U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-Hamilton) hosted nearly a dozen key officials today from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services (NJDHSS), and the Acting Director of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) to receive a comprehensive briefing on the environmental remediation and community health surveillance related to the former W.R. Grace Zonolite facility in Hamilton, New Jersey. The Zonolite plant has been selected for further study because it processed a form of vermiculite mined in Libby, Montana that has been found to contain a dangerous form of asbestos. 

    Smith said, "As a result of the briefings I requested, there will be two sets of reports released to the public today.” 

    Smith's meetings mobilized almost all of the key players and experts looking into the asbestos investigation, and they utilized the opportunity afterwards to later brief local township, state, and news officials on preliminary findings. 

    Smith said the personnel who are conducting the investigation, and who presented their findings, are "highly professional, dedicated, and objectively trying to uncover the scientific facts so that the public's health is appropriately protected."

    "The first of these reports is an historical cancer analysis conducted by the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services of the census tracts that encompassed a one-mile radius surrounding the former Zonolite site. The state will report that asbestos-related cancer incidence from the years 1979-2000 are well within normal parameters in comparison to the rest of New Jersey,” Smith stated.

    "The second and equally critical report stated that former W.R. Grace employees and their household residents (spouses, children, etc.) were likely exposed to hazardous levels of asbestos fibers (either from breathing it in at the work site, or from the dust particles that were brought into their households on their clothes, skin, and hair)," said Smith. 

    "It is important for the NJDHSS and ATSDR to set up an easily accessible system for former employees of this factory, as well as their spouses and children, to register their possibly higher risk status,” said Smith.

    ATSDR will also be providing fact sheets and informational materials to known former employees. This recommendation and outreach is based on the fact that there exist completed exposure pathways for former employees and their spouses/households that put them at higher risk of asbestos exposure.

    Smith expressed "major disappointment" with the 1995 NJ DEP certification of a "no further action necessary" report issued by an outside consultant, the ERM Company. 

    "W.R. Grace's own documentation showed that asbestos was present in the materials coming in from Libby, Montana, and knew that the exfoliation process freed up asbestos fibers into the air, yet the ERM consultants did no air sampling before signing off on a clean bill of health for the facility, and this is simply inexcusable," Smith said. He asked EPA to look into the ERM Company's analysis to find out how and why such an inaccurate report could have been certified.

"We need a lessons learned so that similar oversights do not happen again," Smith said.