New Details in Investigation of Sick Iron Range Miners

By Alison Gonzalez

Published on December 10, 2007

According to the report spearheaded by the Minnesota Department of Health, nearly a quarter of the 58 miners who were diagnosed with mesothelioma were employed at the mines for less than one year. The rest of them worked the mines for 30 years or more.

The affected miners were employed at six of the seven mines in the Iron Range, including the Conwed Corporation plant in Cloquet, which manufactured asbestos ceiling tiles. According to the study, the rate of developing mesothelioma in the area around Cloquet is four times higher than anywhere else in Minnesota.

In addition, all of the 58 miners were men who worked at the Iron Range between the 1930s and 1980s. In all but one of the cases, the miners developed mesothelioma 30 years after they began working in the mines.

Although the latest report offers new background information to the investigation, researchers are years away from determining how the workers developed the deadly cancer.

The health department plans to conduct more studies to determine if there were any external factors that may have caused the miners to develop mesothelioma, including analyzing their death certificates to find differences in their causes of death.

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