Manufactured doubt and the EPA 2020 chrysotile asbestos risk assessment.

While all forms of asbestos have been determined to be carcinogenic to humans by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) as well as other authoritative bodies, the relative carcinogenic potency of chrysotile continues to be argued, largely in the context of toxic tort litigation. Relatively few epidemiologic studies have investigated only a single form of asbestos; however, one study that included an asbestos textile plant located in Marshville, North Carolina that processed chrysotile asbestos was used by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2020 to help inform the agency's chrysotile asbestos risk assessment. During the EPA proceedings toxic tort defense consultants submitted comments to the EPA docket and made public presentations asserting that the Marshville plant had processed amphibole asbestos types and should not be used for the chrysotile risk assessment. A detailed evaluation of defense consultant assertions and supporting information and a full assessment of the available information concerning asbestos types used at the Marshville plant was undertaken. The preponderance of evidence continues to support the conclusion that neither amosite nor crocidolite were likely to have been processed in the Marshville textile plant. Defense consultants' assertions about chrysotile use are not supported by the preponderance of evidence and constitute an example of manipulation of information to cast uncertainty and doubt rather than to seek truth and contribute to the body of scientific evidence.

The four most pernicious myths in asbestos litigation: Part I: safe chrysotile and idiopathic mesothelioma.

The now well documented phenomenon of "doubt science" has crept into litigation generally, but has had a particularly deleterious effect in asbestos litigation, giving rise to pernicious myths that are told and re-told every day in legal briefs and in court proceedings. Defendants routinely challenge the admissibility of testimony from plaintiffs' expert witnesses when those experts testify about certain key concepts in asbestos medicine and asbestos science. Defendants boldly proclaim plaintiffs' experts' opinions to be "junk science" and seek to have them precluded regardless of how well documented, well researched, well supported and well accepted those opinions are. This has become all too routine in asbestos litigation, where defendants predictably seek to preclude testimony about medical and scientific issues that have been settled for decades and that are not legitimately disputed outside of litigation by the unbiased scientific community of national and international regulatory agencies and scientific organizations.

The four most pernicious myths in asbestos litigation: Part II: safe thresholds for exposure and Tyndall lighting as junk science.

Part I of this survey confronted the first two Most Pernicious Myths in Asbestos Litigation: the supposed harmlessness of chrysotile asbestos; and so-called idiopathic mesothelioma. Part II discusses the pernicious notions of safe exposure thresholds for asbestos and the unreliability of Tyndall lighting. Defendants' attempts to preclude plaintiffs' experts from testifying about these generally accepted scientific facts are a disservice to the legal system and to plaintiffs who have been harmed by asbestos. These defense tactics attempt to deny reality and to spin scientific facts in order to keep them from the jurors' eyes and ears. This undermines the legal system and harms the integrity of the scientific enterprise. Defendants' efforts to manufacture "controversy" over previously uncontroversial facts are bald attempts to infect the legal process with junk "doubt science." The role of this type of "doubt science" is being steadily exposed as legitimate researchers resist the degradation of their disciplines and the scientific literature by unprincipled purveyors of this insidious brand of junk science.