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SPONSORED BY SENATOR PATTY MURRAY, D-WASH
JUNE 17, 2002
On January 2, 2000, I lost my life’s hero, my
father, Admiral E. R. Zumwalt, Jr., at the age of 79—the result of his exposure to
asbestos decades earlier. The specific cause of death was mesothelioma which, according to
a noted medical expert who examined my father’s affected lung, was one of the worst
cases of the disease he had ever observed. My father’s death came as a shock to our
family as he had been the picture of health, even taking first place in his age group in a
5K race in which he had participated six months before he died. None of us realized a
silent killer was at work—a killer that would take the life of this very vibrant man
in a horrible and painful struggle. As I bore witness to my father’s final days of
suffering, I could not help but wonder how such a terrible disease, linked to asbestos
exposure, could have existed for so long in an industrialized society without any
effective means of treatment having ever been developed to combat it.
It was only after this personal tragedy that I came to learn of the
horrors asbestos has visited upon mankind ever since its heat resistance properties were
first discovered. I was shocked to learn health problems associated with the use of
asbestos were first written about in the 1st century AD by a Roman author who
described "diseases of slaves" linked to the textile process of preparing and
weaving asbestos and flax.
We have not been good history students when it comes to the dangers
of asbestos. For even in more modern times, as extensive use of asbestos products began in
the late 1880s, we failed to heed the warning signs, recorded over time, that should have
indicated to us it is a lethal toxin. It kills. It kills slowly. It kills painfully.
Before the turn of the century, the man credited with first
developing asbestos as a commercial product in the US was dead of a lung-related disease.
Two years later, in 1900, a presumptive connection was established in the U.K., linking
employment in the asbestos product manufacturing industry to asbestosis. In 1918, the US
Bureau of Labor Statistics reported American asbestos workers were experiencing unusually
early deaths—so much so that some insurers were refusing to issue life insurance
policies to workers in this industry. In 1929, a U.K. study revealed a direct correlation
between exposure to asbestos and length of employment in an asbestos product manufacturing
plant—with 81% of those in a sample group employed for 20 years or more having a
lung-related disease. In 1930, the same presumptive health-related connection made thirty
years earlier in the U.K. was made in the U.S. In 1964, a US study of a sample group of
asbestos workers employed in the industry for more than 20 years revealed an astounding
87% to have asbestosis. Even with this evidence, it would still take the US government
several more years to force the industry to implement safety measures to protect its employees from exposure. In 1983, the lethal toxicity of
asbestos to a non-worker "bystander" was evidenced by the death from
mesothelioma of a woman whose only exposure was washing the clothes of her son who worked
in an asbestos product manufacturing plant.
While an effort was made to phase out and ban
asbestos by the EPA in 1989, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled EPA could
not ban it. Thus, under current law, only new uses of asbestos are banned, but existing
uses are not. Unbelievably, as many other industrialized nations have come to recognize
asbestos as a known carcinogen—therefore banning all usage—we continue to allow
existing usage.
A question bantered about recently in the press after 9/11 is who
knew what and when did they know it. This same question should be asked about the lethal
toxicity of asbestos. There is a written record, stretching back almost two millenniums,
indicating there is linkage between working with asbestos and lung-related diseases. But
even today, we have failed to take the steps necessary to protect future generations of
Americans from the horrors of asbestos exposure.
On 9/11 of last year, America came under terrorist attack, losing
almost 3000 of her citizens. But that death toll is incomplete. For when the WTC towers
came crashing down that day, they released millions of asbestos fibers into the air.
Circulated around New York City, these fibers were undoubtedly inhaled by tens of
thousands of rescue workers and local residents. When all is said and done, it may well
turn out that the terrorists inflicted a much greater death toll upon us than we currently
recognize. Ten, twenty, thirty years from now, as these asbestos fibers work their way
into the lungs of their victims, many more will die a terrible, protracted and painful
death. This would not be the case had a complete ban of asbestos been implemented before
construction of the WTC. In the aftermath of the tragedy of its collapse, we should not
wait for the latency period of asbestos to run its course on this new group of victims
before finally taking the necessary steps to protect future generations.
We knew about the health concerns related to exposure to asbestos by
the early 1900s. Had appropriate action been taken back then to address them, my father
might well be alive today. I am saddened to think that more loved ones will be lost well
into the 21st century because we have still failed to take appropriate action.
That will change with the passage of Senator Murray’s legislation.
I salute Senator Murray for sponsoring this bill. I salute Senators
Dayton, Wellstone, Cantwell and Baucus for co-sponsoring it. Should it become law, future
historians tracing the history of the asbestos industry will point to this legislation as
THE crucial turning point, in more than a century of ambivalence by the US government, in
protecting Americans once and for all from this terrible carcinogen.
*** POSTED ON JUNE 20, 2002 ***
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