Asbestos confusion exposing millions 

Andrew Schneider /Seattle-Post-Intelligencer 28feb01

Search for asbestos in Crayons finds government detection methods obsolete

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. -- Millions of Americans could be at risk of asbestos-related disease because the government's methods for detecting the deadly fiber are inconsistent and obsolete, leading environmental scientists say in a new report.

Motivated by questions from Crayola and various government agencies, the Research Triangle Institute analyzed crayons as well as the analysis of crayons done by labs around the country. Their report confirms the presence of small amounts of asbestos in Crayola crayons bought last year, as well as significant, larger quantities of other asbestos-like fibers.

Michael Beard, principal investigator for the 10-month study, said it also shows government standards must be updated to accurately reflect new technology and health risks posed by exposure to the microscopic fibers.

"The level of confusion on how we identify and analyze asbestos has to end," said Beard, who was an Environmental Protection Agency lead chemist for 26 years.

"This problem applied not only to crayons and talc, but to all materials analyzed for asbestos content."

Beard warned that confusing standards used by the government for risk assessment could affect "the well-being of schoolchildren, miners, construction workers, brake mechanics and consumers of all sorts of products."

The institute is the leading quality assurance arm for nearly 1,000 analytical labs accredited by the federal government and the American Industrial Hygiene Association. It financed the $70,000 study itself, rejecting support from federal agencies and industry to maintain impartiality.

The study began after the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported last May that lab tests done for the newspaper revealed cancer-causing fibers in talc used by most crayon makers to strengthen the wax sticks. Within three weeks of the P-I report, more than 30 other government-certified labs around the country tested crayons for school districts, state agencies, ABC News and other media outlets. Although almost all found asbestos, labs commissioned by Crayola and a government lab used by the Consumer Product Safety Commission reported finding none.

"It was this inconsistency -- the discrepancies between labs testing the same material and reporting different findings -- that prompted our investigation," Beard said.

Crayola, Rose Art and other crayon makers denied there was asbestos in their products, but after additional safety commission tests verified the presence of trace amounts of the material and larger amounts of "asbestos-like fibers," the companies agreed to stop using talc. Crayola announced last week that it had done so, ahead of schedule.

"We have completed our crayon reformulation ahead of the voluntary commitment we made to the CPSC," said Stacy Gabrielle, spokeswoman for Binney & Smith, Crayola's manufacturer.

The institute did not find quantifiable amounts of any fiber in Rose Art crayons.

 

George Biekkola of L'Anse, Mich., is one of hundreds of taconite miners along the Minnesota and Michigan Iron Range suffering from asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma as a result of exposure to asbestos in the ore. He is displaying an X-ray of his diseased lungs. Paul Kitagaki Jr. / Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Health authorities believe the asbestos danger to children using crayons is minimal.

"I don't have any fear of kids using crayons because the fibers are encapsulated in wax," Beard says. "But I darn sure wouldn't want to be the guy at a factory who has to cut that bag of talc open and dump it into the hopper without protection or the guys who are mining it in New York."

Crayola last year said it had no knowledge of any employees suffering asbestos-related illness.

Workers at the R.T. Vanderbilt talc mine in Gouverneur, N.Y., the main source of talc for the crayon industry, have not been so fortunate. The P-I last June documented that hundreds of miners, millers and mine supervisors had died or were dying from disease caused by asbestos fibers in their lungs.

But mine officials pointed to years of Mine Safety and Health Administration tests that failed to detect asbestos in Vanderbilt's talc, although the tests did identify "similar-appearing fibers" called magnesio-anthophyllite.

This was the same substance that both the Research Triangle Institute and the lab used by the Consumer Product Safety Council call "transitional fibers" in their studies.

"Semantics -- that is what this fiber issue is coming down to," said Ronald Medford, the safety council's assistant executive director of hazards identification.

Test methods deficient

The Research Triangle Institute is uniquely qualified to question consistency in testing methods because it routinely audits the work done with asbestos by laboratories working for EPA. It said government asbestos test methods are deficient in two major areas -- identification of fibers and analytical methods used.

The U.S. Bureau of Mines lists more than 100 mineral fibers as asbestos-like fibers, yet the government, largely because of years of lobbying by the asbestos and stone industries, regulates only six. In effect, the government says that if a fiber isn't one of those six, it is not asbestos and therefore not a health risk.

At the same time, the analytical techniques used by government agencies don't reveal everything.

Today, commercial labs use three different levels of microscopic examination to detect and quantify asbestos fibers. What they can see and report varies dramatically with the technique used:

To put the following in perspective, consider that a human hair is about 100 micrometers thick.

Polarized light microscopy (PLM) is limited to detecting fibers that are about 1 crometer in diameter.

• Phase contrast microscopy (PCM) can detect fibers as small as 0.25 micrometers in diameter.

   

• Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) can detect fibers as small as 0.01 micrometers or less.

  The institute's research shows the value of sophisticated analysis in its crayon testing. In one group of crayon samples, PLM tests showed two asbestos fibers, while a TEM analysis of the same crayon found 10 fibers.

  The differences in analytical methods can have life-and-death ramifications for workers and consumers, but the Occupational Safety and Health Administration lab in Salt Lake City, for example, uses only the PCM test because that test alone is specified in Department of Labor enforcement standards. Reliance on the less-sensitive test could explain why that lab detected no asbestos in crayons examined for the safety commission last year.

