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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, better known as NASA, said in July that it had found the "smoking gun" that caused the space shuttle Columbia to break apart as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on Feb. 1: a piece of foam that had peeled off the external fuel tank and struck the shuttle's wing 1 minute and 22 seconds after liftoff. But many experts looking at the tragedy that killed seven astronauts say there is a deeper cause. They say that the metaphorical smoking gun should be painted green. Because of demands that the agency help to front for...

WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency for the first time has declared a public health emergency in a contaminated community, targeting a Montana town Wednesday for immediate federal attention. The declaration by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson involving Libby, Mont., will not result in an evacuation, but will require an extensive cleanup and better health protections for residents with asbestos-related illnesses. -- Asbestos contamination from a now-closed vermiculite mine near Libby has been cited in the deaths of more than 200 people and illnesses of thousands more. Jackson said the public health emergency declaration was the first time the EPA has...

A federal jury on Friday acquitted W.R. Grace & Co. and three of its former officials of charges that they knowingly exposed residents of Libby, Mont., to asbestos poisoning associated with a mining operation and conspired to hide it. The verdict brings to an ignominious end one of the most significant criminal prosecutions the government had ever filed against a corporate polluter. The acquittals raise new questions about prosecutorial failings in the Justice Department, which already was reeling from the dismissal of its corruption case against former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska).In Libby, where an estimated 1,200 residents have died or...

LIBBY, Montana: A reckoning in one of American history's worst industrial disasters, which unfolded here over seven decades as an asbestos-tainted mineral was dug from the ground and processed, begins Thursday when five former mine executives go to trial on federal criminal charges. The case is highly unusual in that prosecutors have generally avoided criminal charges in the broad arena of asbestos law, leaving the issue to the civil courts.

A former French aircraft carrier containing 700 tonnes of contaminated materials has docked in Britain. The ship, which used to be known as the Clemenceau, completed its journey from Brest, in France, to join the ranks of "ghost ships" gathered at Graythorp, in Teesside. Environmentalists and local campaigners fear asbestos contained onboard the warship could harm the environment At 738ft (225m) long and 213ft (65m high), the 32,780-tonne vessel will become the largest ship to be recycled in Europe and will bring jobs to the area, but the project has faced criticism from environmental campaigners. Seven other decommissioned vessels, known...

A New York City contractor was sentenced to three years in state prison Friday for releasing hazardous asbestos dust and debris in a Paterson church when removing insulation without a license. Tyrone Maple, 51, of the Bronx was sentenced by Superior Court Judge Marilyn Clark in Paterson for illegally removing the asbestos at Friendship Baptist Church. The church also hosts A Whole New World Daycare. Maple, a church member who works as a boiler repairman in New York, was hired to remove the insulation last December so that plumbers could repair leaky steam pipes leading from the basement boiler. As...

Joe Biden can beat Sarah Palin by pretending she's a man. And that he's not Joe Biden. You have a problem. In less than a month, you will face off against Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in a vice-presidential debate in St. Louis, and were you anyone but Joe Biden, it would likely be a rout. Last week, Palin proved herself a charming, confident, and gifted reader of speeches. But that doesn't change the fact that two years ago she was the mayor of a town of 6,000, crusading against dirty books at the local library. You are a six-term senator...

The family of Joe Biden, who will be officially nominated as the vice presidential candidate of the Democratic Party's 'reform Washington' ticket with Barack Obama Thursday night, appears to be enmeshed in the same D.C. money game that Obama denounces. One of the senator's sons -- Hunter, a Washington lobbyist -- and the senator's brother, James --received a $1 million investment in their purchase of a hedge fund company from the senator's largest political donor, an Illinois law firm, SimmonsCooper. The brother and the son subsequently repaid the $1 million to the law firm, which specializes in representing asbestos victims....

The fraudulent nature of many legal cases alleging damage from exposure to asbestos, long documented in legal and other publications, was officially confirmed to the world by a savvy federal judge in Texas three years ago. However, if allegations in a new report are true, similar rip-offs are still being tried. The most disheartening thing about the report, “Trial Lawyers Inc. Asbestos,” fifth in a series from the Manhattan Institute, is that the reader can count on the fingers of one hand the number of doctors and lawyers who have been punished for abusing the system. A federal grand jury...

