Industrial Talc and R.T. Vanderbilt (Podcast)

In this podcast, Paul Kelley explains how asbestos exposure happened in R.T. Vanderbilt talc mines. Then, he talks about the companies that bought the talc powder and how their employees were exposed. Finally, he explains what to do if you have contracted mesothelioma due to asbestos exposure in talc mines.

John Maher: Hi, I am John Maher, and I’m here today with Paul Kelley. Paul is a partner with the Kentucky personal injury law firm Satterley & Kelley, which has over 45 years of collective experience in litigating mesothelioma and asbestos claims. Today, we’re talking about industrial talc and R.T. Vanderbilt. Welcome Paul.

Paul Kelley: Hi, John. How are you doing today?

John: Good, thanks. How are you?

Paul: Doing well.

What Is R.T. Vanderbilt?

John: What is R.T. Vanderbilt? What do they do?

Paul: R.T. Vanderbilt historically is a company that has mined and sold talc, predominantly for a couple of different products, the manufacture of tile and for the manufacture of paint products.

Asbestos Exposure in Talc Mining

John: Okay. How is R.T. Vanderbilt then related to mesothelioma cancer cases?

Paul: Well, unfortunately, R.T. Vanderbilt’s talc, which was mined in upstate New York, called the Gouverneur Talc Mines, R.T. Vanderbilt Talc was contaminated with asbestos. It takes a little bit of background concerning talc to completely understand this process, but talc is a natural rock.

It grows in the earth, and there are talc deposits all over the world. We have several in the United States. It gets mined, and lots of times, talc is mined, in areas where asbestos is also formed. Asbestos is just a rock, too. It’s a naturally occurring mineral. There are different forms of it, and it also gets mined in various parts of the world. There are talc mines that are contaminated with asbestos.

Terminology is important, but basically, when they go and they scoop the talc out of the earth, they are also scooping asbestos from those mines. They take the talc, and this is very simplistic, but it goes to a milling center, and it gets milled, and then they sell it. They package it and sell it to their customers.

Industries That Use Talc Powder From R.T. Vanderbilt

John: They grind it up into a powder, and then they package that up?

Paul: Absolutely right. During that process, when they’re grinding up the talc, there definitely is asbestos that is included in that process. When they sell it to the customers, the customers are getting a product that contains not only talc, but also contains asbestos.

R.T. Vanderbilt has operated these talc mines in New York, I think maybe going back to the 20s or 30s, but certainly 40s, 50s, and all the way into the 2000s. I think they finally stopped operating that talc mine within the last 10, 15 years. They sold to the tile industry companies that manufactured floor tile, ceiling tile. They sold to the paint industry. A lot of industrial paints would use the talc for various purposes. It was a heat-resistant material. Sometimes it was important in industrial plants to have some sort of heat resistance.

Sometimes they sold talc to places that needed to use it as a lubricant. Let’s take a company that manufactures steel products that would be molded, or plastic products that would be molded. They would use the talc to dust the molds, so when the product came out, it didn’t stick to the metal. Unfortunately, there have been a number of people, and when I say a number, I mean dozens of people who worked in the Gouverneur R.T. Vanderbilt talc mines that have developed mesothelioma. Talc by itself, uncontaminated talc, there’s no evidence it causes mesothelioma, or any type of cancer.

However, talc contaminated with asbestos has been proven to cause mesothelioma. Honestly, part of the proof is what’s occurred in New York, with RTV talc mines. That was one of the first locations, talc mine locations where it was really recognized that this was becoming a problem. Mesothelioma, it’s a very rare disease. There are only about 3,000 people in the United States that are diagnosed with that cancer each year. If you start to see more than one person diagnosed with that cancer who worked at the same place, it’s evidence that there may be a problem at that place. There may be a source of exposure other than at that place, because it’s very rare for one location to have more than one mesothelioma, if any.

Asbestos Exposure at R.T. Vanderbilt Talc Mines

John: There’s so few cases that it would just be a huge coincidence that you’d have two people working in the same place that would get it.

