Content uploaded by Steve Schwarze
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Steve Schwarze on Sep 09, 2014
Content may be subject to copyright.
This essay argues that juxtaposition is an important rhetorical convention for over-
coming uncertainty and institutional inertia in relation to environmental health haz-
ards. The essay illustrates the rhetorical dynamics of this convention in the public
discourse that exposed the problem of asbestos contamination in Libby, Montana, and
contends that the dichotomous moral framing of this problem was an effective and
morally appropriate example of “ecospeak.”
Libby, Montana, is the site of what one Environmental Protection Agency official
has called “the most severe human exposure to a hazardous material this coun-
try has ever seen.”1 Over two hundred human deaths have been attributed to a ver-
miculite mining operation that ran for most of the twentieth century outside of
Libby. Vermiculite was a lucrative ore for the companies that owned the mine, but
it was a death sentence for mine workers: the deposit is laced with tremolite, an
especially toxic form of asbestos that has been linked to elevated levels of asbesto-
sis, lung cancer, and mesothelioma. At one point during the operation of the mine,
company records reported that 92 percent of the mine’s long-term workers had lung
abnormalities related to asbestos exposure.2
Miners’ families also are suffering from asbestos-related disease. For decades
workers would come home with clothes covered in asbestos dust, and wives and
children would breathe the toxic fibers. It is not surprising that this type of expo-
sure to asbestos occurred. W. R. Grace, the company that operated the mine from
1963 until its closure in 1990, did not provide changing rooms for the workers until
the mid-1970s, and decided in 1983 that adding a shower room to their facilities
would not be cost-effective.3A recent public health screening conducted in Libby by
the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) revealed the
extent of this exposure: fully 25 percent of those who lived with mine workers have
pleural or interstitial lung abnormalities related to asbestos exposure.4
JUXTAPOSITION IN ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH
RHETORIC: EXPOSING ASBESTOS CONTAMINATION
IN LIBBY, MONTANA
STEVE SCHWARZE
Steve Schwarze is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Montana in
Missoula, Montana. He acknowledges Anthony Hurst and Phaedra Pezzullo for their productive
engagement with earlier versions of this essay.
© Rhetoric & Public Affairs
Vol. 6, No. 2, 2003, pp. 313-336
ISSN 1094-8392
Beyond that, even residents who never worked at the mine or lived with those
who did are showing signs of asbestos-related disease. This is likely due to the fact
that environmental exposure to asbestos is pervasive in Libby; ATSDR researchers
have identified 18 pathways of exposure to asbestos in the Libby area. For example,
the processing of vermiculite released dust into the air containing as much as five
thousand pounds of asbestos per day, and vermiculite with traces of asbestos was
used throughout the town for insulation in homes, for soil conditioner in gardens,
and for fill in schoolyards, ball fields, and skating rinks. These environmental expo-
sures are the likely cause of astonishing public health statistics. The ATSDR found
that in one 20-year period the rates of mortality from asbestosis in the Libby area
were 40 to 60 times higher than in a normal U.S. population.5In addition, the pub-
lic health screening found that approximately 18 percent of all participants x-rayed
had abnormalities in the lining of their lungs, compared to pleural abnormality
rates of 0.2 to 2 percent among populations that do not have work-related asbestos
exposure.
These statistics documenting the pervasiveness of asbestos-related disease leave
little doubt that Libby is the site of a serious environmental health problem.
Moreover, documents from W. R. Grace and state and federal agencies also leave lit-
tle doubt that this problem could have been averted. Company and government
officials knew several things about asbestos hazards in Libby as early as the mid-
1950s but did little to eliminate those hazards:
•They knew the vermiculite deposit contained asbestos, and that asbestos dust
is toxic.6
•They knew that processing vermiculite released amounts of asbestos into the
workplace that often exceeded maximum allowable concentration levels.7
•They knew that significant percentages of workers had lung abnormalities,8
and that workers in Libby and at locations that processed Libby vermiculite
were getting sick from diseases related to asbestos exposure.9
•And they knew that if information about asbestos exposure resulting from the
processing of Libby vermiculite or the use of vermiculite products were to
become public knowledge, the company could face significant financial costs,
both from the threat of lawsuits and from declining product sales.10
In spite of this knowledge, public officials in multiple government agencies failed
to act on this knowledge, and thus failed in their duty to regulate corporate activity
and protect the health of workers and citizens.11 Early reports of the problem in
Libby highlight the role of government inaction. The newspaper article that first
brought national attention to the Libby situation, written by Andrew Schneider in
the November 18, 1999, issue of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, encapsulates the situ-
ation in this way: “The story of Libby, Mont., is the story of the monumental, even
unforgivable, failure of government at all levels to protect its people from corporate
314 RHETORIC & PUBLIC AFFAIRS
misdeeds that at best were neglectful and insensitive and at worst were dishonest,
immoral and criminal.”12 Subsequent articles by Schneider draw further attention
to government failure in Libby, as does the rhetoric of citizen activists and even
some government officials. Thus, while W. R. Grace rightfully gets targeted in pub-
lic discourse as the party responsible for this problem, government agencies also
face criticism for their acts of omission.
The story of Libby is not unlike other stories about other environmental health
struggles. Indeed, the dramatic elements of the situation in Libby—innocent vic-
tims, a deceptive corporation, and an ineffective bureaucracy—resonate with other
public narratives about toxic exposure. The Love Canal story of the late 1970s, the
book and movie A Civil Action (also starring W. R. Grace) and Erin Brockovich offer
similar tales about issues of power and politics that communities confront when
trying to address toxic contamination situations. Rhetorically, these popular narra-
tives of civic engagement with unresponsive government agencies and callous cor-
porations provide a framework for interpreting events and making moral
judgments. In particular, they provide a dramatic structure in which a rhetoric of
stark oppositions, simplification, and moral outrage—what M. Jimmie
Killingsworth and Jacqueline S. Palmer call “ecospeak”13—can be viewed as a justi-
fiable response to corporate and governmental disregard for environmental health
concerns.
Such responses are precisely what led public institutions to address asbestos
problems in Libby. In this essay, I show how resident voices and investigative jour-
nalism combined to produce a powerful public discourse that provoked institu-
tional engagement with the environmental and health conditions in Libby. I
describe and analyze the rhetorical conventions that emerge in this discourse,
explaining how a rhetoric of exposure operates to influence meaning and action in
this environmental health controversy. Specifically, I argue that juxtaposition is a
central rhetorical feature of this discourse that helps overcome key obstacles to
engagement with the problem. Juxtaposition contextualizes different forms of
knowledge about the situation, altering the dynamics of certainty and uncertainty
surrounding the situation; and it heightens moral outrage, generating pressure on
public institutions to act. In my view, the juxtapositions in the Libby rhetoric can
be judged as an effective and ethical mode of rhetorical engagement.
