Monsters in the Attic

The modest two-bedroom house was typical of others in the neighbourhood, only theirs was located directly across the river from the mainland. So when the river didn't break up in the winter, their house sometimes served as a makeshift schoolhouse for some of the local students.

None of the family members, teachers or students ever imagined that their private play and public school space would be the death of them. Ms. Thundersky and her family, you see, were exposed to a hazardous form of insulation in their attic.

And the risk still exists for hundreds of thousands of Canadians who have contaminated insulation in the attics, floorboards and wallboards of their homes as well as commercial, institutional and industrial buildings.

One might think that there would be dozens of professionals in HazMat suits surveying these homes and buildings. To the contrary, there has been little official activity in the way of assessing the extent of contamination, let alone cleaning it up. Yet the risks have been known since 1964 -- the same year Ms. Thundersky's family began living in her contaminated home -- and where they stayed until 1977.

Why are authorities taking so long to address a serious health risk that continues to put so many Canadians at risk?

Sadly, many of the people suffering already face their share of economic and health challenges. Aboriginals tend to use more attic space than other Canadians as they often live in poor and small living quarters, where the attics often become play rooms and even bedrooms.

Fallout from insulation use is bad news they could probably do without, what with Aboriginals experiencing more sickness and shorter life expectancies than other Canadians, as a result of birth defects, outbreaks of tuberculosis, infant deaths, suicide and diabetes.

While things are looking up since first ministers' health summit in September, and the $700-million pledge to improve the health of aboriginals, none of this is earmarked for asbestos abatement on reserves.

The asbestos-laced insulation, sold as a product called Zonolite, was used in Ms. Thundersky's home and is linked to cancer in four members of her family, two of whom have already died. Two sisters died of mesothelioma, a cancer of the lungs and the lungs' linings caused by asbestos. Symptoms of mesothelioma, which may not surface for 20 to 30 years after exposure, range from shortness of breath and chest pain due to an accumulation of fluid to bowel obstruction, blood-clotting abnormalities, and permanent lung damage. If the cancer spreads beyond the mesothelium to other parts of the body, symptoms may also include pain, trouble swallowing, or swelling of the neck or face.

Her mother, Nora Bruce and sister, Rebecca Bruce, continue the struggle against the deadly disease.

"I remember seeing the insulation in the attic, but we didn't think anything of it," says Ms. Thundersky, now 39. "It was later covered with plastic, but I realize now that there wasn't a proper vapour barrier in place."

Not surprisingly, she says words cannot express how painful the loss of life and health problems have been for her family. And she herself has not escaped unscathed.

When asked about her noticeable difficulties breathing, she says it's a symptom of her asbestosis, a pulmonary fibrosis caused by exposure to asbestos fibres. The condition produces breathlessness and flu-like symptoms that demand daily use of antibiotics. Diseases associated with asbestosis are lung cancer and mesothelioma.

"The doctors tell me it won't get any worse than this, but that's what they told my sister before she was diagnosed with cancer."

Ms. Thundersky and her surviving family members have met with their lawyer, Keith Ferbers of Akins, MacAulay & Thorvaldson LLP in Winnipeg. They plan to file a lawsuit this fall.

In the meantime, they are trying to be optimistic. Her mother is taking well to the chemotherapy and her sister saw a specialist in Boston this summer. The specialist said she may have an extended three-year lease on life -- if they remove her left lung, "clip off cancerous lymph nodes" and reconstruct her diaphragm.

The house they grew up in has since been demolished. When Ms. Thundersky went to see the demolished property where her home once stood, she says she found remnants of vermiculite out in the open amidst the rubble. (So even the demolished site continues to cause a health hazard to passersby.)

Ms. Thundersky's family is one of many dealing with use of asbestos-contaminated insulation. An older sister who lived on a different reserve also has asbestosis.

Experts agree that no one is immune to the risks and consequences posed by asbestos exposure, unless they are properly protected.

South of the border, the Environmental Protection Agency issued guidelines in May 2003 to warn the public about the asbestos-contaminated insulation. This warning came four years after media reports that workers became sick or died after working at the Libby Mine in Montana, where most of the matter was extracted. The campaign included a notice to the public that millions of homes and businesses may contain insulation that could cause potentially dangerous exposure to cancer-causing asbestos. In addition, the campaign instructs concerned parties on how they might identify vermiculite insulation and recommends that people make every effort not to disturb it where its removal is not a practical alternative.

Meanwhile, Canada has been much more lax on the matter. Environment Canada has information available on its website and Health Canada issued an under-publicized advisory on its website in the spring. And a group of officials from five departments (Health, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Agriculture, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. and Energy Canada) is getting together to deal with the issue. But the government has set no definitive deadline. Indian and Northern Affairs has only just completed a tabulation of areas of concern.

This is cold comfort to Ms. Thundersky and her family, who have tried to confront the bureaucracy but have been discouraged by a system short on resources, time and enthusiasm. In the meantime, many more Canadians continue to face a life threatening risk in their own homes and businesses -- whether or not they know it.