Enlarge ImageEvildoer.Scientists may have figured out how asbestos fibers (indicated by arrows and shown ensnared by an immune system cell) trigger lung scarring and cancer.Credit: Jürg Tschopp/University of Lausanne Researchers may have cracked the mystery of how asbestos causes life-threatening lung damage and cancer. A new study shows that the material triggers key immune system proteins that set off chronic inflammation. As a result, a commonly used arthritis drug might ward off the lung problems induced by exposure. Over decades, asbestos fibers inhaled into the lungs can lead to cancer and scarring that interferes with breathing. Although these risks...

It is one of the most popular toys on children's wish lists this holiday season, but independent laboratory tests show the "CSI: Crime Scene InvestigationT Fingerprint Examination Kit" contains asbestos. The Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) and Public Justice, a Washington, D.C. public-interest law firm, are demanding that companies involved in the distribution of the toy protect children and other customers from exposure to the substance, which has been linked to fatal lung cancer and other serious diseases. The toy is made in China. In a letter to CBS, the toy's licensor; Planet Toys of New York City, the toy's...

 Nov. 16, 2007 based on the following news story: Clinton plays the gender card for a win "This pantsuit is asbestos tonight" - Hillary Clinton   This cartoon/graphic is free for noncommercial use in emails, blogs, and forums.  iowapresidentialwatch.com

Chinese authorities today announced a sweeping recall of garments manufactured with asbestos, including the pantsuit worn by Sen. Hillary Clinton during last night’s Democrat presidential debate. Sen. Clinton’s trousers were marketed mostly through retailers in the Washington D.C. region, and made from “a political-grade fabric that provides protection from spontaneous combustion, thus avoiding the embarrassment of ‘pants on fire’.” Because asbestos is the leading cause of lung cancer in laboratory mice and rats, experts said it posed a particular danger to Sen. Clinton’s rivals on the stage last night. The Chinese government apologized to the former First Lady for shipping...

A U.S. consumer group called for an urgent Food and Drug Administration review of the safety of aspartame on Monday, but the FDA said there was no immediate need to do so despite a new study showing the sweetener may cause cancer.  Italian researchers published a new study last week that showed aspartame -- widely used in soft drinks -- might cause leukemia, lymphoma and breast cancer in rats.   "This is the second study by the same lab showing that aspartame causes cancer in rats," Center for Science in the Public Interest executive director Michael Jacobson said in a telephone...

WASHINGTON, June 20 — Federal environmental officials misled Lower Manhattan residents about the extent of contamination in their condominiums and apartments after the collapse of the World Trade Center, according to a preliminary report released on Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office. According to the report, made public during a Senate subcommittee hearing, the Environmental Protection Agency did not accurately report the results of a residential cleanup program in 2002 and 2003. More than 4,000 apartments in Lower Manhattan were professionally decontaminated in that program, and the agency reported that only a “very small” number of air samples taken in...

By all accounts, Fred D. Thompson will soon be running for president, portraying himself as a Washington outsider on the campaign trail. But over the past three years he showed up every two weeks or so at a lobbying and law firm in downtown D.C. to plot how best to persuade Congress to help a British company. His main assignment: to use his connections to then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) to extract information about goings-on inside Congress and use it to benefit his multibillion-dollar client. In exchange for this insider wisdom he was paid a cool $760,000. Even casual...

Yes, it's asbestos Janet Raloff Federal mineralogists have now corroborated what toxicologists from another agency reported last year: Sierra-foothills communities around Sacramento, Calif., are built atop soils naturally laced with asbestos. The confirmatory findings appear in a December 2006 report by Gregory P. Meeker and his team at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Denver. Last spring, a San Francisco–based Environmental Protection Agency team demonstrated that everyday activities, such as bike riding, gardening, and baseball, could churn up high concentrations of asbestos-laden dust from soils in the foothills area (SN: 7/8/06, p. 26: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060708/bob9.asp). In response, a construction-materials trade group...

