I spotted this photo, from 1962 – in Lincoln County, as in Wittenoom, Australia, the sixties were happy days, when the hazards of asbestos exposure weren’t particularly understood.
“Wittenoom was officially removed from the Western Australian maps in 2007 and legislation was introduced to forcibly remove the last three residents in 2015. This ghost town located at the mouth of the Wittenoom Gorge is the home of Australia’s greatest industrial disaster. However, being in the Hamersley Range, it can lay claim to being located in one of the most beautiful areas of the Pilbara.”
https://www.aussietowns.com.au/town/wittenoom-wa
This article mesotheliomahope.com/ tells of the mesothelioma connected with the asbestos contamination of the vermiculite mined near Libby. When Gayla Benefield started bringing up the evidence that W.R. Grace knew of the health hazards, my first response was that the company officials could not have been so evil. I was wrong. Gayla’s evidence was solid.
“Prosecutors sought to prove that W.R. Grace knew they were killing miners and poisoning their families and those in the community. But in 2009, shockingly, the company received an acquittal of charges that it knowingly harmed people.”
Read the article – it quickly covers how things occurred. I knew too many people who died unable to get a lungful of oxygen in their last days to write about it. Still, it’s a story that broke nearly 25 years ago that we need to remember.
Trego's Mountain Ear 