Fatal Deception : The Terrifying True Story of How Asbestos is Killing America [Paperback]

Michael Bowker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 26, 2003

STILL LEGAL, STILL LETHAL

Most Americans mistakenly believe asbestos was banned long ago. In fact, it is still legal and can still kill you. Its microscopic fibers cause painful and incurable diseases.

Despite being outlawed in nearly every other industrialized country, asbestos remains a legal component of more than three thousand common products in the United States. These include toasters, washers/dryers, ovens, building supplies, and automobile brakes. Our confusion about asbestos is no accident.

Fatal Deception is a chilling exposé of the asbestos industry's successful seventy-year campaign to hide the deadly effects of its products from the American people. The stakes are high -- tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. Michael Bowker rips the cover off the decades of deceit, including the treachery in Libby, Montana, site of the most deadly environmental disaster in U.S. history. He also unveils a startling and ongoing cover-up at Ground Zero -- where thousands of New Yorkers may still be suffering from exposure to dangerous levels of asbestos fibers.

Compelling, enraging, and very timely, Fatal Deception is not just a fascinating story, it is a plea to the government and to the American people to help sponsor research into asbestos-related diseases -- and a call to arms to ban asbestos now.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Journalist Bowker’s riveting, anecdotal look at the damage done by mining and manufacturing companies who denied the harmful effects of asbestos might have been titled "Evil Incorporated." Focusing largely on a vermiculite mine in bucolic Libby, Montana, Bowker shows a business that put its bottom line over its employees’ health. Interviews with victims of asbestos poisoning and their survivors are interspersed with EPA reports, company memos and other sources, as Bowker charts asbestos’s history, from its identification as a "miracle mineral" to the first signs that it might be dangerous, to the government’s ineffectual policies and various companies’ decisions not to inform its workers of the health risks it posed. As one asbestos plant exec is alleged to have said, it was "the company’s policy to let workers continue on the job until they quit work because of asbestosis or died of other asbestos-related disease." Worker after worker describes how he was never told that the dust he encountered daily was poisonous: "The asbestos was whitish-gray and my hair was pure white after work. We never wore any protective gear, except the little paper masks they gave us," said one worker who now has asbestosis. The personal stories make for a sad and gripping read, as Bowker, in classic muckraking style, gives voice to many who suffer from long-term exposure to asbestos and argues for a ban on asbestos products in the U.S.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Inside Flap

Fatal Deception

"It's shocking to me that hundreds of thousands of people are dying of asbestos-related disease across this country but most people don't know a thing about it," says Chris Weis, an asbestos coordinator for the Environmental Protection Agency. Medical evidence dating back to 1899 has shown that asbestos is a slow but steady killer, even though world governments, including our own, and the popular media have long bought into the idea that a little asbestos won't hurt you. In fact, a single microscopic spear-shaped asbestos fiber lodged in a victim's lung can cause myriad fatal reactions. Physicians estimate that exposure to asbestos will eventually kill millions of Americans. They will die of asbestosis, mesothelioma, tremolite poisoning, or cancer of the esophagus, colon, or stomach.

In 1989, the EPA finally did ban the manufacture, importation, processing, and distribution of commercial asbestos-- but the ban didn't hold. Asbestos is big business, rivaling tobacco in its profitability. By 1991, powerful corporate lobbyists had succeeded in having the ban overturned. Today, asbestos remains an ingredient in more than three thousand products on sale here in the United States and many more that are exported to developing nations around the globe.

In Fatal Deception, Michael Bowker details the gritty struggle for justice in Libby, Montana, site of the most lethal environmental disaster in U.S. history. Bowker also tracks the cover-up that has led to the exposure of more than 100 million Americans to the potentially lethal fibers that still exist in countless homes and in more than a million public buildings and offices. Among these are the World Trade Center, which contained hundreds of thousands of pounds of asbestos. Bowker makes the case that the owners of the vermiculite mine in Libby, and the asbestos industry in general, took terrible advantage of employees, who rarely were told of their peril.