Paul: It really would be, unless they were exposed there. With respect to the R.T. Vanderbilt talc mines, by the early 2000s, there were published studies of at least 10 people who had worked at the Gouverneur talc mine who had been diagnosed with mesothelioma.

Scientists started to conduct more research, and ultimately concluded that they received that diagnosis as a result of the work that they performed in that mine, and with respect to the milling process. In addition to that, certainly people that have used R.T. Vanderbilt’s talc to manufacture the products that we’ve discussed, the paint products, the talc products, the things that the talc was put into, they’ve been diagnosed with the disease as well. Again, these are situations where the only known exposure was to talc.

R.T. Vanderbilt will disagree, they’ve fought these cases for years. If I filed a new one today, they would deny it aggressively, and vehemently deny and defend the case. I believe that the evidence is on our side, that its talc contains asbestos, and that it has caused dozens, if not hundreds of people to contract mesothelioma and other asbestos cancers.

Industrial Talc Vs. Talcum Powder

John: Now, you mentioned that what R.T. Vanderbilt mined was what we’re calling industrial talc. It was sold to other companies for various uses. Is there any difference between that industrial talc and what we might call commercial talc, that we think of as talcum powder, or body powder?

Paul: I really don’t think so. I don’t think that there is much of a difference, really. Now, I will preface this by saying, as far as I know, R.T. Vanderbilt has only sold its talc to industry, for some of the products that we’ve talked about. That having been said, really, the predominant difference between industrial talc and cosmetic or commercial talc, if we want to make that difference, is the milling process.

They mill it a little bit differently. They’re probably a little bit less concerned with the purity of an industrial talc versus a cosmetic talc, because it’s not intended to go onto somebody’s body. There have been other instances, other companies that have been involved in talc mining, where talc from the same mines have been sold for both purposes, sold for cosmetic talc to be put in body powders and things like that, and then sold to industry.

They’ll maybe suggest that, “We mine different areas of the talc for industrial purposes, and different areas for cosmetic,” but that’s really just an argument. It really has to do with the milling process and what they’re willing for the final product to be in terms of other elements that are still within the talc. For cosmetic talcum powders, they want it to be as pure as it can, we’ve talked about this in other contexts, that contain asbestos, but they process it differently. With industrial talc, they’re less concerned about other elements, and other constituents in the talc, because its purpose is just a lot different than talc sold for cosmetic purposes.

Who Was Exposed to Asbestos Due to R.T. Vanderbilt?

John: You mentioned that obviously, the miners who worked for R.T. Vanderbilt at the talc mine would’ve been potentially exposed to asbestos. Were other people who worked for R.T. Vanderbilt potentially exposed as well? Who else used this industrial talc product that they made?

Paul: In terms of the people that worked for R.T. Vanderbilt, it’s not going to be limited to the miners. There wasn’t anything special about the miners that made them particularly susceptible to developing disease. It’s people that worked at the mine, and they’d have a lot of people that worked at the mine for various reasons.

You have all that equipment there that is used to conduct the mining, and they would have electricians, maintenance folks and mechanics that worked on the equipment. They’re there all day, every day. They’re exposed to the same things. You certainly would have the supervisors and managers, product designers and folks that are spending a lot of time at the plant, or at the mine, and then people that were involved out of the mine in the milling process.

Again, we talked about it, that product ultimately is going to be ground up and processed, and sold. It’s got to be packaged. People that are involved in the shipping process, typically customers that bought this talc, they bought so much of it, it didn’t go out in a semi-truck. It went out in a rail car. They put tons, tens of tons into rail cars when they shipped it out. I know people are familiar with the gondola cars that don’t have a top on them, just dump it in like it’s a big basket, and that’s what they would do.

Somebody’s got to process all of that, and make sure that the paperwork lines up. They’re making these shipments every day, every week.