To pursue these objectives, my analysis focuses on a set of texts that exposed the
asbestos problem in Libby and oriented initial public discussion. These texts include
Schneider’s series of articles in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (hereafter referred to as P-
I) from mid-November 1999, which first brought national attention to the Libby sit-
uation, and the transcript of a public hearing held by the Montana Department of
Environmental Quality (DEQ) on December 1, 1999, in Libby. To provide contextual
information, I have relied on other local, regional, and national newspaper accounts,
magazine articles, W. R. Grace memos, and government documents pertaining to the
EXPOSING ASBESTOS CONTAMINATION IN LIBBY, MONTANA 315
situation. I have chosen to treat Schneider’s articles and the public hearing as a rela-
tively unified object of rhetorical analysis. In this situation, residents’ comments and
investigative reports share the same rhetorical purpose—exposing the existence and
consequences of asbestos contamination—and address the same audiences—the gen-
eral public and institutional decision makers. Moreover, because I am interested in
conceptualizing juxtaposition as a rhetorical convention rather than in explaining the
operation of a particular text, my approach to the texts foregrounds their similarities
and downplays their differences. In this regard, my approach is akin to what James
Jasinski has called “conceptually-oriented criticism.”14
OBSTACLES TO EXPOSURE:MATERIAL UNCERTAINTY AND
INSTITUTIONAL INERTIA
The main rhetorical obstacles faced by those addressing the situation in Libby are
uncertainty about material conditions and relationships and inertia on the part of
institutions responsible for investigating and addressing those conditions. These
obstacles are characteristic of environmental health controversies, and as rhetorical
scholars have noted, they present a daunting challenge for advocates trying to estab-
lish relationships between environmental degradation and human health. For exam-
ple, Killingsworth and Palmer observe how advocates such as Rachel Carson, Paul
Ehrlich, and Lois Gibbs get labeled “hysterical” on account of their provocative artic-
ulations of environmental problems to human health issues.15 The charge of hysteria
is used to insinuate that such linkages are figments of the imagination, illusions of
certainty driven by raw emotion or sheer ideology. However, Killingsworth and
Palmer argue that from a psychoanalytic perspective, these hysterical rhetorics can be
interpreted productively as the return of repressed knowledge of environmental
degradation. As they remark, “If the fervor of environmentalism seems irrational,
that is because, in the view of the environmentalists, an ostensibly rational public dis-
course has neglected the signs of trouble for so long that only a cry of pain can break
the public habit of inattention.”16 Exposing environmental health problems, then,
may demand provocative forms of rhetoric to garner public attention and puncture
the prevailing assumption that no problems exist. Advocates face a significant rhetor-
ical challenge, then, in overcoming scientific and public uncertainty about possible
material relationships between environmental degradation and human health.
In addition to the obstacle of material uncertainty, environmental health advo-
cates often face the related obstacle of institutional inertia. For example, Phaedra
Pezzullo explores the strategies of environmental justice advocates in Warren
County, North Carolina, whose rhetorical efforts prodded the state to clean up a
local toxic landfill.17 Pezzullo shows how residents “critically interrupt” the domi-
nant success-story narrative about environmental activism in Warren County and
open the possibility for a new conclusion to those narratives, one that would
316 RHETORIC & PUBLIC AFFAIRS
include environmental cleanup. In this case, advocates faced the obstacle of institu-
tional inertia and invoked an earlier promise of cleanup made by the governor in
order to hold the state accountable and provoke institutional action. Similarly,
Caitlin Wills Toker examines strategies of the comic frame used by Lisa Crawford,
whose advocacy helped overcome institutional resistance to community concerns
about cleanup of a former nuclear weapons facility in Fernald, Ohio. Toker’s analy-
sis shows how Crawford’s rhetoric functioned to expose the “unjust, irrational and
unfair nature”18 of institutional practices and to generate new forms of negotiation
and engagement between residents and institutional decision makers.
These studies, then, identify two key rhetorical obstacles faced by advocates
when attempting to expose environmental health controversies: material uncer-
tainty and institutional inertia. Scholars from a variety of disciplines confirm that
these obstacles are typical features of environmental contamination situations.
Regarding uncertainty, environmental psychologist Michael R. Edelstein explains,
“Local environmental disasters are inherently fraught with uncertainty. The pollu-
tion is not easily identified nor are its characteristics easily described.”19 Sociologists
Phil Brown, Steve Kroll-Smith, and Valerie J. Gunter concur in finding an “endemic
presence of uncertain knowledge” in controversies surrounding environmental
contamination and disease: “From the clinical literature on environments and dis-
eases to the social science literature, the problem of knowing is never very far from
the center of the discussion.”20 And political scientist Sylvia Noble Tesh shows how
grassroots groups consistently enlist the support of “environmentalist” scientists to
challenge the claims of uncertainty by government and industry scientists about
environmental effects on human health.21
Both of these obstacles establish conditions that are ripe for rhetorical interven-
tion. First, to the extent that rhetoric emerges to influence judgment under condi-
tions of uncertainty, it can serve several important functions in environmental
health controversies. It can establish certainty on some issues, expose uncertainty
on others, and promote or thwart courses of action based on those certainties and
uncertainties. Second, rhetorical intervention can help overcome the obstacle of
institutional inertia on environmental health issues. In some instances, the obsta-
cles of uncertainty and inertia are inextricably intertwined; the lack of certainty
about contamination may result from institutional failure to investigate environ-
mental conditions or act on citizen complaints. Even when a problem is apparent,
institutions may not prioritize the problem as significant and may not consider the
problem their responsibility to address. In these instances, rhetoric can function as
a force for overcoming institutional inertia, motivating officials to take action with
regard to some problem.
The combination of material uncertainty and institutional inertia constrains
environmental health advocates in specific, characteristic ways. Uncertainty about
material conditions can lead advocates to call on personal experience, which often
EXPOSING ASBESTOS CONTAMINATION IN LIBBY, MONTANA 317
gets discredited by public officials who prefer to base action on “the facts.”22
Similarly, an overreliance on personal experience can lead advocates to make
unwarranted generalizations, what Lawrence Buell calls “a rhetoric of unequivocal
assertion” in which citizen claims are buoyed more by moral outrage than by data
and leave themselves open to charges of hysteria.23 Institutional inertia also con-
strains rhetorical intervention. Victims and agency officials tend to perceive toxic
situations from very different perspectives; as Edelstein suggests, “controversy is
inherent in the relationship of toxic victims to their institutional context because
there are differences in the way citizens and technocrats view risk.”24 Due to these
competing perceptions and discourses of risk, citizens often find themselves frus-
trated in their efforts to engage public institutions. In Edelstein’s view, “It is the real-
ization that they cannot depend on government to solve their problems that often
spurs the contaminated community’s residents to collective action aimed at forcing
a solution.”25 Indeed, citizens have found some success in overcoming these obsta-
cles. As Fred Setterberg and Lonny Shavelson state, residents “have grappled with
the uncertainties of science, pressed up hard against a resistant political establish-
ment, and overcome their own lack of confidence and entitlement to speak out for
commonsense solutions to complex, often immobilizing problems.”26
The Libby situation provides an exemplar of how advocates effectively addressed
material uncertainty and institutional inertia to spur investigation of ongoing envi-
ronmental and health problems. Advocates in Libby were able to reverse the dynam-
ics of uncertainty typical of most environmental health controversies by
demonstrating the pervasiveness of asbestos-related diseases among miners and
their families. From those grounds, advocates had a powerful basis from which they
could generate moral outrage at W. R. Grace and government agencies for their role
in perpetuating exposure, and a compelling rationale for demanding that agencies
address ongoing environmental exposure. Juxtaposition was a primary rhetorical
convention in this process.
JUXTAPOSITION AND THE RHETORIC OF EXPOSURE
The exposure of both material conditions and institutional inaction forms what I
will call a rhetoric of exposure. This is a rhetoric of exposure both in form and in
content. Formally, the rhetoric functions to expose problems, and the content or
subject matter of those problems concerns residents’ exposure to asbestos. The pur-
poses of this rhetoric are to establish certainty about past exposure and institutional
failure, generate uncertainty about ongoing exposure, and ultimately motivate
action by state institutions. Across its manifestations in specific texts, this rhetoric
relies upon the contrast between victims’ knowledge of asbestos exposure and ill-
ness, and statements of officials from W. R. Grace and government officials about
the extent of their knowledge of asbestos hazards.