Manufactured for Money How slick lawyers have turned a genuine health crisis into a ripoff you won't believe. Dr. George (snip) Martindale's name was on several thousand documents claiming people suffered from an incurable work-related respiratory disease. (Attorney Daniel) Mulholland asked Martindale if he had ever intended his work to be used as an official diagnosis in a lawsuit or for any other purpose. "No, sir," he replied. (snip) Martindale went on to explain his role in what a federal court concluded was a massive legal scam. He had expanded his radiology practice by becoming a certified "B-reader," which meant...

The tort bar pretends to stand up for the little guy against large, bottom-line-obsessed corporations. Now that this conceit has been exposed as a fiction, the lawyers who dominate Congress should heed the call to end the rapacious practices of the nation's trial lawyers. Congress again is considering a bill to create, at industry expense, a fund for victims of asbestos-related disease. Today, people who worked with asbestos must wait for their cases to wend their way through the courts. The fund would be faster, more consistent and more attentive to companies' viability. The new plan, similar to one that...

Paul Gleason, who played the go-to bad guy in "Trading Places" and the angry high school principal in "The Breakfast Club," has died. He was 67. Gleason's wife, Susan, says her husband died Saturday at a Burbank hospital of mesothelioma, a rare form of lung cancer linked to asbestos. Gleason appeared in over 60 movies, including "Die Hard," "Johnny Be Good," and "National Lampoon's Van Wilder." Most recently, he made a handful of television appearances in hit shows such as "Friends" and "Seinfeld." A native of Miami, Gleason was an avid athlete. Before becoming an actor, he played Triple-A minor...

NEW YORK -- A 41-year-old paramedic who worked at a morgue for months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center was buried Monday after dying of an asbestos-related cancer. Deborah Reeve, a 17-year paramedic, died on March 15 of mesothelioma, a lung cancer associated with exposure to asbestos, her family said. Reeve developed a cough in late 2003 and retired at the end of 2004 after becoming too ill to work. Her doctors and family say her cancer was caused by exposure to toxic dust from the World Trade Center site. City health officials say it's...

......the lawyers signed up tens of thousands of "victims" for class-action lawsuits — picking up along the way some plaintiffs who had also filed claims as victims of asbestos. U.S. Silica, the country's largest sand maker, was flooded by more than 20,000 lawsuits in a short period that began in November 2002...But some judges, notaly Clinton appointee Janis Jack of the Federal District Court in Corpus Christi, Texas, aren't letting the trial lawyers run freely with silicosis as they did with asbestosis. Lawsuits on behalf of people diagnosed with asbestosis (which isn't always the same thing as actually having it)...

WASHINGTON -- Opponents of a $140 billion trust fund for asbestos victims forced leaders to withdraw it Tuesday, but Majority Leader Bill Frist gave himself the option to bring it up again. The 58-41 vote to send the bill back to the Judiciary Committee was a severe setback. Opponents said the fund would be drained by claims against it, leave taxpayers liable and violate federal budget rules. The bill's supporters needed 60 votes to keep the measure alive on the Senate floor. They had 59 before Frist, R-Tenn., switched his vote at the last minute to leave open the option...

The leader of U.S. Senate Democrats said on Monday he would consider backing curbs on some asbestos lawsuits if the chamber would scuttle legislation removing all claims from court and paying victims from a $140 billion trust fund. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's urged senators to "get this bill off the floor" ahead of a major procedural vote, that could come as early as Tuesday, over whether the industry-funded trust could cost taxpayers in violation of budget rules. Reid, from Nevada, said an alternative to the national fund would be to keep asbestos claims in court, but revise the medical...

E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend Version February 08, 2006, 11:29 a.m. The Worst Bill Money Can Buy Revisiting asbestos — again. EDITOR'S NOTE: This piece appears in the (upcoming) February 27, 2006, issue of National Review. Claims to compensation for alleged asbestos-related illnesses prompted the Supreme Court to call for congressional action to deal with the “elephantine mass” of litigation. Six years later, Republicans are poised to pass an elephantine mess of legislation. Many Republican senators don’t wish to see this bill — which they have roundly criticized — become law. But the need they feel...

