Criminal trial for mining officials after hundreds die of asbestosis

Read the New York Times story here, dateline Libby, Montana. Here's an excerpt from Kirk Johnson's report, which explains what sets this case apart from others arising from asbestos-related illnesses and deaths:

But the story of the now-closed mine and its adjacent mill is different, because it involves not only miners but also their families and neighbors, many of whom became ill just living in this remote northwestern corner of Montana.

At least 200 deaths and thousands of illnesses are known to be related to the town’s exposure to the mine’s billowing dust clouds of vermiculite, which by dint of geological bad luck was layered millions of years ago with naturally occurring asbestos.

Prosecutors say that the mine’s owner, W. R. Grace & Company, which is also a defendant, and its managers knew as far back as the 1970s that asbestos was mixed with the vermiculite and that this posed a risk to their workers, but that they conspired to continue releasing it into the air and to misrepresent the peril.