Miners
More miners dying of cancer; AN IRON RANGE STUDY FINDS THAT AN ABNORMALLY HIGH NUMBER OF MINERS' DEATHS IN THE PAST DECADE WERE CAUSED BY A RARE ASBESTOS-RELATED CANCER.(NEWS)
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) | March 29, 2007
By Star Tribune Staff
Reviving a 35-year-old controversy on Minnesota's Iron Range, the state Health Department said on Wednesday that a rare asbestos-related cancer is killing miners in significantly greater numbers than previously reported.
A new analysis found that 35 miners died of mesothelioma from 1997 through 2005 - double the number reported killed by the disease in the previous nine-year period. In all, 52 Iron Range mine workers died of the disease since 1988, all of them men.
In northeast Minnesota, where dusty iron- ore mines have operated for more than a century, mesothelioma strikes men at more than twice the rate in the rest of the state, the department said. Women there have lower rates of the disease, suggesting that the higher rate among men is job-related.
But the Health Department hasn't linked the deaths to mine dust. Nor did health officials repudiate their controversial 2003 study, which said commercial asbestos used in boilers and other equipment, rather than mine dust, is the most likely cause of miners' mesothelioma.
That study has been criticized by mine workers and others, including former U.S. District Judge Miles Lord, who have said it didn't dig deep enough into the problem.
Now, the department said Wednesday, it plans to launch a three-year study that examines whether past mine-dust exposure is linked to cancer, along with other research to assess the health risks of breathing asbestos-like fragments produced during mining and iron-ore processing. The latter study aims to set state exposure limits for those fibers, officials said.
Bitter confirmation
For Joe Scholar, 84, of Virginia, Minn. a retired mine supervisor who suffers from lung disease, the growing death toll is a bitter confirmation of his 20-year effort to convince health officials that ore mining caused cancer.
"It is undeniable," said Scholar, who served on an advisory committee for a 2003 state study. "I am hoping I live long enough to see this exposed."
Health officials warned that asbestos exposure also puts workers at risk for other asbestos-related illnesses like lung cancer and lung-scarring asbestosis. Those diseases potentially affect many more people than mesothelioma would. Yet officials offered only generic health advice to current miners.
"We still don't know any more than we did in 2003," said Mary Manning, director of the Health Department division overseeing the effort. "What people should do is continue to get regular health care, not smoke, watch their weight, eat a good diet. There is no screening for mesothelioma. Taking positive actions for their health is the only thing we can recommend right now."
Mesothelioma attacks the lining of the lung, but takes decades to strike. Needle-like asbestos fibers first lodge deep in the lungs, causing inflammation and plaque that restricts breathing. In some cases, the condition progresses to the deadly cancer. In Minnesota, it strikes less than 3 in 100,000 people.
Two months later, he died
The cancer snuck up on Alver Uncini of Chisholm, Minn. For 10 months, he suffered intense pain from his chest area to his back, but doctors and a chiropractor did not immediately discover the problem, said his son, Robert. Then he was diagnosed with mesothelioma. Two months later, on Nov. 15, 2004, he died. He was 80.
Uncini, who had worked in the mines for 34 years, had retired from the Minntac plant in Mountain Iron, Minn., in the mid-1980s.
"The trouble with mesothelioma is that it is hard to detect and by the time they find it, it is usually too late to do anything anyway," Robert Uncini said. "I hate to see anyone suffer from that."
"I'm glad to see that [new studies are being conducted]," Uncini said, "because I worked in the mines for 30 years myself." He said he had just retired from Hibbing Taconite, and recalled that in the early years at the plant, none of the workers wore respirators.
Databases were cross-checked
The Health Department identified the 52 mesothelioma victims by comparing names in a statewide cancer registry with a database of 72,000 people who worked in Minnesota's iron-mining industry between the 1930s and 1982. That means miners who died of mesothelioma after moving to other states are not counted.
Officials said the new studies will cost up to $1.2 million. In the planned exposure study, officials will use data on how much workers in various jobs were exposed to the dust, and then compare whether workers in dusty jobs had higher rates of mesothelioma.
The department has applied for federal research grants, but Manning said the projects will go ahead regardless of whether that money comes through.
Data found a year ago
Manning said officials spent a year reviewing data and planning the response after researchers discovered the higher mesothelioma toll in March 2006.
Officials from the United Union of Steelworkers and the mining industry endorsed the studies. But Robert Bratu- lich, director of the District 11 Steelworkers union, said a larger study should have been done long ago "and as I recall, the Health Department refused to do that."
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CHRONOLOGY
The health risk of asbestos-like fibers from iron-ore mining has been debated for three decades in Minnesota. 1973: Asbestos fibers found in the Duluth water supply traced to taconite tailings that Reserve Mining Co. dumped into Lake Superior. After years of controversy, Reserve was forced by court order to treat them.
1983: An industry-funded study of 5,751 workers at Reserve Mining from 1952 to 1976 finds no increase in cancer deaths.
1985: An Iron Range doctor reports that chest X-rays of many residents and miners are abnormal, but the results are disputed by a scientific panel.
1985: In a study paid for by the National Institutes of Health, University of Minnesota researchers don't find an elevated rate of lung cancer in 10,403 people who worked in the iron-ore industry in St. Louis County from 1937 to 1978. 1988: An industry-funded study of 3,444 people who worked at the Erie and Minntac taconite operations in northern Minnesota from 1952 to 1976 finds that the group had a lower-than-average lung-cancer rate.
1989: A Health Department study links asbestos exposure at a Cloquet ceiling tile plant to high rates of lung abnormalities in the 4,271 workers employed there from 1958 to 1974. 1997: The Health Department cancer-tracking system detects an unusually high rate of mesothelioma in men living in seven northeastern counties from 1988 to 1996.
2003: The Health Department's study of 17 mesothelioma deaths among 72,000 current and former mine workers concludes they likely were exposed to asbestos while working on plumbing, in boiler rooms and in other nonmining jobs rather than from mine dust.
2007: 35 more cases of mesothelioma are reported among men who worked in the Iron Range mines from the 1930s to 1982, prompting the Health Department to plan two further studies of the possible link.
Star Tribune research
ASBESOTOS AND LUNG CANCER
1. INGESTING THE FIBERS
Because they are extremely small, asbestos fibers can travel deep into the narrow branches, or bronchia, of the lungs before sticking. 2. ASBESTOSIS
Accumulations of the needle-like fibers cause inflammation and scarring of the airways. That leads to chronic coughing and chest pain - symptoms of asbestosis.
3. MESOTHELIOMA
The fibers may eventually migrate into the pleural lining which covers the lungs. The pleura becomes inflamed and plaque builds up, restricting breathing. The condition may progress to mesothelioma, cancer of the pleura.
Source: National Insititute of Occupational Safety and Health, N.Y. Times, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry