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Originally Posted by NY65912
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“Well, sometimes in the mornings…stuff would be covered like your first snow…and you could go out and you could write on the cars or you could write on your toys and walk through the grass and it would leave your footprints going through the grass and it was just fun.” Deborah Ann Ketchem.
The “snow” Mrs. Ketchem described was actually asbestos dust escaping from the Johns-Manville plant and dumps. And it is this type of exposure to asbestos that has been found to cause asbestos-related diseases, such as mesothelioma. In fact, according to the New Jersey Department of Health Environmental Health Services, the mesothelioma rates in Somerset County (where the Manville plant was located) are approximately five times higher – 105 per million males and 21 per million females – than the average New Jersey rate and about seven times the national rate. These numbers include not only individuals who worked at the Manville plant, but also household members of workers and residents of the town.