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COPYRIGHT 2002 The News & Observer
Byline: Anne Saker
Apr. 21--PLYMOUTH, N.C.--The snowstorm swirled around Grover Barber and Mack Henry Leggett, spotting their clothes with flecks of paper and bits of insulation. The boilers roared, the turbines howled, and the dust fell everywhere, twinkling in the lights, settling, stirring back up again. The sun could shine and the rain could pour on Plymouth, but inside the town's paper mill on the banks of the Roanoke River, every day brought a snowstorm.
Though that day in 1982 was like most others at the mill, Barber remembered that particular snowstorm because of something his old friend Leggett said. They stood together watching men on ladders spray compressed air over the huge paper machines to blow down the dust. Other men pushed brooms to clear the mill floor. They could never get all the dust, but they chased it anyway. Leggett turned to Barber and said, You know, I heard this stuff gives you cancer, and Barber laughed. Sure, it'll eat your heart out! Honey, it's only dust. If it was bad, they would have said so. They would have told us. It's just asbestos.
Leggett said, Yeah, maybe you're right, and they went back to work. Barber, Leggett and hundreds of other workers at the Plymouth mill considered themselves fortunate. They worked for Weyerhaeuser Co., a giant in the timber industry. Weyerhaeuser paychecks lifted two generations of their families into the middle class, and the Weyerhaeuser tree emblem adorned their clothes, their trucks, their homes. The company had always taken care of them, and they expected that it always would.
But Weyerhaeuser officials knew something important that the workers didn't: The tiny, light asbestos fibers in the snowstorms that their employees lived through every day had long been known to cause lung damage and cancer.
Internal company documents show that Weyerhaeuser knew at least since 1972 that it had significant levels of exposure in virtually all its paper and pulp mills, including Plymouth. In 1974, the company created a program to monitor asbestos-related health effects in its workers. But the documents also indicate that for decades, Weyerhaeuser officials did not explain to workers the hazards of inhaling asbestos and did little to reduce their exposure. Today, dozens of current Plymouth workers and retirees have fallen ill. Some have contracted asbestosis, in which the lungs lose the elasticity they need to work properly. Others have died from asbestos-related ailments, including cancer. In the past four years, about 350 workers and retirees have filed workers' compensation claims against Weyerhaeuser, seeking payment for their exposure and for future medical bills. They gave similar reports of conditions in the mill: "The air would be thick with dust"; clothes would be "filthy and nasty"; "couldn't see across the room sometimes"; "as though he had been in a snowstorm."
Thousands of companies of all sizes nationwide have been forced to confront the problems that the widespread use of asbestos has caused. Weyerhaeuser, based in Federal Way, Wash., is ranked No. 140 on this year's Fortune 500 list of the nation's largest companies. In North Carolina, Weyerhaeuser owns more than 500,000 acres of timberland and operates 10 sales offices or major factories, including a pulp plant in New Bern and a lumber mill in Greenville. Travelers on U.S. 64 can see the Plymouth mill from the road, about a mile away. The massive facility employs about 1,500 people in 20 buildings sprawling over 350 acres. Every year, the mill manufactures about 900,000 tons of computer paper, absorbent pulp for disposable diapers and packaging such as corrugated cardboard. In at least 44 of the workers' compensation claims out of the Plymouth mill, Weyerhaeuser has acknowledged its employees contracted asbestosis. The N.C. Industrial Commission, the state agency that rules on workers' compensation issues, has ordered the company to pay those claims and 22 others. In addition, Weyerhaeuser agreed to pay a penalty to the workers for violating regulations governing levels of asbestos in the mill. Though Weyerhaeuser conceded responsibility for the illness, the company is still appealing the 66 cases to challenge the law used to decide them. Officials for Weyerhaeuser in North Carolina and Washington state declined to discuss asbestos or the situation at...
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