An Air That Kills

Rating:
Summary: Read this book
Review: As a former resident of Libby Montana, this book brought home to me the deceit, greed and simple cruelty of Corporate America. I remember playing on those piles of Vermiculite when I was a kid and W.R. Grace telling us we could eat it and it would not hurt us. I have not cried while reading a book in my entire life but I cried while I read this book.
I hope there is a special place in Hell for the people who had such a blatant disregard for the safety of an entire town and in fact the entire country.

Read this book and write your Congressmen afterwards. This is a tragedy and an outrage

Rating:
Summary: Stunning!
Review: As one of the characters in the book, I am grateful to Andrew Schneider and David McCumber for portraying what has happened to Libby, Montana and its residents so thoughtfully and thoroughly.

The book is a "must read" for everyone.

The story is far from over in Libby and around the country, but if what has occured in Libby serves as a lesson to other communities, it will be worth it.

People can make a difference, if they don't give up and are surrounded by people that believe in them.

Rating:
Summary: It Is Both Informative And A Public Service
Review: Authors McCumber and Schneider spent five years researching
this story, with much of their time spent interviewing
Libby residents. They write emotionally, but with what
can best be described as an objective passion.

Their facts are well-researched and corroborated. This is
the true story of the death of many Libby residents, the slow
death of an entire community, of corporate lies, and of partisan
politics which continues to block any medical help reaching
the victims (the conflict breaks down along
typical conservative vs. liberal firing lines). The partisan
sniping is found amongst Libby's residents, but it goes
all the way to the Whitehouse and into the halls of the
U.S. Congress, from which most of Libby's aid must
eventually come.

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in
environmental health issues and environmental politics.
It would make an excellent college text book for
Environmental Science classes and for Environmental Law classes.

Unfortunately, this story is not yet finished. Very
little has been done to provide adequate medical
care or *individual* financial aid for the victims. An
Asbestos Disease Research Center will soon be built in Libby.
Its goal is to study the townspeople and to study how
asbestos-related diseases progress in this population.
Not surprisingly, many Libby residents now believe that
they are being viewed as "human lab rats".
Many victims have no health insurance, and so far, no
one is offering to help them. Some of the Federal money that
will be used to build the new Asbestos Research Center
could have been used to pay the medical bills of these people.

Therefore, Libby's last chapter has yet to be written.

Rating:
Summary: Required Reading ASAP
Review: I have just completed "An Air that Kills" by Andrew Schneider and David McCumber. I grew up in Libby, MT, the birthplace of this story. I was impressed by how the authors were able to capture the mood and the history of the town. Far more impressive, however, is the scope of their research and their ability to bring understanding to not only the devestation of Libby but the degree to which asbestos is still so prevalent in the United States. The obvious politics of protecting the corporations rather than protecting the health of our citizens is clearly detailed. I recommend the book highly. It's a great story about tenacity of regular citizens, and the integrity of a small band of government officials who worked together to create change....and yet an understanding of how far we have to go in order to write the last chapter of this book.

Rating:
Summary: Actually, a Real Page-Turner. This book deserves to be read!
Review: I want you to read this book. It is important to you and your family. I consider myself a knowledgeable person and I don't remember this scandal when it came out in 2000-2001. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that I live in southern CA, but the problems with asbestos effects all of us in the US. Attic insulation, talc products and even gardening/soil products have asbestos risks that have been used and available for sale up into the 1990's and beyond.

I must have read a review or heard one of the authors in an interview...but somehow this book made it onto my "Must Read" list. When I received the book, I questioned why I had gotten it, having forgotten what motivated my interest in the first place. But I started reading and have found this book to be a treasure.

The story is one of deception, corruption and greed on the part of Big Business, in this case the mining business. The owners and executives misled their workers, investors and the government agencies that regulated them into turning a blind eye to the dangers of asbestos in their products.

While the deception of the miners in Libby was unconscionable, the book goes on to document the Bush White House withholding information that the air in and around the World Trade Center was not healthy! Can you imagine, after a tragedy like the WTC disaster, that your own government, that you rallied round to give support, would turn on you and withhold information that the air that you breathe is full of cancer causing dust? Which tragedy is worse?

The book is truly a must-read.

Lastly, I want to point out the courage of the reporters, editors, doctors and the outstanding EPA field workers that fought to get this story out. Whistle-blowers, whose main motivation is to right a wrong, are oftentimes rewarded by getting fired and branded as outcasts. This book is ultimately a story of courage and perserverance of those determined to overcome the obstacles of standing out and doing what's right.

Rating:
Summary: Truly shocking! Superbly written!
Review: This book is a masterpiece of investigative journalism - well written, throughly researched and truly in the interests of the public.

The authors do a superb job of combining all the science and politics with a touching picture of the real Americans who ultimately paid and are paying the price for corporate greed and governmental push-overs.

If you read just one book this year, this should be it!

Rating:
Summary: Stunning!
Review: This book was truly stunning. I felt terrible for the residents of Libby, and just can not believe that this could have gone unanswered for so long. Even for a non-environmentalist, this is a superb book!

Rating:
Summary: Unfortunately, I can believe this happened and still does!
Review: You would think a little town in Montana, named Libby could not possibly be interesting or draw the attention of the nation (and the world). Yet it does, and will continue to do so. These two newspaper journalists do an excellent job of pulling together all the various threads of the story of Libby. The corporations involved, the miners and their families, the government agencies that did nothing, and the ones that finally got around to it (only to be told to back off by the Bush administration). It's one thing when men were mining way back in the forties and fifties, and even if it was thought or known that the variety of abestos were dangerous if breathed in, not enough was known to control or stop it, and the miners back then may not have taken the information seriously as they needed the jobs for the care of their families.

But it's a whole different ballpark, when it's their kids who are being impacted by lung disease...because they played in a ballpark, where Grace & Company dumped their waste/tailings. Or when the men know their wives will die of the same thing through bringing their clothes home to be washed.

How very presient of Grace to put itself into bankruptcy, just before this information became widely known, through Libby's activist, Gayla and Les. But wait a minute, wasn't Grace one of the companies written about in A Civil Action? They did not care much about killing a bunch of little children with leukemia in their drinking water, so why would anything in LIbby conern them.

It would really help if someone put on the Internet, known companies that are placing their workers at risk, so that we can all look at them from time to time and decide whether we want to do business with them or whether we want to buy their products. We have fiberglass in our 1950's made home, but now I wonder what that fiberglass replaced and where it is in my home. I am sure that many will feel the same after reading this book.

Kudos to Gayla and Les, as well as the two reporters/authors...

Karen Sadler,
Science Education,
University of Pittsburgh