Getting back to the usual Friday musings  and house-keepings this week, but first a few post-scripts in the matter of the Eden/Lowell asbestos mine hullabaloo

First, it does not seem likely that the Department of Health could have successfully kept secret the controversial report that found a statistical “association” between living near the abandoned mine and getting asbestosis.

According to state officials, the report based on the Health Department study was going to be attached to the federal bankruptcy case against GAF Corporation, the successor to the company that last operated the mine. So it would have been available on the Internet to any reporter competent enough (or lucky enough) to find it, or to any one of a number of lawyers who would be happy to tell a reporter about it.

In that case, the story might have been not just the results of the study but the Department’s attempt to cover it up. One way or another, the study was going to get into the public domain.

Next, just to clear up any confusion about what description was intended for whom, the mention of people who “don’t know what they’re talking about”  did not refer to the two people quoted near the start of yesterday’s post-Rob Naramore of Lowell and Mary Walz of Hyde Park.

They may have been a little confused about the scientific rigor of statistics, but so are most of us. The folks who “don’t know what they’re talking about “are the ones who said they ate asbestos for breakfast every day for 50 years and it never did them any harm.

OK, I lied about the breakfast part. But several speakers at the community forums in Eden and Lowell said asbestos couldn’t do much harm because it hadn’t hurt them or their friends who’d been exposed to it.

Perhaps it had not. Some people can smoke two packs of cigarettes a day for 60 years and suffer few ill effects from it, too. But others get sick and die. Same with asbestos. The evidence that it is a health hazard is abundant. The evidence that it was found in greater-than-expected proportions in the area around the mine is significant, if tentative. Denial in such circumstances is ignorance.

Despite all the rancor, there was some evidence near week’s end that state officials and the local residents who were so angry at them might…well, not exactly kiss and make up, but at least talk civilly to one another about the situation.

Howard Manosh of Morrisville, who once operated the mine, suggested that the 13 towns in the area select representatives to consult regularly with officials of the Health and Environmental Conservation Departments. Both sides greeted the suggestion positively, and Manosh said Thursday he is getting together some local  people who are  “pretty diligent about what they’re doing” to meet from time to time with state officials.

There were two small mistakes on Tuesday, in the first of two posts about this controversy. The statistical study conducted by the Health Department covered a ten year period that ended six-not ten-years ago. And the report’s conclusions were based on a small number of occurrences of deaths and hospitalization, not on a small “sample.”  This was not a poll. “Sample” was the wrong word.

And a typo in yesterday’s post, in which “contracted the disease” came out “contacted…” I knew the right word, but typed the wrong one.

Expect more mistakes and less news in Vermont in the future. The jointly owned Rutland Herald and Barre-Montpelier Times-Argus announced Wednesday they will be laying off 14 workers, including one reporter and one editor.

Inside baseball of importance only to news junkies and folks in the business? Maybe not. Whoever Seth Godin is, he had a good point when he wrote in his blog: “I worry about the quality of a democracy when the state government or the local government can do what it wants without intelligent coverage. I worry about the abuse of power when the only thing a corrupt official needs to worry about is the TV news. I worry about the quality of legislation when there isn’t a passionate, unbiased reporter there to explain it to us.”

As Godin pointed out, this “intelligent coverage” by an “unbiased reporter” need not be in newspapers. In the future, more of it will be on web sites like this one. But this one is being done by one person, who is not a superman. One non-superman can help offset-but can not entirely compensate for-the cutbacks at several other news organizations.

That’s why I’m especially grateful to those of you who emailed me news tips, to those who sent donations (more of you are welcome to do that), and to Mark Johnson for once again having me on his radio program on WDEV.

Next week: From the Legislature.

Is living in Eden, Vermont, and environs dangerous to one’s health?

Possibly, is the apparent verdict of Dr. Wendy Davis, Vermont ‘s Health Commissioner, though she never put it quite that bluntly.

Nonsense, was the verdict Monday and Tuesday of hundreds of people who live thereabouts.

So it was that first in Eden and then in nearby Lowell, Davis, her counterpart Lara Pelosi of the Department of Environmental Conservation, and other state and federal officials confronted a whole lot of angry people, some of them shouting profanities while they scorned and ridiculed the scientists and executives.

Most of the angry people didn’t understand science or statistics. But they understood that they didn’t like the Health Department study finding an “association” between living near an abandoned asbestos mine and incidents of asbestosis, a chronic and sometimes fatal inflammatory disease.

It wasn’t just the report that they didn’t like. They didn’t like the Health Department, or the DEC or the federal Environmental Protection Agency or any other outsider who threatened to disrupt their lives and lower their property values. Seemingly without opposition, they agreed with Leslie White of Eden who said, “we’re getting the short end of the stick.”