John: I think it gets shipped in those paper bags, almost like a bag of cement. I think of when I get a bag of cement, you get that cement dust all over your hands because it’s not sealed properly. It just leaks out all over the place. The people who are handling those on a daily basis, and tossing them into the backs of trucks or something like that, there’s got to be a lot of dust flying up in the air.

Paul: Absolutely. They sold and packaged those in different ways. Some of these plants bought so much of it, they just literally put the talc itself into a rail car, and then it would get to a facility, and that facility would have some sort of a receptacle to put it all in. Other places would get it in barrels, they’d get it in bags. These bags weren’t intended to keep out dust, people had to put the material in the bags. There were a lot of different ways, and it wasn’t just limited to the miners.

Now, the studies have been related to miners, because they’re the easiest to study for sure, but guaranteed, there have been numerous people that have been involved in the process, that have been exposed and developed cancer as it relates to R.T. Vanderbilt employees.

Again, all of the customers who used the product, and we’ve talked about it I think in some prior podcasts, John, there was a company in Kentucky, Lawrenceburg, Kentucky called Florida Tile. Florida Tile made a lot of tile products, floor tile products, and they had a big plant here, probably about 40 miles from where I’m sitting right now. They made lots and lots and lots and lots of tile, and they used hoppers to pour talc into, and it manufactured the products, and they mixed it up with other ingredients, for decades, it’s all they did all day, every day. It was a tile plant.

The people who mixed the talc with the other ingredients were heavily exposed. People who inspected the product when it came in, they had people at that plant who tested, they did their own purity checks. They’d have to take scoops of the product, take it into a very small, enclosed area, pour it into beakers and other pieces of equipment, so they could make sure that it met their purity standards. Those people were exposed.

We had people who were inspectors of the final tile products, and they frequently broke the tile, there was exposure when that happened. They cut the tile to make sure that it did what it needed to do, and they were heavily exposed. We have people who worked in industrial plants where they used paint, and so again, they would pour bags or barrels of talc into the paint, and mix it up. When you’re pouring it in, people are getting heavily exposed from that process.

Like every other asbestos product, people were exposed in the home, from their family members who worked in a tile facility, or worked in a paint facility, or worked at the talc mine. They’re exposed to the asbestos contaminated clothing that they brought home, and brought in their car, their vehicle. It was one of those things that it was a really well-kept secret by industry. I hate to single out R.T. Vanderbilt, because quite frankly, the entire talc industry, but we have unique experience with R.T. Vanderbilt.

We filed a lawsuit against it several years ago. My partner, Joe Satterley, took it to trial, got a verdict, a very nice verdict. One of R.T. Vanderbilt’s defenses was that, “Our product doesn’t contain asbestos, never has contained asbestos,” and they advertise it. Any of their customers that contact them to ask, they say, “Yeah, it doesn’t contain asbestos.” They don’t tell them that there’s a controversy over it. They don’t tell them, “A whole bunch of people that worked at our mines developed mesothelioma.”

Did R.T. Vanderbilt Warn the Public About Asbestos?

John: Right, it’s not like there’s a label on the box that says, “Contains asbestos.”

Paul: Or even, “Might contain asbestos,” or, “Some people say it contains asbestos.” They just say it doesn’t, and it doesn’t. There’s actually a good published opinion in Kentucky that my law firm was involved in, where the court strongly held R.T. Vanderbilt accountable for failing to at least advise customers and the public about the potential for asbestos contamination in its product.

It’s been something that’s been widespread with respect to all of the various talc companies that I’ve dealt with over the last 10 years or so, 15 years, they never admit that their product contained it, and they don’t tell anybody that it could, and people have been exposed unknowingly over the years. One of the big problems that we’ve seen is, it used to be that if a woman in particular showed up to a doctor’s office, and ultimately, the physicians diagnosed that woman with mesothelioma, a lot of doctors would have no clue what caused it, because historically, women didn’t work in occupational settings where there was asbestos exposure, and even then, who didn’t work as a traditional insulator, electrician, miller of asbestos. Lots of times, doctors didn’t know.

