Chapter 3/Warning consumers about asbestos

Mr. Glen Loyd:

Why, Glen, did we have to threaten exposure before we were extended the common courtesy of good business?

We thought it only proper to thank you and inform you that the mild mannered, smiling Glen Loyd we watch on TV strikes terror in the hearts of those who choose to ignore the so-called little guy.

Thank you, Glen, for the help you gave us, unknowingly. You solved our problem that started in December and ended in July.

Roy and Alice Hull
Saxeville, WI.


Before I was the "mild mannered" TV consumer advocate, I was a young investigative print journalist in Chicago, working for Today's Health magazine, published by the American Medical Association, and writing articles for the Chicago Daily News.

This was the late 1960s and the first time someone said they were going to sue me. The threatening company was mad about a story I had written about one of their asbestos products.

I was among the first reporters to warn about the dangers of asbestos to people in their homes and cities.

Today's Health sent me to Mt. Sinai Hospital and Medical School in New York to interview Dr. Irving Sellikoff, a medical doctor and world renown expert on asbestos diseases.

Dr. Sellikoff told me that medical examiners in cities like New York and Chicago were finding that city people had asbestos in their lungs. Dr. Sellikoff was worried about what he called "a cancer threat to the general population."

Previously asbestos miners, shipbuilders and insulation workers were the only people thought to be at risk for asbestos related diseases such as the lung cancer mesothelioma.

Now asbestos was being discovered in motor-vehicle brake pads, ironing-board covers, oven mitts, and building products
including floor tile and pipe insulation.

What's more, I observed and reported that the steel skeletons of new skyscrapers going up in Chicago were being sprayed with asbestos fireproofing to keep them from bending during a fire. The asbestos overspray came down like snow on pedestrians below.

When my story was published in Today's Health and the Chicago Daily News, a red-faced executive, working for the company producing the sprayed insulation and other asbestos products, stormed into my office at the American Medical Association. He yelled that his company's products didn't cause cancer and he was going to sue me.

The threat concerned me but the company never sued. Now, 33 years later, the company has gone into Chapter 11 bankruptcy because of asbestos lawsuits.

As a result of my reporting, Chicago outlawed sprayed asbestos. "The City Council, by a unanimous 42-0 vote, enacted the nation's first ban against the use of sprayed asbestos in construction," reported the Chicago Daily News. "Dr. Murray Brown, Chicago health commissioner, said sprayed asbestos was a health hazard to the general public."

Think you are safe from asbestos now? Not according to U.S. Senator Patty Murray of Washington State: "Most Americans
believe that asbestos has already been banned. People have this misconception. While new uses of asbestos were banned, existing ones were not. As a result, products such as asbestos clothing, pipeline wrap, roofing felt, vinyl-asbestos floor tile, asbestos-cement shingle, disc brake pads, gasket and roof coatings still contain asbestos today."

Asbestos currently kills about 10,000 Americans a year, according to a study by the Environmental Working Group in Washington, D.C. At least 716 Wisconsin residents have died since 1979. Deaths are increasing as more Americans exposed during the peak years of asbestos use, the 1960s and 1970s, reach old age. Currently, more than 400,000 asbestos' related claims are pending before U.S. and state courts.