“How Did This Happen To You”

 I hear this question often enough that I thought today might be a good day to discuss this topic.

As I alluded to in my first entry, Mesothelioma is an environmental cancer.  The only known cause is exposure to asbestos.  The fact of the matter is, most of us probably have had some distant exposure to asbestos in our lifetime.  The older you are, the more likely, absent the countermeasures from extreme pressure on the asbestos industry in the last 30-40 years.  Perhaps, you lived in a very old classic home that at one time used asbestos in things like, fireproof siding, dangerous ceiling tiles, the adhesive that was used to install floor coverings, or maybe in old paint.  Think about the dangers to firefighters using extinguishers and fire prevention techniques that used asbestos.  Another prevalent occupation seems to be Navy veterans who spent time on ships.  

Another large population that seems to be affected are asbestos industry workers, miners, transportation, installers, and other construction type workers.  This is my most likely exposure.

While all my high school friends got their first job at the grocery store or in the fast food industry, my first job as a 16 year old kid was working at Ari-Zonolite, a manufacturing plant and a division of W.R. Grace. I only got the job because the plant manager was a good friend of our family and his kids all started there as did my brother Pat and I.  I worked there about 5 years.

It was a horrendous place to work but the pay was significantly better than my friends at the grocery store.  Plus, we were young and invincible.  Here’s what we did:

The building was a large metal sided warehouse.  Inside were two massive furnaces that ran all day at 1400 degrees.  (Imagine that on a nice 115 degree day in Phoenix!). The furnaces were loaded with heavy, thinly shaved iron ore from a mine in Libby MT.  Those furnaces would “pop” the shavings like popcorn to create vermiculite. You are likely to know that product as a light weight additive for gardening that you can still buy at Home Depot.  It was primarily used in quantity as a perfect insulation to pour down the concrete block walls of your new home as it was being built.  

Our job was to stand under a large hopper with the finished product above and direct a bag’s worth of vermiculite into a paper bag and then move it to a small conveyor belt with a string sewing machine and zip it closed.  Bag after bag, all shift.  

I don’t recall the company ever regarding the vermiculite work as dangerous with regard to asbestos.  We did however wear cotton face masks (similar to N-95 but not sure they even had N-95s in 1970)

The company did add extra warnings when we had to make Monokote.  (I look back on those warnings now and it verifies to me that they knew this was dangerous). Monokote was an entirely different product and far more dangerous.  Luckily we did not make this product every day, only when a large order came in for a building project.  In the 70s when a new skyscraper would go up builders used Monokote mixed with water and sprayed this fireproofing material on the raw steel skeleton.  If you look in old underground parking structures you can still see the cotton candy looking spray stuck to the steel and probably painted like the rest of the garage.  

Here’s how we made Monokote:  The machine was more like an auger that mixed four different materials together.  One guy kept the four hoppers full. The biggest share was vermiculite, then we would break 50# bags of Gypsum into another hopper, and we would have an open bag of Johns-Mansville asbestos to keep the third hopper full using a large hand scooper (like an ice scoop)  The smallest fourth hopper was some mysterious powder that I can’t even remember what it was!   The other two guys would be up front where the double hopper of finished product would drop a bags worth of material and they would take turns filling and sewing those bags up.  

That machine was the worst!  The whole time that process was going on there was a cloud of dust hanging in the air.  In the desert heat we would be dripping in sweat and all that toxic stuff would stick to our bare arms, all around our sweaty masks that we would have to change out at least every hour.  Imagine what these workers brought home to their families.  People have Mesothelioma exposure from washing their spouses clothing!

If the company had any defense, I will say they warned us not to get an asbestos fiber in our lungs because it could lay dormant for 20 years and cause cancer.  They did give us an annual chest X-ray.  I continued to get X-rays for some years after that but I didn’t worry much after 20 years.  Who would have thought it could lay dormant for 50 years!

As a follow-up I’ve been reading a document our daughter Rachel discovered online that is a 35 page US EPA case against W.R. Grace/Ari-Zonolite that probably led to their bankruptcy.  In there I discovered that even the iron ore shavings from Montana contained 21-26% fibrous asbestos!  The report goes on to talk about the required remediation and I believe the eventual designation as a superfund hazmat site.  

Many of you will probably let me know about the Mesothelioma law firms that have developed their practices into full time pursuit of the 32 billion dollar settlement against the asbestos industry.  Rest assured we have every intention of joining that settlement.  As that story develops I will share more about that process.

Thanks again for following my story.  Since the first chemotherapy a week ago I think I had a pretty good week.  No hard core chemo side affects, but definitely a few discomforts still happening.  I didn’t feel very good this morning but I took my first nausea pill and it really seemed to help.  Feeling good enough to write!