318 RHETORIC & PUBLIC AFFAIRS
The juxtaposition of these pieces of evidence is the central rhetorical convention
of the discourses that exposed the asbestos problem in Libby. By juxtaposition, I
mean the placement of apparently conflicting or contradicting pieces of evidence in
close proximity to one another. With this definition, I align my notion of juxtapo-
sition with the strategy identified by Anne Teresa Demo and Kimberly A. Powell in
their analyses of social change rhetoric.27 Juxtaposition creates the appearance of an
incongruity between symbolic characterizations of reality, and it encourages audi-
ences to take sides and make judgments in order to resolve the incongruity. As ear-
lier research demonstrates, juxtaposition may operate in a liberatory or hegemonic
fashion;28 thus, it is important to continue examining instances of juxtaposition to
further understand its rhetorical functions.
In relation to Libby, juxtaposition functions effectively to recontextualize insti-
tutional discourses and (in)actions, opening those discourses to questions and call-
ing (in)actions into question. Residents and journalists juxtaposed institutional
knowledge claims with evidence of past asbestos exposure to render institutional
knowledge uncertain. Thus, as Demo illustrates in her analysis of the Guerrilla
Girls, juxtaposition “exposes ...hypocrisies”and can function to “critique . . . insti-
tutions.”29 The Libby rhetoric confirms these functions and illustrates how juxta-
position can help reverse the dynamics of uncertainty that are typical of
environmental health controversies.
Further, juxtaposition functions to highlight the moral dimension of public con-
troversies. This is the case in Libby, and it is especially characteristic of the two types
of discourse I analyze here, investigative journalism and advocacy about toxicity.
Other scholars have noted that these types of discourse can hardly avoid giving
moral meaning to factual evidence. In both, moral meanings can be generated as
the juxtaposition of evidence—words, actions, personal experience, expert testi-
mony, official documents, and the like—helps to establish protagonists and antag-
onists in controversies. For example, regarding discourse about toxicity, Buell has
argued that one of its chief characteristics is “the moral passion of a battle between
David and Goliath.”30 For Buell, this motif aligns the interests of workers and citi-
zens against forces of capitalist development, using a “strategy of channeling com-
munal hostility by linking environmental reform with social justice against ‘the
common enemy’ of corporate greed.”31 Similarly, in investigative journalism, the
David/Goliath motif resonates with the rhetorical constitution of “villainy and vic-
timization”as identified by communication scholars James S. Ettema and Theodore
L. Glasser.32 These authors interpret investigative news stories as rhetorical con-
structions that, like advocacy about toxicity, function as a powerful form of public
moral discourse. These stories rely on two important rhetorical features: “the inno-
cence of those good citizens who have been victimized by some systemic problem,
and the guilt of those reprehensible lords of civic vice (often, though not always,
bureaucrats) who have caused the problem or else failed to address it.”33 Through
EXPOSING ASBESTOS CONTAMINATION IN LIBBY, MONTANA 319
the juxtaposition of victims and villains, stories begin to take on a moral meaning;
events get framed “not merely as an example of a systemic problem but as a moral
outrage.”34 Thus, juxtaposition provides the formal structure for developing both
the David/Goliath and victim/villain themes, producing a moral framework for
understanding unacknowledged environmental health problems.
The juxtapositions in the Libby rhetoric present a useful case for rethinking the
moral implications of particular rhetorical conventions. As noted above, juxtaposi-
tion can be understood as an example of perspective by incongruity. In Denise M.
Bostdorff’s words, “perspective by incongruity involves altering an orientation or
expectation by viewing an incongruity, which is inconsistent or not in agreement.”35
The Libby rhetoric exemplifies this concept, as public discourse consistently
attempts to alter orientations toward institutional discourse (claims made by W. R.
Grace or government officials) by juxtaposing the latter with conflicting evidence.36
In Libby, as in other cases, perspective by incongruity foregrounds the dominant
discourse used to characterize some situation and then views the situation from
another perspective, serving to “‘remoralize’ by accurately naming a situation
already demoralized by inaccuracy.”37
Juxtaposition, then, can serve a socially beneficial purpose to the extent that it
remoralizes a situation. The rhetoric that exposes the Libby situation does exactly
this. The stark oppositions and clear moral lines drawn by the rhetoric surround-
ing Libby helped to accurately name a situation that for decades had gone
unnamed. Consequently, the juxtapositions illustrated here provide an example of
“ecospeak” that is productive and commendable.
JUXTAPOSITION IN INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM:“UNCIVIL ACTION”
The rhetoric of exposure is most apparent in the narratives that juxtapose the state-
ments and actions of W. R. Grace and government officials against concrete exam-
ples of sick miners, personal testimony from former mine workers and their family
members, and expert testimony from doctors. Schneider’s “Uncivil Action” series in
the November 18 and 19 editions of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer provides several
examples of how journalistic narratives employ multiple forms of evidence to con-
struct an article that constitutes certainty about “the facts” of the situation and
arranges those facts in a way that summons moral outrage over institutional failure.
Schneider’s introduction in the main P-I article of November 18 frames the sit-
uation in terms of “killing” and amplifies the facts of knowledge and inaction to
generate a clear set of victims and villains:
First, it killed some miners.
Then, it killed wives and children, slipping into their homes on the dusty clothing
of hard-working men. Now the mine is closed, but in Libby, the killing goes on. The
320 RHETORIC & PUBLIC AFFAIRS
W. R. Grace Co. knew, from the time it bought the Zonolite vermiculite mine in 1963,
why the people in Libby were dying. But for the 30 years it owned the mine, the com-
pany did not stop it.
Neither did the governments.
Not the town of Libby, not Lincoln County. Not the state of Montana, not federal
mining, health and environmental agencies, not anyone else charged with protecting
the public health.38
This introduction ends with the quotation in which Schneider characterizes the
story as the “monumental failure” of government to protect citizens from “corpo-
rate misdeeds.” This broad framing of “the story of Libby” immediately identifies
the victims and villains in the story, with government’s role falling somewhere out-
side of this dichotomy. That role is clarified in the November 19 article; the
November 18 article focuses primarily on W. R. Grace.
The moral stance of the “killing” narrative that opens the November 18 article is
supported by the juxtaposition of numerical evidence and medical testimony with
a statement by a W. R. Grace official. Schneider states that the paper’s investigation
has shown that at least 192 people have died from the asbestos in the mine’s vermi-
culite ore, and doctors say the toll could be much higher. The doctors and Libby’s
long-suffering families say that at least another 375 people have been diagnosed with
fatal diseases caused by this silent and invisible killer. Dr. Alan Whitehouse, a lung spe-
cialist from Spokane and an expert in industrial diseases, said another 12 to 15 people
from Libby are being diagnosed with the diseases—asbestosis, mesothelioma, lung
cancer—every month.39
Schneider juxtaposes these numbers and doctor claims with the company’s dis-
course: “The W. R. Grace Co. says it did no harm. ‘Obviously we feel we met our
obligation to our workers and to the community,’ said Jay Hughes, Grace’s senior
litigation counsel.” The juxtaposition of the weighty numerical evidence and med-
ical testimony with Hughes’s self-satisfied comments encourages audiences to inter-
pret skeptically the claim that W. R. Grace had met its obligation. Coupled with the
initial narrative, the notion that Libby’s families have been “long-suffering” and that
their diseases were caused by a “silent and invisible killer,” this juxtaposition under-
scores the innocence of victims and characterizes Grace as an unsympathetic cor-
poration.