Well, the answer clearly is, talc contained asbestos for years, and there wasn’t widespread public information available for any physicians to ask the question. A lot of causes of mesothelioma went unknown or undetected because of the talc industry’s not only withholding of information, but active disinformation that it put out there. I didn’t necessarily mean for this to turn into a preach session on that, but it’s just a fact. Their denial that their products contain asbestos has led to countless deaths in the United States. It’s not unique to R.T. Vanderbilt, R.T. Vanderbilt just happens to be who we’re talking about today.

Does R.T. Vanderbilt Still Mine Talc?

John: Right. What’s the status of R.T. Vanderbilt now, as it relates to talc mining? It seems as though the Gouverneur Talc Mine was closed, I believe, in 2008. Is that correct?

Paul: Yeah, the exact year, I’m not exactly sure of, but it was around that time frame. Of course, they’ll tell you that it wasn’t because of lawsuits, or any health-based reasons. It was just a business decision. I think that we can safely assume that they got out because it was no longer profitable because of prior decisions that had been made.

By the way, there was a safe way that this product could have been used, for sure. It’s not your traditional asbestos product, and I think that people in the mines could have been protected. People in these manufacturing plants could have been protected, but they had to have the knowledge. R.T. Vanderbilt has stopped mining talc, and it’s gotten into other things. The good news is, at least as it relates to that company and the people in that area, they’re no longer being exposed to asbestos from the Gouverneur Talc Mines.

Steps to Take If You Have Mesothelioma

John: If you were an employee of R.T. Vanderbilt, or you used their industrial talc at another site, another company, and now you have mesothelioma, or asbestosis, or lung cancer, what should you do next?

Paul: In Kentucky, we have a pretty harsh statute of limitations. We have to file our lawsuit within a year that you know or should know that you have a disease, and what caused your disease. Obviously, people know immediately when they’re diagnosed with mesothelioma, but sometimes it’s not obvious as to what caused it. Feeding off what I said a moment ago, about how actively R.T. Vanderbilt and the talc industry withheld information concerning the constituent of its product.

We get people all the time, John, that worked as an accountant their entire life, or worked in some white collar job where they just had no occupational exposure, and nobody in their family did either, but maybe they worked at a tile plant for a period of time, and they just don’t know. That’s why it’s important to contact a lawyer who does know.

If somebody walked in my office today and said, “Mr. Kelley, I haven’t the slightest idea where I was exposed to asbestos, but for five years in the 1980s, I worked at this plant in Lawrenceburg, and I made tile.” Well, I know the answer to the question, and we can hit the ground running, and put a case on for you.

That’s important, because time is of the essence, and it’s not just because of that statute of limitations. Unfortunately, the average life expectancy of someone with mesothelioma is only about 12 to 18 months from the date of diagnosis. I hate to use terms like wasting time, because time is so precious, but time can’t be wasted. Unfortunately, mesothelioma is a terrible disease, and because the outcome is not good, it’s important for people to also try to learn all of their medical options.

Depending on age, stage of diagnosis, there’s a lot of different medical options. I think that it’s important for people to talk to their doctors about all possible treatments, to consider going to some of the national cancer treatment centers that specialize in mesothelioma, because there’s a handful of those throughout the country.

Those two things, getting your medical situation under control and learning and determining your legal rights, they’re not mutually exclusive. They really have to be dealt with at the same time. I think it’s important to find a lawyer that has experience with these cases, has experience with the particular exposure that you have, and also somebody that you certainly feel comfortable with, and feels like that person is going to fight for you, and do everything that he or she can do to obtain the best possible result. I hate to say you’ve got to call a lawyer first, but it certainly has to be very high on the list. More than likely, there will be a recovery there for you and your family in the greatest time of need that any of you have ever had.

Contact Us to Get Help Today

John: All right. Well, that’s really great information, Paul. Thanks again for speaking with me today.

Paul: Thank you, John.

John: For more information about mesothelioma and asbestos exposure, you can visit the law firm of Satterley & Kelley at satterleylaw.com, or call (855) 385-9532.