Articles Posted in Asbestos Exposure

A news feature from GazetteNet.com takes a closer look at recent environmental news headlines involving Holyoke and other parts of the Commonwealth Of Massachusetts.   One issue discussed in the article is a large-scale effort to clean up the Connecticut River Watershed. The Watershed stretches over 400 miles through Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, and the planned cleanup is scheduled to take place along the entire watershed in all three states.

The cleanup is held each fall and usually attracts thousands of volunteers. Some of these volunteers will walk along the river and wade into the water, while others will use private boats to patrol the river and collect trash. Plastic bags are one of the most common types of trash found in rivers, and they have been known to kill animals and do all kinds of damage to the watershed environment.   Another problem with the river is a major illegal tire dump site located nearby. Tires are hard to dispose of and cost money to destroy, so people tend to dump them illegally. Rivers and other bodies of water happen to be sites where unscrupulous people tend to throw them, and, with steel belts, these tires tend to sink to the bottom, where they are not seen until the pile gets much bigger. Continue reading

According to a recent news article from the Environmental Working Group (EWG), in the immediate aftermath of the horrific terror attack on the United States, many people were awestruck by images of burning jet fuel and smoke rising in the air. There was, in fact, 90,000 gallons of burning aviation fuel and a considerable amount of thick black smoke over Manhattan.

However, it was the giant plumes of dust and debris rising in the air for days on end that were really a sight never to be forgotten, and it was these same clouds of dust reeking having on the lungs and internal organs of the thousands of workers at Ground Zero in New York City. Continue reading

BASF is one of the largest chemical companies in the world. Business was going well for the company, and it seemed like it had money to burn. As part of its desire to grow and expand, the firm purchased an ownership interest in a company known as the Engelhard Corporation, as discussed in a recent article from Bloomberg.

In addition to gaining ownership interest in the firm, BASF unknowingly inherited what has been called a ticking time bomb in terms of liability for mesothelioma lawsuits due to asbestos exposure. Engelhard Corporation manufactured the asbestos for many years, so the risk and liability transferred with the sale of the company.

The reason the chemical giant didn’t see this coming is because the product produced by Engelhard was traditionally known as an asbestos product outside the industry. It was industrial grade talc. While some talc was used in barbershops prior to the advent of non-talc baby powder, the majority of talc was used in heavy industry and production. It was also used in building construction materials, such as wall boards, and it was used as quick way to handle hot materials on a production line. It was common for workers at tire plant to use talc as quick temporary insulation, so they could grab the hot tires without burning their hands. Continue reading