At least fifty American companies have already filed for bankruptcy due to asbestos lawsuits, and jury awards by some estimates may reach a staggering $200 billion. By establishing the serious threat of asbestos once and for all, Fatal Deception is an urgent appeal to cut our collective losses and ban asbestos now.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Bowker is an investigative journalist who specializes in telling the human stories behind today's health, science, and environmental issues. He has written four books and hundreds of articles for a variety of publications, including the Los Angeles Times, Outside magazine, and the San Francisco Chronicle. He lives in Placerville, California.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone; Revised edition (August 26, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743251431
• ISBN-13: 978-0743251433
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #421,533 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #55 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Exercise & Fitness > Injury Prevention

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Warning: This Book May Be Hazardous to Your Blood Pressure., June 1, 2003

By 

Karin Hofland "Mystery author, Sacrificial Lamb" (Grass Valley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fatal Deception: The Untold Story of Asbestos (Hardcover)

Let me say right up front that I am a steadfast supporter of the free market. However, it serves neither the free market nor humanity when giant corporations are run by people who are no better than mass murderers. Exaggeration? Read this book and see if you still think so. I read "Fatal Deception" because a friend of mine and his wife acquired a vacation cabin in Libby, Montana a few years back. When newspaper reports began appearing about the widespread asbestos poisoning there, I asked if that was the same town. "Yep," he replied with a disgusted sigh. "We call it our own little Three Mile Island, Montana." (Fortunately, the relative who'd given them the cabin later demanded it back.)

The straightforward language, excellent pacing, and suspense-building structure of "Fatal Deception" make it a hard book to put down. Author Michael Bowker skillfully weaves heartwrenching victims' stories with damning excerpts from documents proving that for over sixty years the asbestos industry and the U.S. government concealed scientific evidence that would have prevented thousands of agonizing deaths. At least as far back as the 1930s, industry higher-ups knew that exposure to asbestos was extremely dangerous. Yet not only did they fail to warn their workers, they brazenly lied and assured them all that dust they were breathing and taking home on their clothes was harmless. Faced with growing medical evidence to the contrary, the asbestos companies conspired in a long-lasting cover-up that successfully hid the truth from the public so that asbestos workers and their families wouldn't discover the dangers to which they were exposing themselves. The industry had help in this cover-up, of course, from good old Uncle Sam.

"Fatal Deception" is not merely a sickening portrait of coldblooded corporate greed, but a wake-up call that vividly illustrates why the U.S. government will never behave with integrity until Americans stop electing politicians willing to prostitute themselves to whichever special-interest groups stick the most money down their pants. Angry? You bet I am. By the time you finish this book, you will be, too.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Profits Over People, February 19, 2003

By 

Michael Brown (Arlington, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fatal Deception: The Untold Story of Asbestos (Hardcover)

Michael Bowker has done a thorough and compelling job of telling how asbestos has ravaged the American work force in the past half
century. 'Fatal Deception' not only provides an insider's look at the history of this dangerous mineral, but wraps it around an epic disaster which has been occurring for decades in the small town of Libby, Montana. I know this story, because I have produced a documentary on the town called 'Dust to Dust', which Michael Bowker has generously credited in his book. 'Fatal Deception' takes the reader behind the headlines and reveals the disbelief EPA investigators had until confronted with the awful truth of Libby.
The book is like a good suspense novel, but unfortunately, the story is all too real.
I highly recommend it.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars READ this book late at night with the lights on!, January 18, 2003

By 

Neil F. Thorson (MARYSVILLE, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fatal Deception: The Untold Story of Asbestos (Hardcover)

Yes, in a way this IS a horror story! I met the author of this book shortly before it was published or I probably would have missed the book completely. I am very glad I did not miss it. "Fatal Deception" is easily read and absorbed and is a frightening look at this country's and the world's attitude about asbestos. Sadly, asbestos has & will kill many more people before anything is done about it. Why? Because it is usually a slow killer taking up to 40 years to show its' effects. Michael Bowker paints an alarming portrait of corporate murder and the cover-up of this crime by not only the asbestos industry but the government-Democrats & Republicans. Especially frightening is the chapter about the 9-11 tragedy & the asbestos from the WTC that will kill as many - or more - people as the initial disaster. Even more telling; the fact that the EPA cleaned their NY offices for asbestos contamination in full "Space Suit" gear but left other offices to fend for themselves. Sadly, it will probably take an Erin Brokovitch-type movie to move the crisis to the forefront of the American mind but this book is an excellent start.