Editorial: W.R. Grace/Now, individuals must answer
02/11/2005
February 11, 2005
Without prejudging the case, there is ample cause to welcome this week’s criminal indictment of seven W.R. Grace executives in the public health catastrophe their company visited on a small Montana town.
Some 1,200 people in and around Libby have been sickened by association with Grace’s vermiculite mining operations there. Some were employees who worked without proper safeguards or medical supervision while turning asbestos-laden ore into fireproofing sprays and soil additives. Some were townspeople who bought contaminated properties from Grace, which also made gifts of vermiculite for such civic projects as a running track and ice rink. And some were just townspeople breathing the air into which Grace poured cancer-causing mineral dust for 27 years.
Perhaps 200 have already died of diseases associated with asbestos. In the judgment of an EPA toxicologist who took part in on-site investigations, virtually everyone who lived very long in Libby during the mine’s operation is facing a death sentence.
Grace also shipped the ore to other locations around the country, including northeast Minneapolis, where the health impacts are still being studied. And while Libby suffered more than Grace’s other locations, it is also but one chapter in the long, disgraceful story of Americans poisoned with asbestos—miners, installers, consumers—as companies brushed aside known health risks and regulators went too easy.
Like other industry giants, Grace has gone into bankruptcy to save itself from lawsuits demanding compensation for this suffering. (These would be the “frivolous asbestos claims” cited by President Bush in his State of the Union address.) But the indictment handed up by a federal grand jury in Missoula is the first to seek a different sort of sanction against this industry—one that can’t be ducked by shielding assets, writing checks or waiting for the compensation-capping settlement that Congress is trying to complete. Its 10 counts state clearly that what Grace and its top decisionmakers did in Libby were crimes, punishable by prison terms as well as fines.
Some charges accuse Grace and its executives of concealing, from workers and residents as well as regulatory agencies, the results of internal studies showing the risks of asbestos exposure to people who breathed it—including some employees who were already ill. Others allege that the defendants actively blocked investigations by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Criminal charges over lethal business practices remain a rarity in this country, given the difficulties of convicting wealthy and powerful defendants for crossing the outermost line of acceptable behavior. But what is already known about Libby suggests that what happened there is not merely an egregious example of a bad product, negligent manufacturing or weak workplace-safety standards, but of willful conspiracy.
Grace has responded to the indictment with a categorical denial of any criminal wrongdoing, reserving detailed rebuttal for the courtroom, except to say that “The individuals who make up the global Grace team ... care deeply about our customers, about their co-workers and about the communities in which they live and raise their families.”
To be sure, these teammates are entitled to offer their best defense against the charges when the case comes to court. But whatever the outcome of their trial, a certain justice has already been achieved in the assurance that these seven will be compelled to answer, directly and individually, for their conduct in this calamity.