...
Inside Bay Area - Daily Review Online - Local News
Advertise
Health
Enter search term(s)
Shop local sales
and specials from our
newspapers
News
Local News
Sports
Prep Sports
Bay Area Living
Business
Opinion
Letters to the Editor
Obituaries
Archives
Education
Link To Article
Print Article
Email Article
Article Last Updated: 09/29/2005 05:57:54 AM
Newark factory exposed workers to asbestos
, FROM STAFF REPORTS
A former Newark insulation factory and 17 other defunct plants nationwide could trigger asbestos-related cancer and lung disease in former workers and possibly neighbors, federal health authorities said.
W.R.
Grace's factories processed shiny, golden vermiculite ore dug from a company mine in Libby, Mont.
Out of dozens of such factories in 22 states, only one handled more of the asbestos-contaminated vermiculite than the Newark plant named California Zonolite and Diversified Insulation.
In almost 30 years, workers at the corrugated aluminum factory baked 300,000 tons of the ore.
Federal health authorities say those workers, particularly ones employed from 1966 to 1983, were exposed to dust clouds of tremolite-actinolite asbestos.
Symptoms of asbestos-related disease can take 25 or more years to emerge, so workers could
begin showing respiratory problems this decade or later.
Former workers and close neighbors to the Newark plant can contact the Agency for Toxic Substances and...
Read more...