This Poisoned Montana Town Is Now At The Mercy Of The GOP Health Care Plan

WASHINGTON — Jim Devlin has fond memories of growing up in the picturesque Rocky Mountain town of Libby, Montana, playing baseball and scampering across piles of shimmering ore mined from a nearby mountaintop. But that harmless childhood fun ― the simple act of breathing Libby’s air ― has left him with an incurable, potentially fatal lung disease. It wasn’t until decades later that Libby, a town of fewer than 3,000 people near the Canadian border, learned the truth: that the shiny vermiculite ore that helped drive their economy was laden with toxic asbestos; that the community ball fields where Devlin played catcher were covered with the poisoned mineral; that for decades, miners had been bringing home deadly dust on their clothes, exposing their spouses and children. “We didn’t know anything was wrong,” Devlin, who now lives in Great Falls, told The Huffington Post. “It was dusty. That was about it.” The 52-year-old father of three is among the many victims of one of America’s worst environmental health disasters. The asbestos fibers contained in the vermiculite mined here have been linked to more than 400 deaths and thousands of diagnoses of asbestos-related illnesses, including lung cancer and mesothelioma, in and around this town of less than 3,000. Devlin learned in 2011 that he has asbestosis, a scarring in the lungs caused by inhaling asbestos fibers. He suffers from coughing fits, shortness ...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news