The villainy of W. R. Grace is strengthened by the story of Helen Bundrock’s
family. It is the first personal narrative we see in the article, and it functions almost
as a representative anecdote of the Libby situation. The section is entitled “A
Family’s Nightmare,” a fitting frame given the fact that “six of the family’s seven
members have been diagnosed with asbestos-related disease.” Schneider uses
EXPOSING ASBESTOS CONTAMINATION IN LIBBY, MONTANA 321
Helen’s words to describe her late husband Art’s pain—from the disease and from
the knowledge that he brought home asbestos dust to his family. Then, the article
moves toward Helen’s indictment of W. R. Grace, in which Helen juxtaposes the
words and actions of the company with the effects on her son.
She said that managers at the mine told miners that the dust was harmless—a claim
echoed by other miners and denied by W. R. Grace. “They lied, but they did worse than
that,” she said, talking about when her son, now 46, went to work for Grace. “Bill had
to get a chest X-ray before they hired him. That X-ray showed he had asbestosis and
they never told him. They just let him go to work up there with all that poison. They
never told him for the 10 years he worked there.”40
Helen’s account depicts W. R. Grace as lying, which is corroborated by Schneider’s
insertion that this claim was corroborated by miners and denied by Grace.
Moreover, W. R. Grace’s villainy comes not only from lying about specific facts, but
in maintaining that lie over time, perhaps over the stretch of multiple managers
such that Grace the company is to blame, not a particular person. Finally, this jux-
taposition heightens the innocence of the victim, who did not know he was sick and
yet was knowingly exposed to “all that poison.”In this anecdote, then, the juxtapo-
sition of the company’s words and actions with the ultimate effects on human
health work rhetorically to heighten outrage toward W. R. Grace and emphasize the
innocence of the victim.
The latter half of the article juxtaposes several types of evidence within a narra-
tive to establish detailed facts about knowledge of asbestos hazards and further gen-
erate moral outrage at mining companies and government agencies. Noting first
that the paper “examined 6,000 pages” of documents and “interviewed 110 people”
with connections to the mine, Schneider then places multiple pieces of evidence in
proximity to one another. He says that in 1956 the Montana Board of Health
reported that “asbestos dust in the air is of considerable toxicity,” and that two and
a half years later, the board’s follow-up report listed four single-spaced pages of
deficiencies and repeated a warning that inhalation of asbestos dust would lead to
asbestosis. These statements from government reports are followed with the fact of
the first diagnosis of asbestosis in a Libby miner (Glenn Taylor) in 1959, and testi-
mony from another miner (Les Skramstad) describing work he was directed to do
at the mine involving raw asbestos. By juxtaposing this firsthand evidence from
miners with the state’s discourse, the narrative suggests that miners were working
with asbestos and getting sick from it even as the State of Montana was telling the
company that their asbestos dust was a health hazard.
This juxtaposition of worker exposure to asbestos with institutional knowledge
of asbestos becomes more appalling with a subsequent example of what W. R. Grace
knew about asbestos and disease. First, we see the words of a 1969 internal Grace
322 RHETORIC & PUBLIC AFFAIRS
report that states “tremolite is definitely a health hazard.” Then, we read the state-
ment of a local doctor whose examination of x-rays found “‘a great deal of lung
abnormalities among the employees . . . far in excess of what one would find in
examining the normal population.’”This movement back and forth between a vari-
ety of forms of evidence—government reports, miners’ evidence, company docu-
ments, medical statements—allows Schneider to generate a compelling account of
factual knowledge that W. R. Grace had about asbestos problems at the Libby mine.
The account composes a set of consistent signs of asbestos hazards, fortifying the
appearance of certainty about those hazards. Moreover, these consistent signs show
that W. R. Grace officials certainly knew of the hazards.
This constitution of certainty about asbestos hazards implies a moral judgment.
The overall narrative depicts several instances in which W. R. Grace knew of the
problem but neither acted to protect workers nor told workers about their own
medical condition. W. R. Grace was in the wrong because they knew of the asbestos
problems, knew of the related health problems, and failed to disclose this knowl-
edge or to act upon it. Through the consistent set of juxtapositions in this story, W.
R. Grace gets framed as a villain, and miners such as Taylor and Skramstad as
unknowing, innocent victims. This moral judgment emerges implicitly from the
organization of evidence from multiple voices in the story and is supported explic-
itly by an outside source, Grace’s insurance company. Schneider cites a 1969 letter
from Maryland Casualty to W. R. Grace that states, “Certainly when an X-ray pic-
ture shows a change for the worse, that person must be told....Failure to do so is
not humane and is in direct violation of federal law.”41 This evidence shows that it
is not merely Schneider’s personal moral judgment intruding on the story, but that
others raise the issue of moral obligation as well as legal transgression. Thus, the
rhetoric of exposure flows seamlessly from factual knowledge to moral judgments,
offering readers a solid basis for criticism of W. R. Grace.42
Alongside the exposure of W. R. Grace, the rhetoric of the Libby situation also
criticizes government agencies that knew of problems but took little preventive or
investigative action. The government angle is at the heart of the November 19 P-I
article, and is echoed in accounts in the Missoula (Montana) Missoulian and much
later articles in the New York Times that focus specifically on the EPA. Schneider’s
November 19 article displays conventions similar to those of the previous day’s
story, juxtaposing comments from local, state, and federal agencies with firsthand
testimony of Libby residents who have asbestos-related health problems.
The November 19 headline signals the basic juxtaposition at work in
Schneider’s article: “While people are dying, government agencies pass buck.”43
The article’s movement between the words of asbestos victims and the statements,
actions, and inactions of government agencies makes clear how human lives have
been damaged by the institutions that are supposed to serve them. Schneider’s
framing of the problem blunts the villainy of any specific agency, however, and
EXPOSING ASBESTOS CONTAMINATION IN LIBBY, MONTANA 323
instead indicts government as a whole. The story of Libby, again, is a story of sys-
temic institutional failure to address an environmental health problem.
The lead of the article emphasizes the buck-passing noted in the story’s headline,
playing upon a commonsense distinction between words and actions.
They all say somebody should do something.
City, county, state and federal officials agree that someone should follow up.
Inquire. Ask questions about the hundreds of people from Libby who have either died
or been diagnosed with fatal diseases after being exposed to tremolite asbestos from a
vermiculite mine.
Somebody, they say, should investigate disturbing indications that Libby may still
be at risk. But every official and every agency has a reason why, so far, they have not
been that somebody.44
This framing of the problem sets the stage for two important features of the rest of
the article: results of soil and air samples taken near the mine by the P-I showing
actionable levels of asbestos, and comments from an array of agency officials dis-
claiming responsibility for asbestos problems. By juxtaposing these comments with
concrete evidence of potential ongoing asbestos hazards and actual ongoing health
problems, Schneider’s article constitutes a tension between material conditions and
institutional inertia that attempts to provoke the indignation of audiences and
implies that action needs to be taken to adequately address those conditions.
This tension works rhetorically by generating uncertainty about the claims of
state institutions. In contrast to the construction of W. R. Grace’s and the govern-
ment’s certain knowledge about past asbestos hazards, the article depicts a current
situation marked by considerable uncertainty. Early in the article, Schneider states
that as the death and illness statistics grow,
(S)ome townspeople are finding questions none of the government agencies has
dared to seek answers for:
•Are the tons of asbestos debris from the mine still killing people?
