Iron Resolve
5/8/2009
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The University's School of Public health is leading a vast partnership to discover why so man Iron Range taconite miners are dying of a brutal lung disease. |
By Greg Breining
The three men began working at the old Erie Mining company taconite plant near Hoyt Lakes, Minnesota, in the 1950s. All three retired more than 30 years later. Now two are dead from asbestos-related diseases and the other is crippled by asbestosis.
Kenneth Lerol, a retired mining mechanic, was shoveling snow at his Aurora, Minnesota, home in January 2008 when he suddenly became terribly winded. He went inside, rested awhile, and then went back to finish the job, only to fight for his breath again. By September he was dead from the lung disease mesothelioma.
In August 2007, Dorla Langfeld insisted that her husband, Winfred, a retired shovel operator, see a doctor for his persistent cough and unexplained weight loss. X-rays and a bronchoscopy revealed tumors in his lungs, under his sternum, and on his adrenal gland. He was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer due to asbestos. He died in August 2008.
Gene Olds, a retired millwright, was diagnosed with asbestosis and emphysema nine years ago (he quit smoking 20 years ago). Now his lung capacity is about 50 percent impaired and, while he doesn’t routinely use oxygen, he has little stamina.
“These are people I worked with, rode with, and knew. They’re not just statistics,” says Dave Trach, who worked at Erie Mining (later LTV) for 38 years and is now a representative for the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees. “We’ve got to find out what’s causing this. There’s something different here. And to me the only thing I can see that’s different from the rest of the United States or the rest of the state of Minnesota—the difference we have here is we’ve got that dust from the taconite.”
To get to the bottom of a puzzling number of cancer deaths on Minnesota’s Iron Range, a broad-based partnership led by the University of Minnesota School of Public Health has launched an ambitious $4.9 million investigation called the Minnesota Taconite Workers Lung Health Partnership. The investigation includes, beginning this spring, a health survey of some 2,000 retired and current miners and their spouses. Progress reports are being shared with Iron Range residents and the members of the partnership, a group of more than 35 agencies and organizations, including labor unions, mining companies, area hospitals, and government officials.
The three-year effort represents a far-ranging inquest into miners’ health issues, especially respiratory diseases. But at its heart is finding out why so many taconite miners are dying from the lung disease mesothelioma, an extremely rare and always fatal disease that for all practical purposes is caused by only one thing: exposure to asbestos.
Says Trach: “Whatever they find out this spring and this summer, I hope they develop some way to protect the guys that are working in the mines from that stuff.”
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