They may be right. Even if the statistical analysis in the report turns out to be as inconsequential as its critics contend, having a state agency raise questions about the health of the neighborhood can only hold down property values.

Worse, the analysis might not be overstated. The sample on which the asbestosis-to-region “association” was based is tiny-five asbestosis deaths in the area over ten years, and two of them were men who worked at the mine.

But asbestosis is a rare disease. The population of the 13 towns is less than 17,000 people; statistically no deaths from the disease would be expected in the target area. Even the three who did not work in the mines caught the attention of the health statisticians. Beneath the local insistence that the report is a fraud could very well lie the concern that it is not. No wonder people are upset.

What transpired in the Northeast Kingdom was part theatre, part group therapy, and part culture clash. The angry locals were (with a few exceptions) articulate. But they were also proudly local, many of them proclaiming how long they and their families had lived in Orleans County, and they made no secret of how unimpressed they were by state and federal officials regardless of their credentials.

Credentials, if anything, seemed a disadvantage. The mood of both crowds was, “we don’t believe you,” though nobody actually said that, and “go home,” which somebody did.

Without doubt, the Health Department bears full responsibility for its credibility problem. The first version of the report it issued last November also found an “association” between living in one of the 13 towns within ten miles of the mine and incidents of lung cancer.

Whoops! That was wrong. The statisticians counted death certificates from Newport City, which , unlike the Town of Newport, is not inside the 10-mile radius. When the Department noticed the error, it issued a corrected version of the report last month. But talk about handing ammunition over to prospective adversaries. Nobody even had to ask, ‘How can you believe anything these folks say?’ for the question to hang in the air.

So intense were the sentiments against the officials and the report that the audiences applauded when questioners said they suspected that the whole enterprise-the findings of both environmental degradation and health hazard-was just a ploy so the state workers could keep their jobs and make money. When Pelosi responded to one question by pointing out that “nobody’s going to get rich,” one man shouted “bullshit” from his chair, to general approval.

Dr. Davis apologized for the mistake, saying she was “extremely sorry.” Not good enough for Leslie White, who said, “I think there needs to be more than apologies. You broadcast this all over the state. It affects us very personally, and it has been very unfair.”

It does affect them personally, financially and otherwise. The health officials may have caused the biggest backlash with their “association” findings. But it’s the state and federal environmental officials who talk about having the mine declared a Superfund site.

Asked to reply to a woman who said Superfund designation would mean “our property values going down,” Megan Cassidy of the EPA said that once Superfund work is completed in an area, its property values often go up, a de facto and not particularly candid way of saying that in the meanwhile, they’re likely to go down. On Superfund projects, “meanwhile,” can be a decade or more.

For the most part, the state and federal officials stood there and took their punishment, some of which was deserved, opting not to argue even when the questioners were confused and their comments downright wrong.

There was a fair amount of denial. Both at the microphones and in the corridors, many locals talked about how their relatives had worked in the mine for years and never got sick. One man went so far as to say, “I firmly believe that more people have been killed in Teddy Kennedy’s car than have died of asbestosis.”

Actually, no. In addition to the five deaths in the target area, 14 other Vermonters-of the nearly 600,000 who live in the rest of the state-died of the disease during the ten-year period of the study.

Dr. Davis made sure to point out that this ten year period is more than ten years old, that the report “spoke to historical exposure,” and that whatever danger may linger is probably diminished. The report, she insisted, did not establish a causal connection between the asbestos and the disproportionate number of deaths and illnesses. It was not a final report, she said, but a warning to do further studies, which are under way.

But she would never say-in fact, during a press briefing she decidedly refused to say-that local residents have nothing to worry about. Asked what she would tell parents of young children in the area, she replied, “I can’t say that there’s no risk.”

Nor would the DEC or EPA officials downplay the potential environmental dangers of the abandoned mine site, which is immense. It is a 1,540-acre project lapping the Eden-Lowell town lines. The mining went on for almost 90 years before it stopped in 1993. At least 29 million tons of asbestos tailings remain. Some of the asbestos has already leeched into nearby streams and wetlands. Unless the site is stabilized, they warned, more contamination is possible.

All this would be cost perhaps $200 million. Both the state and federal governments have sued the former mine owners, but no one thinks they have anything like $200 million in assets.

Right now, though, most of the controversy and most of the questions center around that Health Department report. With only a handful of deaths and only 14 reported hospital discharges involving asbestosis, did the Department make much out of little? Considering that, according to the Department’s own statements, the report is tentative, largely a signal to conduct further study, should it had been released at all?

Questions to be considered tomorrow.