LIVE on Senate Floor.. Sen. Reid calling for Filibuster of Asbestos bill !! This is Reid vs Leheay ! this should be interesting

WASHINGTON -- The subject was a sober one, and new to the Senate floor: Should the Senate vote on a bill that would set up a $140 billion fund for people sickened by asbestos exposure? Within minutes, the exchange spiraled into familiar election-year territory with Democrats calling the legislation Republican payback to corporate lobbyists and GOP senators accusing the Democrats of obstructionism. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., objected to allowing a vote on the bill. He spoke only a few moments before uttering the name of disgraced influence peddler Jack Abramoff. "Washington has been run by the lobbyists. The...

MUMBAI: The Supreme Court Monitoring Committee on Hazardous Wastes Management on Friday decided that the French warship, Clemenceau, should not enter India. This recommendation would be sent to the court in two days. G. Thyagarajan, chairman, said that in the light of new and additional information about the ship, the committee concluded that "it is not desirable for the ship to enter India's sovereign territory." The Clemenceau is expected to enter Indian territorial waters in four to six weeks. The committee, which met here, also heard two representatives from the French company, Technopure, contracted to decontaminate the ship. In a...

Insurers are concerned that creating a fund will only cause more people to file suits before the trust is up and running. Trial lawyers don't like it since it would limit fees in what has been a very lucrative field.The legislation would create a trust fund administered by the Labor Department. It would make payments to individuals who could prove they were harmed by asbestos. In exchange, the companies would be shielded from further liability. Lawyer's fees would be capped at 5% of the fund.

<p>FOR the lawyers who file lawsuits against corporations, it looked like the next big thing — the next fen-phen, asbestos or even tobacco, the mother of all jackpots.</p> <p>Like the lawsuits involving asbestos, the fire-retardant material that when inhaled can cause a horrible lung cancer, the new suits involved a substance that under certain circumstances could harm the lungs: silica, a purified sand used as a cleaning abrasive as well as in making glass, paint, ceramics and other materials. Silica dust, when inhaled, can lodge in the lungs, causing silicosis, a disabling and often fatal lung disease.</p>

EL DORADO HILLS, Calif. (AP) - A huge cloud of construction dust blowing across the field where his son played Little League signaled to Lance McMahan it was time to get out of this fast-growing suburb above Sacramento. Watching from a lawn chair as bulldozers reshaped a nearby hillside into another setting for high-priced homes, McMahan knew that the ground getting torn up and carried by the wind over the baseball diamond contained natural veins of asbestos. "That was like the last straw." said McMahan, recalling the day six years ago when he decided his family's health was more important...

People who live near the kind of rocks that can contain asbestos are more likely than other Californians to contract a rare cancer, according to a study being published in the nation's leading respiratory medical journal. The study by University of California, Davis, and Harvard University researchers has been eagerly awaited by federal officials trying to understand possible links between the rocks beneath our feet and asbestos-related diseases. It could be "a huge part of the puzzle," said Dan Meer, one of several EPA officials who had heard the study's results described at public meetings. Still, they and others characterized...

WASHINGTON -- A Senate committee on Thursday approved long-stalled legislation that would shield manufacturers and insurers from asbestos lawsuits. The measure would create a $140 billion trust fund to compensate people sickened by exposed to asbestos, a fibrous mineral commonly used until the mid-1970s in insulation and fireproofing material. Asbestos has tiny fibers that can cause cancer and other ailments when inhaled. The diseases often take decades to develop. Several Republicans on the Judiciary Committee plan to oppose the legislation when it reached the full Senate. Their support in committee allowed the chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., to advance the...

A federal grand jury has been convened in Manhattan to consider possible criminal charges arising out of civil litigation over exposure to silica and asbestos, according to lawyers involved in the civil cases. The grand jury has subpoenaed documents from at least one of the companies that screened people who later claimed they had suffered injuries as a result of exposure to silica, a material that can cause respiratory disease and that is used in making glass, paints, ceramics and other materials. The federal investigation comes amid questions about some silica-related claims that emerged in federal court proceedings in Corpus...