  The lab also does tests for the mine safety agency, whose former director, Davitt McAteer, responded quickly and strongly to a 1999 series of P-I articles about hundreds of miners and their family members from Libby, Mont., who were killed or sickened by exposure to asbestos from a W.R. Grace & Co. vermiculite mine.

  McAteer said he was most concerned by the newspaper's documentation that his agency, the EPA and branches of the Department of Health and Human Services knew for years that vermiculite miners were being exposed to lethal levels of asbestos, yet did nothing.

  The inspectors general of EPA and Labor are trying to determine who dropped the ball, and to ensure it doesn't happen again, but McAteer's agency isn't waiting for their report. Reports of significant asbestos illness among New York talc miners and taconite iron miners along the Iron Range in Minnesota and Michigan prompted McAteer to order increased mine surveillance.

  "This just doesn't make sense," McAteer said at the time. "Something has got to be wrong with how we're testing these ore samples."

  OSHA had failed to find asbestos in mines, but McAteer ordered a shift to newer sample collection techniques already used by the Defense Department and other agencies.

  The change made a difference. In October, MSHA released the findings of the first tests using the new method, reporting that ore from the Virginia Vermiculite mine, the largest of the nation's three remaining vermiculite mines, contained dangerously high levels of asbestos. Some of the ore samples tested for the agency by a private lab showed 95 percent to 99 percent asbestos.

  After mine managers challenged the results, MSHA took new ore samples and subjected them to OSHA's traditional PCM tests. The results, released Monday, show no asbestos.

  But agency investigators also gathered samples at identical times and locations and sent them for TEM tests in a highly respected Denver lab. That lab found asbestos in 18 of 27 samples.

  MSHA says the inconsistency won't stop it from moving to protect workers.

  "MSHA plans to gather as much information as we can about asbestos exposure, using any methods and any lab, if we can learn something. Wherever we do find asbestos -- using any method -- we'll alert mine operators and miners to talk to them about how to minimize their exposure," said Bob Elam, who became MSHA's acting administrator after McAteer's resignation.

  Conflicting test results could affect research by other government agencies. For example, the EPA found asbestos contamination in the vermiculite of some garden products last year. At first, investigators believed it was old product from Libby, but later determined that it came from mines in Virginia and South Carolina. EPA is still trying the determine whether consumers are at risk from these products.

  OSHA requested the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health to evaluate workers at the Scott Co. in Marysville, Ohio, a major user of vermiculite in its garden products, and at other manufacturers of construction products that also use large amounts of the popcorn-like expanded ore. Those investigations are continuing.

Map of Asbestos Processing Plants

Many of those on the front lines of the nation's hottest battles in the asbestos wars see the importance of the institute's criticism of test methods.

"Of course they're right. How we look at asbestos is far too narrow to protect the public's health," said Paul Peronard, EPA's on-scene coordinator for the Libby cleanup

"We're dealing with asbestos testing techniques which are decades old. We've been here for more than a year trying to clean up this mess and we're being crushed and limited by these old methods.

"We run countless tests on the soil and vermiculite insulation and the PLM (tests) come back non-detect, clean. The same samples are run through TEM (and) come back loaded, hot as hell with asbestos. This is no way to do science."

The Research Triangle Institute team acknowledged that some scientists believe cleavage fragments -- bundles of asbestos fibers -- and transitional fibers should not be classified as asbestos at all. Many physicians dispute this, saying the government should be concerned because bundled fibers are often broken into individual, toxic fibers by lung action if inhaled.

Pathologists who have examined lung tissue of vermiculite, talc and taconite miners, and from brake mechanics who have died of asbestosis or mesothelioma, have observed fibers broken from cleavage fragments and transitional fibers imbedded in diseased tissue.

Health effects of various forms of asbestos were not in the scope of the institute's project, but the report said that, "It seems illogical to presume that a slight change in the mineralogy of a fiber ... can have a dramatic effect on the (health effects) of the fiber."

Restricted by regulations

Dan Crane is a senior physical scientist at the OSHA lab. He is praised by most peers as brilliant in identifying fibers, but condemned by many others for refusal to use the more sensitive TEM analysis and a perceived unwillingness to report any but the six government-approved fibers.

He says he understands the value of using the more sensitive TEM method, but that he can't do so.

"I have no choice in what I report. I have to follow the regulations. These cleavage fragments and transitional fibers may be as harmful to health as the regulated asbestos but they are not regulated, and therefore we cannot count them," Crane said. "It could tell a great deal more about the fibers we're analyzing, but under OSHA's regulations, we cannot use TEM to determine compliance (with government regulations). The limitations of the techniques we do use is something we must live with until the rules are changed."

Beard says that when OSHA and other standards were written, there probably weren't a dozen TEMS in the country analyzing asbestos.

An OSHA spokeswoman defended her agency's ban on the newer technology, saying "OSHA's methodology is more exclusive with respect to asbestos detection." She insisted the less sophisticated technology is "more precise."

When asked if it resulted in increased safety for the miners and workers in the asbestos-contaminated environment that was being tested, she replied:

"Safer? Is it safer? I don't think I can go there."

P-I senior national correspondent Andrew Schneider can be reached at andrewschneider@seattle-pi.com or 206-448-8218.