NEWS ANALYSIS

(Dec. 8) -- The Environmental Protection Agency turned 40 years old this month, and public health and safety experts say the agency has set a new low in failing to protect millions of people at risk from the cancer-causing, asbestos-tainted insulation detailed in last week's AOL News series, "A Killer in the Attic."

The agency also refuses to explain why it is shirking its mandated responsibility to publicize what its own scientists have proved for years to be the extreme danger from even gently disturbing asbestos-laden vermiculite in insulation that was sold until the late 1990s as Zonolite.

"For decades, the EPA has known about the risks Zonolite could pose to millions of American households, but a mix of brute politics, internal agency disputes and old-fashioned foot dragging has left families without the information needed to protect themselves," Alex Formuzis of the Environmental Working Group told AOL News this week.

"Labeling this inaction an outrage is an understatement. Why EPA cannot move forward with warning the public about this potentially deadly house guest living in their attics is hard for most folks to understand."

Health- and risk-assessment people in the EPA's Washington headquarters contacted by AOL News said they were forbidden to talk to reporters by higher-ups because of the potential to embarrass the agency for doing nothing. Three of the people who spoke on condition on anonymity agreed that it wouldn't cost the agency anything to warn the public, and it most likely could save some lives.

The opposition to the warning, they said, came from two senior political appointees and some "old-timers" from EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics who knew that in 1982 the EPA first learned of the danger of vermiculite mined in the tiny northwest Montana town of Libby and did nothing.

"We were told that if the agency said nothing in reaction to recent news reports of the dangers, the issue of the Zonolite warning would just fade again as it has every time it was raised in the past," said an agency lawyer who read many of the e-mails between senior people weighing the language in a statement.

However, no comments were released.

"I've tried four times to get that statement approved without success. Sorry," a press officer wrote to AOL News.

Since 2001, the last three EPA administrators have promised a major public announcement of the dangers, but nothing happened.

Ignoring the Medical Experts

Several physicians and toxicologists, including ones who continue to count the hundreds of people killed and the thousands sickened with asbestos-related disease from exposure to killing fibers from the now-closed W.R. Grace & Co. mine in Libby, know the dangers well.

"Some of those [in EPA] who are allowing the failure to adequately warn to continue really don't have any personal experience with asbestos diseases and cancers, and don't realize the high cost of their behavior," said Dr. Michael Harbut, co-director of Karmanos Cancer Institute's National Center for Vermiculite and Asbestos-Related Cancers.

Harbut, who is also clinical professor of internal medicine at Michigan's Wayne State University, told AOL News that the EPA's continued benign-neglect approach to notifying the public that death may lurk in their attics "has been formulated not by physicians, but largely by lawyers and persons who have no patient care experience."

"This can subsequently cheapen the government's perspective on the value of human life."

Justin Jorgensen understands that perspective. He says he has been far too up close and personal with the asbestos-tainted vermiculite from the Libby mine.

Jorgensen contacted AOL News after reading "A Killer in the Attic." He had a story and a photograph to share.

Thirty-two years ago, Jorgensen and his brother -- like their father before them -- played in a towering pile of often still-warm Zonolite waste from a Grace vermiculite-processing plant in Minneapolis -- one of hundreds in the country.

It was the neighborhood playground. He told AOL News that it killed his father -- Zonolite asbestos fibers were found in his lungs.

Jorgensen, now 36, said his family didn't know of the deadly asbestos fibers in the play pile any more than the families who today have the same silent killer in their attics and walls are aware of the dangers.

"Clearly the EPA has failed in its promise to alert the public about asbestos in our homes," he said. "Many people I know think asbestos [is] a problem that was taken care of decades ago, and ... they think there's no more asbestos in America.

"They're wrong. And the EPA isn't helping."

What Is the EPA Thinking?

What puzzles so many familiar with the issue is that EPA is refusing to do something without having to pass new laws or spend millions getting the word out. No one expects the government to pick up the costly tab for cleanup, but rather just tell people that their lives may be in danger.

Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist with the National Resources Defense Council, constantly deals with the EPA on public health issues and admits that she's puzzled at the agency shirking its duty to protect the public from environmental harm.

"There is a nationwide rising sentiment that we don't need government in our lives, but this story proves otherwise. What we need is strong federal regulations to rein in corporate malefactors and to warn the public about harms now, before it's too late to protect our loved ones. Anything less is a deadly game of passing the buck," Sass said.

But the EPA's buck passing continues.

The agency repeatedly has pointed to the vermiculite page on its website when asked what it is doing to warn the public about Zonolite, which even agency insiders say is inadequate.

The EPA's press office says that Sears, Lowe's, Home Depot, Ace Hardware and other home improvement chains had distributed brochures and hung posters warning of the danger from the Zonolite insulation. Last month, AOL News checked with managers or store supervisors at 22 stores in 10 states and no one could recall any EPA-issued warning material on Zonolite.

The EPA also told AOL News that it had sent advisories on the Zonolite danger to 116 state and local regulatory and health agencies, consumer-interest groups, public health organizations, property and real estate trade associations, building and construction trade associations, and unions and building-permit and inspection entities.

Again, AOL News checked with about a third of them. Three recalled some type of EPA advisory on lead.

None said they'd ever been asked to promote or distribute a warning on Zonolite.