Washington FOR over two decades, Congress has wrestled unsuccessfully with the difficult problem of asbestos. Now, with Congress about to produce legislation that will compensate Americans hurt by asbestos without clogging the courts and causing undue economic hardship, Dick Armey, a Republican and the former House majority leader, has led a huge and misleading advertising campaign to defeat the bill. The bill, which Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, and I introduced last month with broad bipartisan support, would use a $140 billion trust fund to pay asbestos victims in a no-fault program similar to...

Endorsed by President Bush, manufacturers, big labor and veterans groups, a $140 billion trust fund for workplace asbestos victims was on a fast track for approval by the Senate Judiciary Committee, leaving Californians exposed to asbestos in the environment on uncertain legal ground. But in the final bill rewrite, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California persuaded colleagues to make compensation available to people sickened by asbestos outside the workplace and set aside $40 million for federal agencies to study the problem of "naturally occurring asbestos." Her amendment to the trust-fund bill marks the first federal legislation to grapple with a...

In political circles, it is common knowledge that Democrats at all levels rely on generous financial support from plaintiffs’ lawyers. Indeed, during the last election, the American Association of Trial Lawyers (ATLA) gave more than $2.1 million to Democrats. And contributions to Democrats at all levels from individual members of the plaintiffs’ bar probably totaled more than $100 million. So when ATLA recently threatened to postpone and curtail its fundraising efforts for Democrats, it sent a clear and powerful signal: ATLA is scared to death. What has the nation’s leading assemblage of ambulance chasers quaking in their wing tips? It’s...

Asbestos litigation is a continuing crisis. Thousands of truly impaired asbestos victims are deprived of just compensation through the courts because their legitimate claims must compete with those of the unimpaired. At the same time, hundreds of firms face the imminent threat of bankruptcy at the hands of a predatory trial bar with all the economic calamities that inevitably result... The current system is irrational and unfair. The problem is compounded by an elite class of trial lawyers who have turned asbestos litigation into an entrepreneurial pursuit. Worse still, the hundreds of millions of dollars siphoned by the trial bar...

Asbestos and Alar are only two of many instances where vast sums were spent on hypothetical risk while science was ignored. In the past we used our natural resources freely. We took great pride in our ability to convert resources into products with a direct benefit to the public. We turned trees into houses, coal and iron into automobiles. Today we hear that we must stop using our economic resources. Scale back! Harvest fewer trees. Drill fewer oil wells. Use less fertilizer. Build no new power plants. Encourage the government to buy back land it once offered to its people,...

AUSTIN — This time, leading Republicans and Democrats agreed. They joined together at the Texas Capitol on Thursday to proclaim that they don't want an expansion of gambling. "Empty promises to get rich quick do nothing but bring devastation and addiction," said Tina Benkiser, chairwoman of the Texas Republican Party. "We're being asked to gamble away our children's future in the biggest con game of all times." Legislators looking to cut property taxes while giving more money to schools are considering more than 20 gambling proposals, including video slot machines at racetracks and Las Vegas-style casinos. Conservative Republicans and a...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bill to establish a $140 billion asbestos compensation fund was undergoing a rewrite on Wednesday after warnings that a provision affecting claims for silica, another lung-scarring mineral, could derail the legislation. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said he thought he could solve the problem and save his plan to set up a trust fund to replace asbestos litigation. But other Republicans expressed exasperation with the process, charging Democrats were moving the goalposts each time bipartisan agreement on the fund seemed close. ``Right now I don't think it (Specter's proposal) has much support on the part...

Companies battling lawsuits brought by people claiming injuries caused by exposure to asbestos or silica have long contended that they are the victims of fraud. The companies finally have evidence that their concerns may be real. Thousands of people who have said they were injured by one potentially lethal material are apparently double-dipping - now asserting separately that they were injured by the other. More than half the plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit in Texas seeking compensation for exposure to silica - used in making glass, paint, ceramics and other materials - previously filed claims against a trust set up...

