The horrifying true story of the decades-long poisoning of a small town and the definitive expose of asbestos in America--told by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists who broke it. Death followed the vermiculite ore from the mine as closely as the asbestos fibers that contaminated it followed it far from Libby. Montana, all across the country to more than three hundred ore processing plants, and further yet, Today, in millions of homes, the hazardous material still rests, in attics and walls, to be sent into air, and lungs, with any disturbance. In Libby, even as the EPA struggles to clean up the toxic mess, some unknown number of the kids who show no sign of illness now, as they ride their bikes down quiet streets, or crowd boisterously into the Pizza Hut after a ball game, will have their lives destroyed by asbestos poisoning. That's what breaks Les Skramstad's heart, and what makes Gayla Benefield madder than a stepped-on snake. -from the Prologue. In a valley in Montana, the U.S.

has spent millions of,dollars removing toxic residue from a town that had lain pristine for ages. Until the last century, when the dust came down like a snowstorm. That dust turned a paradise into the worst of America's killing fields, a name at the top of the list that includes Love Canal and Woburn. A place now known to be deadlier than all the rest: Libby. An Air That Kills is told through the eyes of the men and women who fought back--among them, a woman who watched more than forty members of her family succumb to asbestos; a miner who worked there and carried the poison home; and an EPA investigator who battled not only one of the world's most powerful corporations but also his superiors inWashington. It is the first book to reveal how deeply asbestos has embedded itself into the texture of America: how many people have died or are dying; how the industry and government repeatedly ignored the danger; and how, for many.