home in on the dangers until the early 1960s, and the government's sluggish moves to regulate asbestos. The death toll from asbestos exposure among American workers is projected to reach 500,000 in the coming years. However, public health officials say the asbestos-related illnesses among non-workers in Libby and Minneapolis are extraordinary and may mark a new chapter in American environmental health. In Libby, more than two-thirds of roughly 1,250 area residents found to have lung abnormalities in a screening by the US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry "had no occupational exposure at all." Besides the illnesses among families that lived near the Minneapolis plant, the Star Tribune reported three years ago that asbestos contributed to the deaths of at least 10 workers at a second plant 13 blocks from the Grace factory that also processed Libby ore. Two sisters who grew up across the street from that plant, operated until 1971 by the B.F. Nelson Co., died of asbestos-related diseases, and a third has lung problems. William Corcoran, Grace's vice president for public and regulatory affairs, said Grace takes responsibility for the deaths of its former workers. However, he contended that nearly all the illnesses in Libby -- and the company argues that the death toll is far lower than reported -- involved Grace workers or their family members who were exposed to dust they brought home on their clothes. Grace has yet to see sufficient information about the Minneapolis cases, he said, "to draw any firm conclusions about the illnesses these individuals may have or the causes of those illnesses." ------------------------------------------------------------------- LitigationDataSource.com