PERMALINK Posted 9:27 PM by Jordan
Wanted: More Journalists To Pick Up On Asbestos Stories
I'm "promoting" this from the comments because it's important and I'm
not sure if everyone (anyone) actually reads the comments. (Do you?
Hello? Anyone out there?).
This is a response by NYCOSH Public Affairs Director Jonathan Bennet
to last week's post about the origins of the news articles and
legislative hearings about W.R. Grace's contamination of its former
plant in Hamilton, New Jersey.
Just to follow up on the issue of a simple tip to a journalist
making a huge difference: More journalists need to pick up on the
story. W.R. Grace had at least 30 major vermiculite expansion
plants located from Massachusetts to Hawaii, just like the one in
Hamilton, NJ. There is a major expose waiting to be written about
every one of them.
If you click on the ATSDR link in the Confined Space story, you go
to the page that lists the 30 locations. That's all the reporters
from the Trenton Times started with, and the result has been a
small upheaval in NJ government.
If anyone thinks that they shouldn't investigate the site near to
them because it's already been done by the Trenton Times, all I can
say is this. Are you going to refrain from reporting on a serial
killer because it's already been done in Omaha? Are you going to
refrain from reporting on a plane crash because it's already been
done in Chicago?
I would bet dollars to doughnuts that the people who worked in
those plants and the members of their families who were exposed to
take-home asbestos have contracted asbestos-related disease at
rates much higher than normal (unless the plants were such hell
holes that no one would work in one for more than a month or so).
Whether people who lived in the vicinity of the plants are also at
risk depends on the location of each plant. If it was close to
either residential or commercial real estate, you'll probably find
excess illness among those who lived or worked near the plant.
And EPA has a list of more than 700 locations that received
shipments of Grace vermiculite. Some one needs to figure out which
ones received enough of it to put workers and neighbors at risk.
Jonathan Bennett
Amen
Labels: Asbestos
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