•Are people being exposed today, breathing in death sentences that will be car-
ried out halfway into the next century, after decades of agonizing illness?
•Are there dangerous levels of asbestos in the air, in the ground, in the waters
of the Kootenai River?
•Are the children and grandchildren of the sick and dying, who never saw the
mine in operation, going to die from its legacy?45
After quoting two EPA officials who reviewed the soil samples and confirmed the
need for further investigation, the article further heightens uncertainty by intro-
ducing a 34-year-old logger, Shane Whitmarsh. He never worked at the mine, but
he has had pneumonia three times in one year. Whitmarsh is uncertain whether his
324 RHETORIC & PUBLIC AFFAIRS
illnesses are related to asbestos; through the voice of his wife, the story implies that
he is in denial about the source of his persistent illness. However, he does want cer-
tainty about the safety of his children: “That old vermiculite is all over this town.
Has anyone checked to see what happened to the asbestos that’s part of it? Are our
kids safe?”46 Through this juxtaposition of asbestos evidence with a resident and his
unexplained illness, the article adds to the initial questions and bolsters the sense of
uncertainty about current asbestos exposure.
The article amplifies this uncertainty as it introduces statements from agency
officials. No agency at any level is able make claims about asbestos in Libby with any
degree of certainty, and the evasion of responsibility that echoes across the state-
ments suggests that officials have not even tried to resolve uncertainties. Moving
from the local to the federal level, Schneider quotes a series of officials to illustrate
the buck-passing of the article’s headline.
First, Tony Berget, Libby’s mayor: “We know what happened in the old days, the
miners coming home covered with white dust. But I don’t think there’s anything to
worry about now. If there was a problem, I’m sure the county or the state people
would have told us.”
Then, Kendra Lund, a county environmental official who claims the county has-
n’t done any testing for asbestos “for years. We don’t have the facilities to test for
asbestos fibers. These are not county issues, but state issues.”
The mining supervisor at the Montana Department of Environmental Quality:
“We keep hearing about all these people from Libby who are sick or have died, but
no one that I know from the state has any real information.”
A state epidemiologist: “It sounds like the asbestos problem in Libby may have
fallen between the crack of ‘whose territory is it?’”
Finally, Schneider quotes John Wardell, coordinator of the EPA in Montana: “A
lot of folks are saying EPA should do this or that, but not one of them, the town, the
county or the state has written us a letter or called and asked for our help. We can-
not go out there unless we’re invited.”47
Through repetition, these comments amplify the uncertainty about the extent
and severity of material problems, as well as related uncertainty about institutional
responsibilities, all of which has led to overall institutional inertia.
As these comments are juxtaposed with the voices of Libby residents who have
health problems, the uncertainty of state officials takes on moral weight. While
Whitmarsh’s pneumonia is not clearly linked to asbestos exposure, a more certain
case follows the comments from an agency official. Carrie Detrick, a 67-year-old
woman who never worked at the mine, has asbestosis. “‘I just got it by living
around here. It’s all over the town....I can’t understand why the government
doesn’t do anything and why the newspaper doesn’t print a word. It’s like it’s a
dirty secret that nobody wants to talk about.’”48 The juxtaposition of previous
statements of institutional uncertainty with residential certainty about the
EXPOSING ASBESTOS CONTAMINATION IN LIBBY, MONTANA 325
pervasiveness of contamination reveals a moral problem, and Detrick herself
functions as evidence of the effects of government inaction. Her comments,
which conclude the article, make the link between institutional uncertainty and
health effects in a much more pointed way. “‘If the government says there is noth-
ing wrong here, they’re crazy....I’m going to die. Let the government come to
my funeral if they need proof.’”49 The certain end that Detrick faces exposes the
moral failure of the government to protect the residents of Libby and provides a
powerful impetus for institutional action.
JUXTAPOSITION IN RESIDENTS’RHETORIC
Carrie Detrick’s comments display how juxtaposition works in the discourse of
many Libby residents as they address asbestos exposure. Their comments in
Schneider’s articles and at the public hearing feature juxtaposition as a convention
that demarcates certainty and uncertainty about asbestos exposure. Moreover, their
advocacy in the public hearing makes explicit the implicit message of Schneider’s
articles, as residents address agency officials face-to-face and issue forceful calls for
action.
The Montana DEQ bond reclamation hearing was held December 1, 1999, in
Memorial Gymnasium in Libby. In the fall of 1999, the DEQ issued notice that they
were going to return the remainder of the reclamation bond, $67,000, to the com-
pany that currently owns the mine site.50 This notice prompted Gayla Benefield to
explore the site herself to see how well it had been reclaimed. At the hearing,
Benefield spoke about her experience, and her testimony provides a powerful exam-
ple of how juxtaposition affects the rhetorical dynamics of certainty, uncertainty,
and moral outrage.
Benefield’s testimony juxtaposes public accounts of reclamation efforts with her
own experiential knowledge to expose both material and institutional problems. She
begins her testimony by reading a 1993 article from a Libby newspaper about the
reclamation. The article describes elk and deer roaming in areas that used to have
mine tailings and heavy equipment on it. The article itself relies on juxtaposition as
it contrasts depictions of the old mine site with visions of pristine nature—lush
grass, green meadows, wild deer and elk—to show that reclamation can work.
Benefield’s reading of the article ends with a quotation from W. R. Grace’s local rep-
resentative Alan Stringer: “‘We have proven that a mine can exist in scenic areas,’
Stringer said, ‘and that we can succeed in closing it, removing it from the face of the
earth.’”51 Grace even received an award for its reclamation efforts. However,
Benefield counters this account with her personal experience. “I drove up there last
fall. I was shocked. I drove up, I saw the tailings pile, I saw the pond. It did not match
everything else. It was nothing but a great big tailings pile going into the water.”52
Benefield’s personal experience was corroborated by Roger Sullivan, a Kalispell
326 RHETORIC & PUBLIC AFFAIRS
lawyer who has hundreds of clients in Libby and who won a case against W. R. Grace
for the wrongful death of Benefield’s mother. Sullivan’s opening presentation at the
hearing included comparison photographs of the tailings pile before and after the
operation of the mine and estimates that there were “approximately five billion
pounds of asbestos in the tailings pile that we looked at.”53 Reinforced by this evi-
dence, Benefield’s juxtaposition of public accounts and personal experience provides
a powerful indictment of the proud claims of W. R. Grace officials.
Benefield’s initial juxtaposition exposes the material dimension of the prob-
lem, but she goes on to expose institutional problems of uncertainty and unre-
sponsiveness:
I called the DEQ about it. I saw that a bond was being released. I called the DEQ and
they had little or no information on it. I called the EPA. There again, they had little or
no information on it at all. I asked for the DEQ report on it. I read the report. The
report was full of inconsistencies. What I read you right here is basically what the
report said. What is actually up there is entirely different.54
\
Here, Benefield places institutional uncertainty up against the certainty of her per-
sonal experience at the mine site and her personal experience of a “family history
full of asbestosis.” Given her certainty about past exposure, its link to asbestosis in
her family, and her experiential knowledge about the mine site, Benefield’s com-
ments provide a solid ground for issuing a demand that DEQ and EPA further
investigate the situation.
A more personal and stark juxtaposition comes later in the meeting from Pat
Vinion, whose father worked at the mine and who himself is diagnosed with
asbestosis. As with Benefield’s comments, Vinion juxtaposes the assurances of safety
with the tangible effects derived from personal experience.
When my father was a young man they told him that you can’t eat enough of that stuff.
