Grace Sued Over Home Insulation Plaintiffs Say Company Sold Asbestos-Laden Product Knowing It Was A Dangerous

W.R. Grace & Co. contaminated thousands of homes in Washington state with its asbestos-tainted Zonolite insulation long after the company was aware of its toxicity, a class-action lawsuit filed Friday in Spokane alleges.

The company chose not to put warnings on the bags of Zonolite Attic Insulation to protect its profits, the suit claims, even though Grace knew the vermiculite ore used to make Zonolite contained more than 20 percent tremolite asbestos, long known to cause several fatal cancers.

Vermiculite ore from Libby, Mont., was used to manufacture the insulation at plants in Spokane and as many as 200 other cities across the country for more than 60 years. Grace purchased the Libby mine and the Spokane plant in the 1960s.

Grace closed the Spokane plant in 1973 after the Washington Department of Labor and Industries found airborne asbestos contamination several times greater than legal limits. Those exposure levels would be 200 to 500 times more lethal than today’s standards.

The company pulled Zonolite from the market in the mid-1980s. But children across the state still play in attics with the insulation. Homeowners use them for storage or to access and repair electrical wiring.

These seemingly innocuous activities stir up potentially lethal levels of tremolite asbestos, the suit alleges, and Grace should be required to pay to test all homes with suspect insulation and pay to remove or contain it.

Grace deliberately mislead the public and environmental agencies about the dangers of Zonolite, the suit alleges, and therefore should pay punitive damages.

The company also should be required to publish warnings that the insulation contains dangerous tremolite asbestos, the suit charges.

“This asbestos is fully free to launch into the air at the slightest disturbance,” says Darrell Scott, of Lukins & Annis, a Spokane law firm involved in the case. “This is a carcinogenic, toxic substance.

“If you handle it, you are going to inhale it. If you inhale it, you are going to get asbestos in your lungs.”

There is no safe level of asbestos exposure, the suit says.

Tremolite asbestos causes asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma. Many people living and working in Libby, as well as workers from the Spokane insulation plant, have died from these diseases.

Grace officials did not return telephone calls for comment Friday. To date, the company has publicly denied the insulation poses a health threat.

But internal Grace documents appear to bear out some of the lawsuit’s claims, including the allegation that secret company tests showed the vermiculite ore was harmful as early as the 1970s.

An “in-house study of mortality rates among ex-employees at Libby indicates their risk of lung cancer is five times the national average,” reports a May 24, 1977, Grace memo obtained by Lukins & Annis.

Asbestosis rates were likewise high among employees working in both the mine and the Libby insulation plant.

That same memo estimates the company would lose 50 percent of its insulation business if it labeled bags of Zonolite as “containing asbestos.” But the memo also says Grace didn’t believe asbestos exposure from its products increased the risk of health problems.

By 1985, Grace was still debating how much its profits would be harmed by stopping production and sales of insulation made from the Libby ore.

“Basically, the question relates to the risks to Grace vs. the benefits (profits) obtained by continuing the business,” the memo says. “Does dropping out of the business or going to new materials implicitly suggest there is a problem with vermiculite thereby increasing our legal exposure?”

Labeling Zonolite “has potential to adversely effect personal injury litigation relative to the past eleven years,” the memo continues. And labeling “will clearly give competition further fuel.”

This is the fifth class action filed against the company since Feb. 22 over the asbestos-tainted Zonolite insulation. Five legal firms from across the country, including one that played a lead role in getting large settlements in tobacco litigation, are assisting Lukins & Annis.

Spokane resident Marco Barbanti is the lead plaintiff. He owns a rental home near the Spokane County Courthouse that contains the suspect insulation.

He could not be reached for comment Friday.

News of the suit is welcome to Cecilia Whitmore, another Spokane homeowner. She has watched the vermiculite insulation leak from her attic into her bathroom through a ceiling fan for 30 years.

When she learned it was Zonolite, “I was kind of shook,” Whitmore says. “It was like a snake got out of its cage.”

She is disgusted at the thought that Grace kept selling the insulation long after it knew of its problems.

“I think we are a generation of guinea pigs,” she said.

This sidebar appeared with the story: AT A GLANCE Legal action

Since Feb. 22, five class action suits have been filed against W.R. Grace & Co. over the mining of asbestos-laced vermiculite ore from a mine at Libby, Mont. and the manufacture and sale of insulation made from the ore. They are:

A suit filed in state court in Helena, Mont. on behalf of anyone who worked in the Libby mine, ore mill and insulation plant; the families of these workers; and Libby residents. The lawsuit also seeks damages for workers and the families of workers from any of the vermiculite insulation plants across the nation.

A suit filed in U.S. District Court in Missoula seeking medical diagnostic screening for people who lived and worked in Libby.

A suit filed in U.S. District Court in Missoula, seeking compensation for property damage to people living and working in Libby.

A suit filed in U.S. District Court in Boston on behalf of anyone in the United States who owns a home containing asbestos-tainted Zonolite insulation. The suit asks that Grace remove the insulation from all of the homes and pay damages for fraud, negligence, breach of warranties, deceptive trade practices and “unjust enrichment.”

A suit filed in Spokane County Superior Court Friday asking Grace be required to issue statewide warnings about the dangers of the insulation, pay to test homes and, where necessary, remove the insulation. The suit also seeks punitive damages based on the charge that Grace purposefully mislead the public and environmental regulators about the dangers of the insulation.

Ken Olsen