Pleas and Protests

Letters from the week of February 27, 2003

A A A Comments Thursday, Feb 27 2003

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Dave Carpenter
Tempe

Rock Steady

Safety factor: The Arizona Rock Products Association wishes to thank New Times for bringing a critical issue to the front burner – the safety of our employees and neighbors relative to possible asbestos exposure ("Dust Up in Sun City," Amy Silverman, January 30). We hope that any organizations that may possess verifiable information about such exposure will make that known to all concerned as soon as possible. If an exposure does exist, this could affect the health of our workers and the ability for them to support their families.

Reported rates of mesothelioma in the zip code areas corresponding to the areas of Sun City identified in the New Times article are only paralleled by those areas of similar retirement populations in eastern Maricopa County: Leisure World, the Farnsworth retirement communities, Sun Lakes and others. We encourage further testing and refinement of the data sets to find out why.

The Arizona Rock Products Association along with our members are firmly committed to ongoing safety training and thoughtful environmental oversight on many issues, and your article is a help.

Russell Bowers
Executive Director
Arizona Rock Products Association