It won’t bother you. Don’t worry about it. Well, he’s dead. When I started feeling sick
when I was younger they said, you never worked there. It’s not possible. You can’t get
it that way.You never worked there. Well, it’s more than possible. I am dying from it.55
While Vinion’s comments do not specifically identify the “they” to whom he refers,
the sharp contrast between conventional wisdom about asbestos and the material
effects of exposure further builds the case that agency officials do not have certain
knowledge about asbestos. Therefore, they need to reconsider what they know
about the relationship between asbestos and human health.
Environmental advocates also resisted institutional inertia. Bonnie Gestring,
spokesperson for the Montana Environmental Information Center, makes explicit
the implicit indictment of “the system” in Schneider’s articles. Like Benefield and
EXPOSING ASBESTOS CONTAMINATION IN LIBBY, MONTANA 327
Vinion, she questions the assurances made in official discourse by juxtaposing them
with the fact of exposure, disease, and death. Schneider reports her “angrily” deliv-
ering her remarks.
I got a hand-out when I entered that says that—from the Department that says that it
is apparent that the State and Federal agencies have worked with W. R. Grace to insure
the ore processing facilities complied with statutes and standards. And I can’t under-
stand how this can possibly be. How can 300 people—hundreds of people be exposed,
have asbestosis, have died from this and all the statutes and standards have been com-
plied with?56
Gestring’s question makes plain the incongruity between abstract legal criteria and
concrete health effects, turning critical scrutiny toward the statutes and standards
that allowed such an environmental health hazard to go unchecked.
In all these comments, advocates appealed to the certainty of material condi-
tions, both in terms of environmental degradation and human health, and juxta-
posed those conditions with official discourses in order to expose the deficiency of
those discourses, raise uncertainty about ongoing problems, and motivate institu-
tional action. Benefield’s comments expose the environmental hazards still lurking
in Libby; Vinion’s comments expose the health hazards that can result from envi-
ronmental exposure to asbestos; and Gestring’s comments expose the institutional
hazards that obscure government recognition of the environmental and health haz-
ards in Libby. Taken together, these comments constitute a powerful force for over-
coming the institutional inertia that advocates had faced for several years.
The comments particularly gain force by generating a sense of moral outrage
about institutional inertia. To be sure, the moral force of residents’ rhetoric stems
from the tragic health consequences already occurring in Libby, the sense that those
problems are likely to grow over several decades, and the possibility that continued
exposure could harm children in the community.57 But it is the framing of those
elements through the convention of juxtaposition that makes their moral character
emerge and applies moral force to state institutions. The juxtaposition of environ-
mental and health effects with statements from corporate and government actors
constitutes a sense that W. R. Grace officials have lied to residents, and that govern-
ment agencies have failed in their duties to warn and protect citizens. While the
State is not villainized to the extent that W. R. Grace is, these juxtapositions con-
tribute to the perception that a moral bond between the State and its citizens has
been violated, and that the State must act to reestablish that bond.
Schneider’s articles and public comments at the hearing were highly effective in
jostling state institutions into action. The EPA and ATSDR immediately sent offi-
cials to Libby as a result of Schneider’s articles.58 These officials attended the public
hearing along with the top six officials of Montana DEQ, several state legislators
328 RHETORIC & PUBLIC AFFAIRS
and state health officials, and approximately five hundred residents. Subsequently,
the federal agencies engaged in extensive environmental testing, health screenings,
and remedial action that continues today. Ongoing public advocacy by local resi-
dents and persistent media coverage by Schneider and reporters for several
Montana news outlets persuaded Governor Judy Martz to change her initial posi-
tion that W. R. Grace should clean up Libby. In a surprising decision, Martz
requested in December 2001 that Libby be given expedited or “silver bullet” prior-
ity for listing on the Superfund National Priorities List. The EPA approved removal
of Zonolite insulation (made from Libby vermiculite) from houses in Libby, a dra-
matic reversal of long-standing EPA policy that asbestos products should be man-
aged “in place.” Clearly, public discourse had a significant impact on institutional
action in Libby.
JUXTAPOSITION AND ENVIRONMENTAL RHETORIC:RETHINKING THE
DICHOTOMIES OF “ECOSPEAK”
The preceding analysis demonstrates that the rhetoric surrounding Libby relies
heavily on juxtaposition to shed light on unacknowledged effects of asbestos expo-
sure and to generate outrage that would pressure institutions to act. Consequently,
the Libby situation invites reflection on the rhetorical dynamics of juxtaposition. It
also encourages reconsideration of a central issue in the study of environmental
rhetoric: the appropriateness of the moralizing, dichotomous rhetoric that
Killingsworth and Palmer label “ecospeak.”
First, in the Libby rhetoric, juxtaposition recontextualizes institutional dis-
courses and renders them uncertain. In both Schneider’s articles and public advo-
cacy, various statements of knowledge and assurances of safety by W. R. Grace
officials and government officials are undermined as they are juxtaposed with the
firsthand accounts of miners and family members. Their experiences—of exposure,
disease, and death—provide a compelling contrast to the discourse of established
institutions. Hence, this study illustrates how rhetorical intervention can expose the
uncertainties of “official”knowledge and use that exposure as a basis for advocating
public action.59 Juxtaposition can be an effective rhetorical convention for exposing
uncertainty.
The case of Libby, then, illustrates how rhetorical intervention can reverse the
dynamics of the uncertainty that often accompanies environmental health contro-
versies. In this instance, uncertainty functioned less as a negative constraint to be
overcome through public advocacy, and more as a positive opportunity that could be
used to motivate public action. The public discourse surrounding Libby reversed the
dynamics of uncertainty by shifting the burden of proof onto the State, creating the
need to provide an account as to why they failed to act in the face of clear public
health problems. Also, it created the need for public agencies to execute studies that
EXPOSING ASBESTOS CONTAMINATION IN LIBBY, MONTANA 329
would resolve their own uncertainty about conditions in Libby. In contrast to other
environmental health controversies, personal experience was not discredited, in part
because of the pervasiveness of disease but also because institutions’ prior knowledge
claims had been debunked. Thus, institutions had little ground from which they
could effectively counter the claims of residents. Instead, uncertainty at all levels of
government, juxtaposed with the certainties of disease and death in Libby, put gov-
ernment officials in a position that demanded remedies rather than refutation.
Second, in the Libby rhetoric, juxtaposition generates outrage by creating the
appearance that a clear moral order has been violated. The moral dimension of this
rhetoric is most apparent in the Schneider articles, where W. R. Grace is clearly
positioned as a villain in contrast to victims in Libby. Their victim status is consti-
tuted by juxtaposing the knowledge that W. R. Grace and government officials had
with the lack of knowledge on the part of miners and residents, and the subsequent
physical and emotional traumas they have undergone. The moral framing carries
over into the hearing, too. Advocates pick up on the “government failure” motif in
order to influence agency officials to redeem themselves and thereby fulfill their
moral duty as protectors of public safety. Thus, this study confirms how public dis-
course “realizes” innocence and guilt by rendering accounts of reality that are “intel-
lectually comprehensible and at the same time morally meaningful.”60
The case of Libby, then, illustrates how juxtaposition can structure moral mean-
ing in a way that pressures institutions to overcome inertia and address previously
unrecognized environmental health problems. But in doing so, it forces us to con-
front the crucial issue of ecospeak as a mode of environmental rhetoric. One might
argue that the moral meanings constructed through juxtaposition merely reinforce
the “oversimplified dichotomy” that Killingsworth and Palmer find characteristic of
ecospeak.61 Arguably, the binary constructions of David/Goliath and victim/villain
identified by Buell and by Ettema and Glasser (and found in the Libby rhetoric) are
precisely the object of Killingsworth and Palmer’s criticism. The latter claim that
environmental discourse is plagued by a tendency toward an “allegory of good guys
and bad guys, demanding of the observer a value judgment about the goodness or
badness of each side” and “a ready-made stock of plots and characters” that fore-
close possibilities for social transformation.62 The rhetoric exposing the situation in
Libby surely partakes of these tendencies. Moreover, while the juxtaposition of res-
ident voices with official discourses may function as a form of critical rhetoric, it
also may reify the dichotomy between lay experience and ostensibly scientific dis-
course, branding the former the product of “hysterics” and “troublemakers.”
