Do you believe what the government tells you to be the truth? Is what government claims to be the truth based on sound basic silence? Or is our government prisoner to the same ideologically-based viewpoints, greased by campaign contributions and a desire to bring jobs to rural areas? These are all questions I had in my head in reading An Air That Kills.

Andrew Schneider and David McCumber's book that follows their investigation into asbestos contamination and a rural town in Montana for the Seattle Post-Intellinger, discusses a modern environmental crisis that has all but been wiped from the collective national conscience, while hundreds have died in a small rural community from a contaminate not widely known until the end of the 1980s.

Libby, Montana was the home of the W.R. Grace vermiculite mines, used for making Zonolite insulation, along with dozens of other common products from plant fertilizer to animal feed supplements. Vermiculite while in it's pure form is considered non-hazardous, the vermiculite found in Zonolite mountain was contaminated by tremolite asbestos.

Tremolite asbestos is considered non-hazardous, at least before the Seattle Post-Intelligencer investigation into the deaths of many mine workers and towns people of Libby. After publishing a series of stories, and getting the EPA involved they belatedly started realizing the scope of the problem facing this community. Many people previously had gotten sick in Libby, but it was often written off as emphysema brought on by smoking.

Denial ran high both throughout the community and government. W.R. Grace as would be shown, knew the dangers of vermiculite contamination from Zolonite mountain, but hid this fact from workers, hastily demolishing their factory and closing down operations in Libby in 1992, when it was decided that the liability of the continuation of the factory was too high. Yet, until the investigation of this paper about a decade ago, no government agency declared any threat caused by vermiculite or tremolite asbestos.

Polarized-light microscopy or PCM is the standard method of counting asbestos fibers by the EPA and OSHA. The problem is that this test can't see smaller asbestos fibers such as tremolite, and can not distinguish between asbestos and other types of fibers. Using PCM tests, Zonolite does not appear to have asbestos, keeping it off the regulatory radar of government. The asbestos industry has been vigorously opposing the use of Transmission Electron Microscopy testing due to the high cost of the tests, and because it flags far more samples with the dangerous fibers, including non-chrysotile asbestos.

Asbestos is widespread in common products from crayons to talc powder to brake pads to anything with vermiculite in it. While industry to this day insists that the problem is limited to Zonolite Mountain and Libby Montana, the science is saying else wise. Asbestos-containing products are widespread, and according to the book, they have not been faded out unlike what is the popular myth of asbestos being banned. The EPA's proposed ban of asbestos was thrown out by the Court of Appeals on grounds it violated international trade agreements.

You will be shocked after reading this book. If you are at all concerned about our environment or are concerned that government lies to us, then read this story. Just don't breathe deeply, touch the brake pedal in your car, give your crayons. And if you are dying of emphysema, you'll be questioning if it's really asbestoses that is killing you.