Reply #34: recent NC plane crash, 3 WR Grace employees were killed

[seemslikeadream]

In the recent NC plane crash, 3 WR Grace employees were killed: Joseph Spiak, general manager of specialty vermiculite (including the highly toxic asbestos containing Zonolite), Paul Stidham, director of environmental health and safety, and Richard Lyons, global health and safety manager.


Crash ends promising lives in an instant
By Liv Osby
HEALTH WRITER
[e-mail]

Many were just starting their lives, like the two Clemson University graduate students, the Bob Jones University co-ed and the young father traveling with his adolescent daughter. Others, including the North Carolina computer salesman with two small children at home and three employees of W.R. Grace & Co., were just making a living when their US Airways plane flipped, crashed and burst into flames moments after takeoff Wednesday morning from Charlotte.

W.R. Grace & Co. veteran Richard Lyons was global health and safety manager at Grace Performance Chemicals in Cambridge, Mass. Lyons, 56, joined the company in 1969. Married with two children, he lived in Lynnfield, Mass.

Joseph Spiak, 46, also worked at the Cambridge site as general manager for specialty vermiculite (note: this includes the highly toxic, widely distributed brand of asbestos contaminated vermiculite marketed under the W.R. Grace brand name of Zonolite). A resident of Acton, Mass., he had been with Grace since 1981 and occasionally visited its Spartanburg facilities. He was married with two children.

Paul Stidham was a newcomer to the company, joining last July as director of environment health and safety for Grace's corporate headquarters in Columbia, Md. He and his wife, Dora, and their two young children made their home in Howard County, Va.

All three were on their way to a Grace mining plant in Enoree, S.C. "We are devastated and stunned by this tragic loss," said Grace CEO Paul Norris.
http://greenvilleonline.com/news/2003/01/08/2003010834140.htm



Published on Friday, August 4, 2000 in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Cheney's Firm Backed Bill To Limit Asbestos Liability
by Andrew Schneider and Lise Olsen

Dick Cheney and the giant energy company he will leave to run for vice president have contributed more than $150,000 to members of Congress who sponsored legislation that would limit the ability of workers to sue companies for asbestos exposure.
The Halliburton Co., an oil-field services company based in Dallas, and its subsidiaries have had about 273,300 suits filed against them since 1976 by workers suffering from asbestos-related disease. Many of those suits were filed before Cheney became chairman of the board and chief executive officer in 1995.

At the end of 1999, 107,650 suits for damages were still pending, including 46,400 new suits filed against the corporation last year, according to the firm's annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Cheney, 59, says he will resign Aug. 16 to concentrate on the Republican campaign.

Halliburton's political action committees and Cheney contributed $494,452 to congressional candidates from 1997 through mid-2000. Of that, $157,500 went to members of Congress who co-sponsored the asbestos legislation -- 59 Republicans and four Democrats.
more
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/080400-02.htm