While dichotomies have their drawbacks, I believe these drawbacks must be con-
sidered in the context of particular situations. Exposing previously unrecognized
problems may require drawing sharp dichotomies between perpetrators and vic-
tims, between abstract explanations and lived experience, between official rhetoric
and material reality. The need to avoid dichotomous thinking may be outweighed
330 RHETORIC & PUBLIC AFFAIRS
by the need to gain recognition, provoke outrage, and motivate action. These needs
can only be weighed in relationship to the specific situation and the sense of advo-
cates that it is time for officials to face the problem and take action.
In some cases, then, the dichotomous moral framing constituted through juxta-
position may be a timely and appropriate gesture, a crucial catalyst for motivating
action. Libby is one of those cases. Clear identification of distinct identities and
interests, discrete categories of right and wrong, and glaring distinctions between
rhetoric and reality were needed in order to overcome the identifications, concor-
dances, and unspoken consensus that prevented public recognition of the problem
in the first place.
Moreover, the particular style of ecospeak in the Libby rhetoric draws sharp divi-
sions while also cultivating the crucial audience: government officials. Certainly, the
public hearing explicitly positions these officials as a primary audience. But the
newspaper articles, too, have government as a key audience. Robert Miraldi draws
attention to this audience in relation to the muckrakers. “What is true today—and
what was emerging also at the turn of century—is that government, more than the
public, responds especially and vigorously to journalistic exposés.”63 Ettema and
Glasser concur, arguing: “If powerful interests are to be called most fully to account,
journalists must draw other social institutions, especially government into a dia-
logue—particularly if they are to engage in any discussion of either punishment or
policy reform. The initial investigative report must generate enough of a charge to
compel officials to respond.”64 As mentioned earlier, EPA and ATSDR officials
reported going to Libby as a direct result of Schneider’s series. The moral outrage,
the obvious regulatory failure, and the challenge to long-standing scientific
assumptions about asbestos exposure constituted a compelling set of appeals that
moved elected representatives, agency officials, and scientists to investigate Libby.
Thus, even as the Libby rhetoric exposed the failures of government, it did so in a
way that provoked government officials to make up for those failures by aggressively
engaging the problems in Libby.
To be sure, dichotomous moral framings of environmental controversies can be
debilitating. But that judgment should be made on a case-by-case basis. Arguably,
the juxtapositions of the Libby rhetoric did not produce a debilitating case of eco-
speak. Rather, they were an effective and morally appropriate response to environ-
mental injustice.
NOTES
1. Mark Levine, “Killing Libby,” Men’s Journal, August 2001, 77+.
2. This figure is stated in Peter Kostic, “Study to Determine Relationship Between Years of
Employment, Age, Smoking Habits and Chest X-Ray Findings. Zonolite/Libby Employees,”
December 1969, in author’s possession.
EXPOSING ASBESTOS CONTAMINATION IN LIBBY, MONTANA 331
3. Andrew Schneider, “A Town Left to Die,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 18, 1999. Accessed July
9, 2001, available at <http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/uncivilaction/lib18.shtml >
4. U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Year 2000 Medical Testing of Individuals
Potentially Exposed to Asbestoform Minerals Associated with Vermiculite in Libby, Montana
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, August 23, 2001).
5. U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Health Consultation: Mortality from Asbestos
in Libby, Montana (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, December
12, 2000).
6. Benjamin F. Wake reported this to Zonolite officials, in Montana State Board of Health, A Report on
an Industrial Hygiene Study of the Zonolite Company of Libby, Montana (Helena: Division of Disease
Control, August 8–9, 1956).
7. The earliest report that provides data on amounts of asbestos dust specifically is Montana State
Board of Health, A Report on an Industrial Hygiene Study of the Zonolite Company of Libby Montana
(Helena, Mont.: Division of Disease Control, January 12, 1959). In 1961, Earl Lovick, a manager at
Zonolite, wrote to a colleague: “There is a relatively large amount of asbestos dust present in our
mill and this is difficult to control.” E. D. Lovick to C. A. Pratt, Vice President, Western Mineral
Products Company, June 14, 1961. Lovick’s assertion was confirmed to the State Board of Health in
1962; the U.S. Public Health Service found that a sample of airborne dust from Libby contained
“40% tremolite asbestos.” Robert G. Kennan to Benjamin F. Wake, Industrial Hygiene Engineer,
Montana State Board of Health, April 13, 1962. State Board of Health reports in 1962, 1963, 1964,
and 1968 (both before and after W. R. Grace’s acquisition of Zonolite in 1963) show results exceed-
ing maximum allowable concentrations.
8. In 1959, an analysis of chest x-rays of 130 Zonolite workers showed 48 with abnormal chests,
approximately 37 percent. J. M. Cairns, M.D., to Raymond A. Bleich, Local Manager, Zonolite
Company, Libby, Montana, July 20, 1959. In 1965, another analysis showed that of 39 hourly
employees with over 10 years of experience, 18 (fully 46 percent) had abnormal chests. The 1969
study cited in the first paragraph states that rates of occurrence of abnormal chests were 45 percent
for those with 11 or more years of service. However, interpretations of these early studies did not
assert significant correlations between asbestos exposure and lung disease because high rates of
smoking among employees presented a confounding factor.
9. The first case posing a potential link between Libby asbestos exposure and disease is the diagnosis
of questionable asbestosis in Glenn Taylor. His case is described in Montana State Hospital—Galen
Campus Records,“Discharge Summary,” March 20, 1959. Taylor’s case is acknowledged by company
officials as a “positive indication that constant exposure to dust may be catching up with mill
employees” and “that a problem may exist.” R. A. Bleich to J. A. Kelley, April 22, 1959. Taylor died
in 1960. In 1964 several additional cases emerged. The case of Eitel Ludwig is described in Woodrow
Nelson, M.D., to Maryland Casualty Company, February 14, 1964. The case of Dennis Cleary is
addressed in C. A. Pratt to J.A. Kelley, General Manager,Zonolite Division, April 2, 1964. A spirom-
etry test of 140 Zonolite employees that year showed that 21 percent displayed “definite pneumo-
coniotic changes,” and that “the measured respiratory dysfunction in the positive group is of such
severity that I would conclude that a serious hazard from pneumoconiosis exists to the employees
at Libby.” Dr. W. Nelson, “Spirometry Tests, Libby Zonolite Employees,” 1964, in author’s posses-
sion.
10. Several letters circulated among W. R.Grace managers in late 1968 and 1969 on these issues, as they
deliberated about how to respond to inquiries from public health agencies and about potential pub-
lic concern about products made with Libby vermiculite. N. F. Bushell to R. W. Sterrett, General
Manager, Zonolite Division, December 10, 1968; R. E. Schneider to “Distribution List,” December
332 RHETORIC & PUBLIC AFFAIRS
13, 1968; R. E. Schneider to R. M. Vining, March 3, 1969; H. A. Brown to R. M. Vining, October 15,
1969, in author’s possession.
