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Safety groups mostly ignore asbestos peril
Many wrongly think it is banned
Monday, February 14, 2000
By CAROL SMITH and ANDREW SCHNEIDER
Insidious and deadly, asbestos has worked its way through the cracks of the consumer protection system for 20 years.
The result? Today, asbestos is lodged deep in the tissue of American commerce, and almost no one is paying attention.
Not consumers.
Not consumer watchdogs.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission has not banned most products containing asbestos, even though health experts expect the carcinogen to claim another 250,000 lives in the United States during the next several decades.
Consumer watchdog groups Public Citizen and the Consumer Federation of America were both involved in early battles to get asbestos off the market. Now, asbestos is not even on their list of priorities.
In fact, most people who are charged with protecting consumer safety say asbestos is "no longer a problem" because of the faulty assumption that the product has long been banned and that all manufacturers have stopped using it.
But it isn't banned.
The CPSC abandoned its attempts to ban asbestos products in 1979, passing the responsibility to the EPA. In 1989, the EPA attempted a ban of its own, but in 1991, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned it.
Today, it is legal to sell asbestos products ranging from brake pads to ceiling tiles in the United States. Imports of asbestos-containing products are on the rise.
Passing the buck
The story of how asbestos managed to elude consumer regulation is both a pass-the-buck agency saga and an example of how an industry puts pressure on government.
When it came to the specter of regulating a large, complicated area such as asbestos, the CPSC was outmanned. When the EPA said it would work to ban asbestos, CPSC jumped at the chance to get rid of the problem.
"They're a big agency. They've got all the lawyers," CPSC spokesman Ken Giles said. "We're a small agency. It was much easier for us to say, 'You do it.'"
Asbestos first came to the attention of the CPSC in the 1970s after a growing body of scientific evidence linked the fibers to fatal diseases, including asbestosis and mesothelioma.
In 1978, CPSC banned two consumer products that contained asbestos -- a patching compound used for spackling wallboard, and "emberizing" compound, a type of fake ash that was sprinkled over artificial logs in gas fireplaces.
"Looking back on it, it was not a very rational approach," said Charles Jacobson, a retired compliance officer for CPSC who was involved in the early asbestos battles.
It made sense to ban those products because of the potential for fibers to become airborne and inhaled, he said. But there were other asbestos products that weren't banned that posed similar hazards.
In 1979, responding to a consumer outcry, the commission recalled all hair dryers containing asbestos.
"We took the safe approach," said John Bell, who was communications director for the agency during the hair-dryer recall. "We did our own testing and found significant levels of asbestos coming from the heat shields."
That year, the agency also proposed a comprehensive ban to eliminate asbestos from all consumer products, but the effort stalled.
'We'll fold up our tent'
The EPA had just announced it would regulate asbestos under the Toxic Substances Control Act, Jacobson said. "We at CPSC said, 'Good -- we'll fold up our tent.'"
But they folded too soon.
The advent of the Reagan administration made taking actions against consumer products even more difficult, Bell said.
"After the Reagan landslide in 1980, (the government) wanted a regulatory agency pelt -- as in a dead carcass -- to hang on the wall," Bell said. The CPSC came within a few votes of being dismantled by Congress.
The hair-dryer recall was held up as an example of excessive regulation that "slowed down the competitiveness of hair dryers."
The new administration viewed the recall as a waste of taxpayer money, he said. "We felt differently. Any time you can eliminate a hazard, it's good to do that."
After 1980, he said, the agency was not as aggressive. It focused on more clear-cut problems, such as ridding toys of small parts that could cause choking. "Asbestos was no longer a focus because it wasn't considered a winner," he said.
Not only is there no ban on most asbestos-containing products, there is no federal law requiring labeling of products that are contaminated with asbestos.
Under CPSC's current policy, companies are supposed to put warning labels on products that contain intentionally added carcinogenic substances. But it's not known how well companies comply with the policy. And the rule doesn't cover asbestos that occurs naturally as a contaminant, instead of being added.
"Tremolite (a contaminant form of asbestos) is dangerous -- there's no question about that," said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, head of the Health Research Group of Public Citizen, a consumer activist organization that began petitioning CPSC to ban products such as children's playsand and gardening products that contained tremolite, more than 20 years ago.
CPSC: 'Not very strong'
"But the (Consumer Products Safety) commission and the laws it's empowered to enforce are not very strong," he said. "I am concerned about the extent to which (the CPSC) promptly regulates things."
The CPSC doesn't police companies to make sure their products are safe. Instead, it relies on voluntary reports from industry, as well as consumer complaints, emergency-room reports, death certificates and some testing to alert it to potentially hazardous situations.
It uses the same approach to tracking imported products.
"All imports have to meet the same standards that domestically manufactured products have to meet so the CPSC labeling requirement for products would have to apply to imports as well," Giles said.
"We work with the U.S. Customs Service to survey ports of entry," Giles said. "Customs Service has been informed about our overall concerns and several product (categories) in particular. As a matter of practice, I'm unaware of any products containing asbestos. I don't believe the issue of labeling (on imports) has ever come up." According to Department of Commerce figures, imports of asbestos products increased 17 percent last year.
'An unnecessary risk'
Consumers can't be sure the products they buy do not contain asbestos. And if products do contain asbestos, they can't be sure what levels they will be exposed to, or whether those levels would be considered safe.
A key example is lawn products that contain tremolite, a natural contaminant of vermiculite.
"There are some vermiculite (products) which are not contaminated with fibrous materials (tremolite)," said Stephen Levin, medical director at Mount Sinai's Selikoff Center of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
"The trouble is that the consumer is never going to know.
"As far as I'm concerned, if you have these kinds of materials, like soil expanders, when used and applied they will generate a dust. They're handled in a dry state. If some of the materials are allowed to contain fibrous tremolite, we are placing the public at an unnecessary risk. I don't think people should be using vermiculite that is tremolite-contaminated."
Even consumer watchdogs, who aren't happy about the situation, aren't doing anything about it.
Public Citizen has not revisited the tremolite issue because of limited time and resources, Wolfe said. But that doesn't mean the consumer organization believes the asbestos issue has gone away. "These issues come back every once in a while," he said. "It wouldn't happen if they were banned to begin with."
Asbestos being sold, EPA tests show
Fear of losing profits prompted industry leaders to fight regulations
And check out our earlier reports:
Uncivil Action: A town left to die
P-I reporter Carol Smith can be reached at 206-448-8070 or carolsmith@seattle-pi.com
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