Asbestos News
Group Reports Asbestos Woes
By Cory Reiss , Ledger Washington Bureau, March 4, 2004
WASHINGTON -- An environmental group puts California and Florida, respectively,
at the top of the list for most estimated deaths related to two asbestos
diseases.
Federal data listed the two illnesses as causes of death for 3,025 people
from 1979 through 2001 in Florida, a state heavy with retirees from other
states, according to a new report by the Environmental Working Group.
The group estimates that flaws in the data before 1999 make it likely
that the Florida deaths totaled 4,481.
The group estimated that California deaths ranged from 4,273 to 5,792.
Nationwide, at least 43,000 deaths were linked to asbestosis, a sometimes-fatal
lung disorder, or asbestos-caused mesothelioma cancer. "There's an
epidemic of asbestos mortality in the United States," said Richard
Wiles, senior vice president of the Environmental Working Group.
The group says the number of asbestos deaths nationwide would be about
230,000 if asbestos-linked lung and gastrointestinal cancers were included
but it is more difficult to attribute those cancers to asbestos.
The group unveils its report on the Internet today as a tool to influence
debate about asbestos legislation. The Senate is considering a bill that
would bar asbestos lawsuits and set up a 27-year industry-financed trust
fund of $113 billion to pay the claims of people who have or will become
sick from exposure. The bill would ban asbestos, except for uses that
aren't considered a serious risk to human health and for military applications.
Insurance companies and manufacturers support the legislation as a way
out of a legal morass. Existing and future court claims and settlements
would be included.
The legislation has bogged down over disagreements about the fund's size
and details. Sen. Bill Frist, the majority leader from Tennessee, said
Friday that he wants to bring the bill to the floor by the first week
of April.
Asbestos defendants take issue with the working group's data, including
projections that asbestos deaths from these two diseases won't peak until
about 2015. The industries cite a recent study that said mesothelioma
cases already have leveled off.
The Environmental Working Group conducted its research with a $176,000
grant from the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, or ATLA, which
wants to preserve the right to sue.
Wiles said the grant from the lawyers group did not taint its research
because ATLA had no input into how it was conducted and because it is
based on data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Lawyers, however, provided data for a section of the report intended to
show where people have filed lawsuits that the legislation would block.
Mike Baroody, chairman of a steering committee for the Asbestos Alliance,
a group representing defendant companies, said Wednesday that he had gleaned
details of the report from journalists but hadn't seen the data himself.
"Nothing in it contradicts or rebuts or diminishes the need for
a legislative solution," he said. "It does nothing to undermine
the appropriateness of a trust fund as a way to bring about that solution."
The Environmental Working Group has gained attention with similar Web
reports, such as a database allowing users to identify recipients of farm
subsidies. The group's Web site is http://www.ewg.org.
The new report is the latest in debates about projections and when to
attribute asbestos as the cause of illness. Those issues are at the heart
of arguments over the trust fund legislation.
The Environmental Working Group argues the proposed trust fund wouldn't
be large enough to cover everyone who deserves compensation. The group
wants more money in the fund, although Wiles said how much is still a
question, and it advocates leaving open the litigation option.
The AFL-CIO, a negotiator behind the scenes, considers the proposal inadequate.
The union argues that placing a cap on the fund ignores uncertainty about
how many people will get sick.
"There should be enough money to pay those claims," said Peg
Seminario, director of safety and health at the AFL-CIO. "There's
just a lot of uncertainty about the future scope of the problem and the
scope of the claims, but we do know it's going to be big."
Asbestos was widely used in manufacturing, construction and hundreds
of common products but has been tightly regulated since the mid-1980s.
Sites in Jacksonville, Pompano Beach, Boca Raton and Tampa received
tons of asbestos shipments that the working group says could be sources
of asbestos exposure. Some experts surmise that Florida's relatively high
numbers of deaths are related to its large retiree population from states
where exposure in the workplace or at home was more likely.
"There are a lot of retirees here, and I don't doubt that that
is a factor," said Paul Harrison, environmental risk manager at the
Sarasota office of the American Management Resources Corp., an environmental
remediation company that handles asbestos. "You don't see those health
effects until later in life."
Wiles said that likelihood has health policy ramifications for Florida.
The state-by-state numbers don't include deaths from lung cancer and other
illnesses that asbestos might cause, or reflect people who have been living
with illness.
The working group says that before 1999, the government tried to estimate
mesothelioma cases from more general cancer data in death certificates.
When better tracking was implemented in 1999, the numbers doubled. The
group went back to 1979 and estimated the uncounted mesothelioma cases,
giving the high end of the ranges in its report -4,481 in Florida, for
example.
Some manufacturers have sought bankruptcy protection to halt lawsuits,
which all sides agree does not help patients. Frist said last week that
bankruptcies prompted by 600,000 lawsuits, which he described as a "litigation
lottery," have cost more than 60,000 jobs.
"It is a crisis that is getting worse," he said.
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