11. Even an abbreviated list of the federal and state agencies that failed in their oversight of operation
and reclamation of the mine would include: Montana State Board of Health, Montana Department
of Environmental Quality, Montana Department of State Lands, U.S. Public Health Service,
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Occupational Safety and Health
Administration, the Bureau of Mines, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, and the
Environmental Protection Agency.
12. Schneider, “A Town Left to Die.”
13. M. Jimmie Killingsworth and Jacqueline S. Palmer, Ecospeak: Rhetoric and Environmental Politics in
America (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992).
14. James Jasinski, “The Status of Theory and Method in Rhetorical Criticism,” Western Journal of
Communication 65 (2001): 249–70.
15. M. Jimmie Killingsworth and Jacqueline S. Palmer,“The Discourse of ‘Environmentalist Hysteria,’”
Quarterly Journal of Speech 81 (1995): 1–19.
16. Killingsworth and Palmer, “The Discourse of ‘Environmentalist Hysteria,’” 3.
17. Phaedra Pezzullo, “Performing Critical Interruptions: Stories, Rhetorical Invention, and the
Environmental Justice Movement,” Western Journal of Communication 65 (2001): 1–25.
18. Caitlin Wills Toker,“Debating ‘What Ought To Be’: The Comic Frame and Public Moral Argument,”
Western Journal of Communication 66 (2002): 72.
19. Michael R. Edelstein, Contaminated Communities: The Social and Psychological Impacts of
Residential Toxic Exposure (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1988), 75.
20. Phil Brown, Steve Kroll-Smith, and Valerie J. Gunter, “Knowledge, Citizens, and Organizations: An
Overview of Environments, Diseases, and Social Conflict,” in Illness and the Environment: A Reader
in Contested Medicine, ed. Steve Kroll-Smith, Phil Brown, and Valerie J. Gunter (New York: NYU
Press, 2000), 16.
21. Sylvia Noble Tesh, Uncertain Hazards: Environmental Activists and Scientific Proof (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 2000).
22. Tesh, Uncertain Hazards, 110.
23. Lawrence Buell, “Toxic Discourse,” Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 661.
24. Edelstein, Contaminated Communities, 129.
25. Edelstein, Contaminated Communities, 81.
26. Fred Setterberg and Lonny Shavelson, Toxic Nation: The Fight to Save Our Communities from
Chemical Contamination (New York: Wiley, 1993), 265–66.
27. Anne Teresa Demo, “The Guerilla Girls’ Comic Politics of Subversion,” Women’s Studies in
Communication 23 (2000): 133–56; Kimberly A. Powell, “The Association of Southern Women for
the Prevention of Lynching: Strategies of a Movement in the Comic Frame,” Communication
Quarterly 43 (1995): 86–99.
28. See Helene A. Shugart, Catherine Egley Waggoner, and D. Lynn O’Brien Hallstein, “Mediating
Third-Wave Feminism: Appropriation as Postmodern Media Practice,” Critical Studies in Media
Communication 18 (2001): 194–210. However, these authors conceptualize juxtaposition as syn-
onymous with postmodern pastiche, a practice much different from those analyzed in this study
and that of Demo and Powell. Further research might consider how juxtaposition functions dif-
ferently in relation to different audiences, purposes, subject matter, situations, or other rhetorical
elements.
EXPOSING ASBESTOS CONTAMINATION IN LIBBY, MONTANA 333
29. Demo, “Guerilla Girls,” 147, 149.
30. Buell, “Toxic Discourse,” 651.
31. Buell, “Toxic Discourse,” 651.
32. James S. Ettema and Theodore L. Glasser, Custodians of Conscience: Investigative Journalism and
Public Virtue (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).
33. Ettema and Glasser, Custodians of Conscience, 115.
34. Ettema and Glasser, Custodians of Conscience, 115.
35. Denise M. Bostdorff, “Making Light of James Watt: A Burkean Approach to the Form and Attitude
of Political Cartoons,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 73 (1987): 44.
36. Although scholars typically have identified particularly clever and deliberate “misnamings,” puns,
and metaphors as examples of perspective by incongruity, the factual juxtapositions of institutional
discourse and conflicting evidence that I have identified share the rhetorical function of those
tropes.
37. Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose, 3d ed. (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1954), 309.
38. Schneider, “A Town Left to Die.”
39. Schneider, “A Town Left to Die.”
40. Schneider, “A Town Left to Die.”
41. Schneider, “A Town Left to Die.”
42. Ettema and Glasser argue that this use of an external source to provide a moral judgment con-
tributes to the “objectification” of moral standards. By invoking someone else’s moral judgment,
journalists “attempt to transform moral claims into empirical claims so that ultimately the evalua-
tive standards used to appraise the transgression appear as empirically unambiguous as the evi-
dence used to document its existence. By the logic of this process the moral order is made fact, and
fact can be reported with detachment.” Ettema and Glasser, Custodians of Conscience, 71.
43. Andrew Schneider, “While People Are Dying, Government Agencies Pass Buck,” Seattle Post-
Intelligencer, November 19, 1999. Accessed July 9, 2001, available at http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/
uncivilaction/lib19.shtml.
44. Schneider, “While People Are Dying.”
45. Schneider, “While People Are Dying.”
46. Schneider, “While People Are Dying.”
47. Schneider, “While People Are Dying.”
48. Schneider, “While People Are Dying.”
49. Schneider, “While People Are Dying.”
50. Companies post bonds to the state in order to fund future reclamation projects. These projects are
intended to insure that, after a mine is closed, there is no ongoing hazard to the environment or to
human health.
51. Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), Transcript of Proceedings in Re: Montana
Department of Environmental Quality Bond Release Hearing for Kootenai Development Company,
Operating Permit 00010, December 1, 1999. Accessed January 30, 2002, available at
http://www.deq.state.mt.us/libby/libbyhearingcomments.asp.
52. Montana DEQ, Transcript of Proceedings.
53. Montana DEQ, Transcript of Proceedings.
54. Montana DEQ, Transcript of Proceedings.
334 RHETORIC & PUBLIC AFFAIRS
55. Montana DEQ, Transcript of Proceedings.
56. Montana DEQ, Transcript of Proceedings.
57. The long latency period of asbestosis means that people who have been exposed to asbestos may not
show signs of disease for several decades. As Norita Skramstad, Libby resident and wife of a former
miner, noted at the hearing,“[In] the first place, asbestosis doesn’t come to life, as a rule, maybe 10,
20, 30, 40 years, and it’s dormant and then it springs its ugly head up and it’s full-blown.” Montana
DEQ, Transcript of Proceedings.
58. Levine, Killing Libby; Richard Jerome and Vicki Bane, “The Avenger,” People, October 2, 2000,
70–75.
59. For a similar example, see Michael Reich, “Environmental Politics and Science: The Case of PBB
Contamination in Michigan,” American Journal of Public Health 73 (1983): 302–13.
60. Ettema and Glasser, Custodians of Conscience, 127.
61. Killingsworth and Palmer, Ecospeak, 8–10.
62. Killingsworth and Palmer, Ecospeak, 8–10.
63. Robert Miraldi, “Introduction: Why the Muckrakers Are Still with Us,” in The Muckrakers:
Evangelical Crusaders, ed. Robert Miraldi (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2000), xiv.
64. Ettema and Glasser, Custodians of Conscience, 196.
EXPOSING ASBESTOS CONTAMINATION IN LIBBY, MONTANA 335