It's important for contractors, home and business owners alike to realize the risks and minimize them as much as possible.

Mysterious matter

The term "asbestos" is derived from a Greek word meaning "inextinguishable, unquenchable or inconsumable." Asbestos fibres can withstand the fiercest heat but are so soft and flexible that they can be spun and woven as easily as cotton.

Once marketed as the "miracle mineral," vermiculite was a very popular substance used for home insulation in the 1950s to the late-1970s. The product, called Zonolite, was mainly mined from W.R. Grace's Libby Mine in Montana.

Even though vermiculite on its own is harmless, the deposit in Libby was naturally contaminated with tremolite -- an extremely carcinogenic form of asbestos. W.R. Grace is currently facing lawsuits over allegations that its products contained asbestos and that employees were not warned about the dangers of the asbestos dust. The company stopped selling the insulation in the mid-1980's.

The non-profit organization Ban Asbestos Canada says that asbestos, while ideally suited for multiple commercial uses, is also the "perfect carcinogen" as it acts as both a promoter and initiator of cancer. The group points to experiments have shown that when an asbestos fibre enters a lung cell, it can attract cancer-causing agents. And that the dustiest processes are, in general, the most hazardous.

At the worst place in the Libby mill, workers were exposed to more than two tonnes of asbestos a day. X-rays taken of workers during the 1960s show that more than 90 per cent of Libby's long-term workers had lung disease. Families were also exposed when dirty work clothes, covered in asbestos, were brought home.

Litigants in the United States claim that W.R. Grace knew, in 1963, when it bought the mine, that asbestos was present in the vermiculite bearing ore. Moreover, documents recently made available claim that the company chose not to put warning labels on its products because it felt that such labels would result in substantial lost sales. They also allege the company eschewed the labels, allegedly confident that consumers would be unable to prove they had been harmed by the insulation.

W.R. Grace has agreed to spend US$2.75-million in an out of court settlement to create a fund to provide additional health care for Libby residents with asbestos-related diseases.

In 1999, the EPA investigated the site, and almost immediately placed it and its surrounding area on the U.S. Superfund cleanup list.

But the deadly dust had already traveled to 60 processing plants across the U.S. and Canada, and the product was used in thousands of Canadian homes and businesses. Consumers readily bought the "do it yourself" insulation. However, the instructions made no mention that the product contained asbestos or that facemasks should be used for protection.

There is still widespread confusion over which insulation products contain the asbestos contamination and exactly how to identify it.

Don Pinchin, an asbestos expert and president of Pinchin Environmental, says the insulation is a pebbly substance and can be identified by its silvery grey or blond colour. Its particles are about two to 10 centimetres in size. He stresses the importance of confirming identification with proper tests.

"However, there aren't many labs available to help in this regard," warns Dr. Pinchin. "The lab should be accredited by one of the two U.S agencies that qualify labs for the analysis of asbestos in bulk samples."

A recent U.S. EPA study of six homes in Vermont shows elevated airborne asbestos concentrations even in cases where the laboratory could not detect asbestos in the bulk material.

Still, some balk at the concerns raised over trace amounts of asbestos, saying the risk is overstated. To this day W.R. Grace considers Zonolite harmless to consumers because it contains only small amounts of asbestos.

Many environmental experts think otherwise. Dr. Pinchin concedes that the concentration of asbestos in attic insulation is generally under one per cent. But he cautions that the true hazard of an asbestos material relates to how long and how much the exposure is during a typical disturbance. The disturbance of vermiculite containing even trace quantities of asbestos represents great risk and danger to both contractors and homeowners, he says.

Dr. Pinchin advises building managers, contractors, and homeowners to apply careful controls to prevent the disturbance of the insulation. Of course this is not always possible and that's when problems can and do arise.

For instance, in 1996, Pinchin Environmental was hired by the Canadian military to study its base in Shiloh, Manitoba. While demolishing old barracks insulated with Zonolite, the level of asbestos fibre in the air skyrocketed to well over safe levels.

Dr. Pinchin's colleague, Bruce Stewart, reported that he was very surprised by the results. He noted that if the workers had been unprotected, they would have had an exposure equivalent to the maximum allowable for an asbestos worker for six to seven years of exposure -- in one day.

Dr. Pinchin says it would be very prudent for health and safety authorities at both the provincial and federal levels of government to issue advice on this matter. He thinks the Canadian government should emulate the U.S. EPA's example by launching a broad, well-publicized public awareness campaign on the dangers of vermiculite insulation and how a professional should perform abatement.

Holes in the regulatory woodwork

Canadian officials have known about the contaminated insulation for more than 40 years. According to the CBC documentary "Deadly Dust", broadcast on February 7, 2003, the first signs of Montana vermiculite in Canada appeared as early as the 1960s. CBC reporter Frederic Zalac tracked down a former Alberta official who inspected the Zonolite plant in Calgary in 1964. (A follow-up feature is scheduled to broadcast as this article goes to press.)

