Asbestos has been the constant and consistent subject in most conversations when it comes to ‘Libby Montana.’ Finally, someone-Senator Daines and rightly so-wants the horrid substance outlawed once and for all.
“For the first time, an asbestos-ban bill in Congress may have the sponsorship of a Republican senator — Montana’s Steve Daines — signaling improved chances of passage.
Even though asbestos has been a known human carcinogen for more than a century, it is legal in the United States to import, manufacture, and market products containing deadly fibers.
The issue is of particular concern in Montana because of widespread contamination and hundreds of deaths in and near Libby from a vermiculite mine, the ore of which was contaminated with a particularly dangerous form of asbestos.
The Environmental Protection Agency has spent more than 20 years and hundreds of millions of dollars cleaning up the Libby contamination. Because of the latency period before symptoms are evident with an asbestos-related disease, which can be 40 years or more, cases are still being diagnosed in Libby, and people are still dying.”
The article here explains more about the toxic substance.