WASHINGTON - Republicans will try for quick action on a measure that would end asbestos lawsuits in exchange for a trust fund to compensate victims, the incoming chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee (news - web sites) said Tuesday, despite a two-year deadlock. "It is my hope to be able to present a bill through markup at a very, very early date," said Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., who will become Judiciary chairman later this week. "Whether that can be done in late January or early February remains to be seen." Republicans say Democrats wouldn't let previous...

Investors seem to be betting that Congress will fix the asbestos mess this coming year.... We suspect they're too optimistic, and for now we take more heart from last week's landmark decision by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals to reject the $1.2 billion Combustion Engineering settlement. ...[O}ur view is that the judiciary is finally exercising some adult supervision over a mess of its own making. Combustion Engineering, a unit of European construction giant ABB, had become a model of how trial lawyers abuse "prepackaged" bankruptcies to rake in millions for their unimpaired clients, while leaving real cancer victims with...

...For years trial lawyers have so dominated this legal arena that the companies they sued have taken to collaborating with their persecutors -- just to be put out of their misery. Some 70 of these firms are in bankruptcy, many of them willing partners in a racket that hands most of their assets to the tort bar and the 90% of plaintiffs who aren't ill, while the truly sick waste away in an overcrowded court system. Yet there are a few hopeful signs. Most concrete is Ohio's decision to pass the first statewide reform demanding that plaintiffs meet certain medical...

ANGLETON -- A jury has ruled that Union Carbide Corp. was not fraudulent in how it sold asbestos for use in Kelly-Moore Paint Co.'s interior finishing products -- a verdict an attorney for the paint company said probably will force it into bankruptcy in the face of tens of thousands of lawsuits. Kelly-Moore had sued Union Carbide for $1.3 billion plus punitive damages, claiming the Dow Chemical Co. subsidiary had hidden from it the dangers of asbestos. The jury ruled in favor of Union Carbide on Friday, The Facts, Brazoria County's daily newspaper, reported Saturday. San Carlos, Calif.-based Kelly-Moore is...

The Sierra Club this week attacked the President for supposedly showing "reckless disregard" by failing to warn the public of alleged health risks posed by "toxic" smoke from the World Trade Center rubble. "The desire to reopen Wall Street cannot justify placing civilian safety at risk," asserted the Sierra Club. Now there's no question that lower Manhattan residents were exposed to varying levels of smoke, dust and fumes — including asbestos, mineral fibers and a soup of chemicals — as a result of the WTC collapse on and after Sept. 11. There's also no question that some residents developed new,...

... The study appears in Academic Radiology, one of the top peer-reviewed radiology journals. Led by Joseph Gitlin, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins, the study delves into the tawdry world of asbestos X-rays. A crucial part of any asbestos lawsuit are the "expert witness" physicians who make a living interpreting chest X-rays and telling juries that plaintiffs have suffered asbestos-related injuries. But as the new study shows, "expert" doesn't mean what it used to. Mr. Gitlin obtained 492 X-rays that had been examined by doctors retained by plaintiffs' lawyers and entered as evidence in asbestos lawsuits. These X-ray readers...

WASHINGTON - Bret Williams isn't used to being on the business end of a stethoscope. The 52-year-old doctor's place was on the other side, listening to the heartbeats of the rural North Carolinians who were once his patients. Not any more, not since he learned last year that he has a crippling disease himself: malignant mesothelioma caused by asbestos exposure from childhood, summer jobs and home repairs. Nonetheless, the Hillsborough, N.C., internist is fighting a plan in Congress that would provide him and thousands of other Americans compensation from asbestos companies but bar them from suing. Pushing the proposal is...

Last year, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee produced a delicately designed compromise on asbestos litigation that would establish a compensation fund for disease claims. The bill addressed a U.S. Supreme Court pleading to unlock a legal logjam that was crushing businesses and diverting money from the most serious victims. Republican and Democratic senators consulted with industry, labor unions, health-care groups, asbestos patients and their attorneys in proposing a $153 billion fund to be financed entirely by private entities in exchange for releasing them from current and future lawsuits. Another major feature of the bill was a ban on dangerous forms...