Today consumer products that are composed of, or contain asbestos fibres as well as the sale of pure asbestos are banned under the Hazardous Products Act. In addition, the emissions of asbestos into the environment from mining and milling operations are subject to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. And, for its part, Health Canada has encouraged provincial occupational health authorities to adopt stringent workplace exposure limits for asbestos.

However, there is still a lot of support for the multi-million-dollar asbestos industry. At an international meeting in Geneva on September 20, Canada blocked the addition of chrysotile asbestos, a carcinogenic type of asbestos, to a global list of toxic chemicals (the Rotterdam Convention). Canada is the second largest producer of chrysotile asbestos, its share being about 240,000 tonnes in 2003.

So what help can occupants on still-contaminated reserves throughout the country expect?

On April 1, 2004, the federal government began combing through tens of thousands of construction records on Canadian reserves to identify homes containing the asbestos-contaminated insulation linked to cancer.

There are currently 93,474 houses on reserves across the country. The review consisted of scanning files from 1962 to 1990. The recently released results indicate that there are at least 600 "at risk" references identified in about 74 communities across the country -- mostly in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

"To put that into perspective," says Hugh Ryan, manager of housing at Indian and Northern Affairs. "Most of it is not a problem unless it is disturbed. The first line of defence is to not go into your attic."

Mr. Ryan also points to the fact that most of these houses would have been built in the 1960s and so some are probably not standing anymore, as is the case with Ms. Thundersky's home.

But the study omits investigations into renovations and additions that aren't necessarily covered in initial construction plans. Experts say that these additions may also contain contaminated insulation, and should also be a concern.

Mr. Ryan says that all of the communities impacted have been sent letters to notify them of the risks to certain homes. But he is quick to add that "housing is not a federal government responsibility anymore -- it's a shared community concern."

After receiving notification, it's up to the community Chiefs in Counsel to contact the residents, perform visual inspections, and contact an environmental health officer from Health Canada if there is cause for concern.

These instructions contradict the professional advice of consultants like Dr. Don Pinchin, who stress the importance of involving expert laboratories and consultants.

The Ban Asbestos Canada group concurs, calling on the government to pay to have the asbestos removed.

The health crisis in Raven Thundersky's family prompted her to find out more about asbestos contamination than she ever would have wanted to know. She was astounded to discover that even after the Canadian government received scientific data confirming the hazardous nature of Zonolite, the Canadian government actually lobbied the U.S. government not to ban the asbestos-contaminated insulation.

"I want to raise awareness about the risks from asbestos exposure," says Ms. Thundersky. She sighs and takes a deep breath. "I don't want any other family to suffer the way mine has." She and her husband are working with government officials in the U.S. and Canada to lobby for more action to warn people about what to look out for and to seek early diagnosis of possible health problems.

Meanwhile, on August 11, 2004, the federal government issued a request for proposals for consultant services regarding vermiculite insulation clean up at Department of Canadian Defense housing. The six contracts, to be carried out across the country, are worth $750,000 each.

An inquiry as to whether any similar projects have been discussed regarding clean up of reserves, revealed that no similar steps are under way. Catherine Saunders, Health Canada spokesperson states the obvious. "It's a complex issue," she says.

Ms. Saunders points to the information available at the Health Canada website and adds that the Environmental Health division of the First Nations Inuit Health Branch is looking at developing a one-day information session for environmental health officers. Says Ms. Saunders, "The session would provide additional information and/or update their knowledge on vermiculite insulation."

The department has contacted some private sector companies to provide proposals. But no final approval of the session concept, or concrete deadlines, have been set yet.

How many more deaths will people such as Raven Thundersky and her family have to experience in order for the government to get serious about cleaning up the asbestos in aboriginal reserves? That should be an easy question to answer.

Connie Vitello is editor of HazMat Management magazine. For further information, e-mail connie@hazmatmag.com

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BEST PRACTICES IN ASBESTOS ABATEMENT

Environmental experts recommend that the government publicize the following guidance to safeguard the public against risks from exposure to asbestos-contaminated vermiculite insulation:

• Building occupants and/or owners who discover or suspect the presence of vermiculite insulation should follow the recommendations published by the U.S. EPA for managing vermiculite in place. Most important, removal is recommended prior to renovations or demolition that will disturb the vermiculite.

• Building/home inspectors should carefully note the type of attic or wall insulation and provide appropriate warnings to purchasers.

• Purchasers should inquire about the presence of vermiculite and appropriate adjustment in the price should be negotiated to reflect the ongoing management or removal or the effect on future property sales.

• Phase 1 Environmental Site Assessments should note the presence of vermiculite if present or suspected.

• Contractors, construction or demolition workers as well as the general public should be made aware of the precautions that should be followed when working in the presence of vermiculite.

• Construction trades should be made aware of the health issues related to working in the presence of vermiculite.

While a wholesale vermiculite removal program is not likely warranted, both federal and provincial governments should act to inform the parties who may be affected before additional hazardous exposures occur.

Our experts are Shari Elliot, an associate in the Environmental and Energy Groups at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP in Toronto, Ontario and Dr. Don Pinchin, president of Pinchin Environmental Ltd., in Mississauga, Ontario.