Mesothelioma

Ball said even with the increased overall cancer rate, it is not clear that the plants are at fault.

For instance, researchers had no information about how many of the area's residents smoked cigarettes, which is another key risk factor for lung cancer.

Another big gap in the data is that they don't include the people most likely to have suffered the worst exposure: the workers.

Neither the EPA nor state health officials could find pay stubs or employee logs from the two plants that would have allowed them to track down people who worked there during 46 years of operation.

Draper resident Ralph Blevins took a $1.95-an-hour job at the Utah Lumber plant for about six months 45 years ago.

He has asbestosis, an incurable lung disease unique to asbestos exposure that hardens the lung and often makes breathing excruciating.

He was happy to hear about the study and the proposed outreach program.

"We've got to warn people about it," he said.

The environment agencies want to hear from other former employees and people who may have taken waste dust from the plant to use for improving their garden soil.

(Contact Judy Fahys at fahys(at)sltrib.com.) » email this page technorati Post new comment Your name: E...

"We have no way of assessing environmental exposure.

Our numbers are based on cases as they are diagnosed or by death certificates." Brown said statistics for Alpine, Amador and Calaveras counties are combined because of the counties' small populations.

Between 1999 and 2003, nine cases were reported, and most recently, between 2000 and 2004, seven cases were reported, she said.

"The cases are dwindling and this is to be expected because employers have gotten better at protecting people from occupational exposure," she said.

She said the numbers for Alpine, Amador and Calaveras counties are too small to draw any conclusions or make any comparisons with more populous areas.

Unlike smoking and lung cancer, Brown said, there is no straight correlation between exposure to asbestos and development of "We can't tell you for sure what your risk is for developing cancer from exposure to asbestos," she said.

"EPA measures risks of exposure but we can't translate that into expected cases of