Most Americans mistakenly believe asbestos was banned long ago. In fact, it is still legal and can still kill you. Its microscopic fibers cause painful and incurable diseases.

Despite being outlawed in nearly every other industrialized country, asbestos remains a legal component of more than three thousand common products in the United States. These include toasters, washers/dryers, ovens, building supplies, and automobile brakes. Our confusion about asbestos is no accident.

Fatal Deception is a chilling exposé of the asbestos industry's successful seventy-year campaign to hide the deadly effects of its products from the American people. The stakes are high -- tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. Michael Bowker rips the cover off the decades of deceit, including the treachery in Libby, Montana, site of the most deadly environmental disaster in U.S. history. He also unveils a startling and ongoing cover-up at Ground Zero -- where thousands of New Yorkers may still be suffering from exposure to dangerous levels of asbestos fibers.

Compelling, enraging, and very timely, Fatal Deception is not just a fascinating story, it is a plea to the government and to the American people to help sponsor research into asbestos-related diseases -- and a call to arms to ban asbestos now.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 8 reviews)

This terrifying "thriller" is all too true! Read, learn, and pray

My husband was diagnosed with Mesothelioma when he was 54. He was a healthy, active, white collar worker. He died five months after the first small sign of discomfort. You see, he had been exposed to asbestos on summer jobs between high school and college working with ceiling tiles, welding equipment, plumbing insulation, etc. He was also exposed to it on board an army transport ship from the asbestos-wrapped boilers. He was exposed in homes he purchased through the years and worked a little here or there to fix it up or make small repairs. He was never warned that anything contained asbestos. I've learned since that the slightest exposure can kill those whose dna is susceptible (15% of us). The rest of us are all susceptible to Asbestosis, the scarring of the lungs from constant exposure which depletes your oxygen until you don't have the strength to move about. This book reads like my favorite John Grisham novels, but it's frightening to learn what people can do to each other in the name of greed, fear, political pressure, etc. What happened in Libby has affected us all because they shipped out their products to our areas for use in our homes, schools, etc. By the time you finish reading this book, you no doubt will have the street smarts to help protect yourself from this and other types of exposures that can kill you or take away the quality of your life -- If you haven't been exposed already! It can take 10-50 years to get the first symptom. You also might make the rightful connection that your vote for representatives and presidents can choose people that support corporate profits without regard to human life in the name of the economy or in order to fill their own wallets from money they get from those corporate lobbiests. You won't be able to put this book down!
February 28, 2008

Bowker is good.

Great and insightful book into an industry with a dark past. I work in the abatement industry and found this book fascinating.
February 13, 2007

It can happen to you - it may have already!

This book, along with "An Air That Kills", should be required reading for everyone. The asbestos epidemic is just starting to escalate, and this book explains why it has been allowed to do so. Think your government cares? Think again! I've been a nurse for 30 years, and I never saw a case of asbestos disease until recently. In 2002 I was diagnosed with asbestos cancer (mesothelioma) as were six others in my community. The other six are all dead now, and I wait for the reaper to take me. I got my lethal exposure from a single home renovation project 30 years ago. I was unaware that any structure built in the 50's, 60's, 70's or 80's is packed with asbestos. So I went from sanding drywall to losing a lung and my life. No exposure is safe - the EPA knew this a quarter of a century a go, yet they remained silent. If there's a scarier manifest about how expendable citizens are to the corporations and politicians, I've yet to encounter it. Read and beware, America!!
March 07, 2006

The writing leaves something to be desired.

The story told in this book is shocking and should be more widely known - unfortunately the writing in this book is disjointed and poorly organized. After a while, I became bored simply because there was no continuous thread in the book leading me forward - just an assemblage of anecdotes with no real cumulative effect. This is a shame because the story should be far more riveting than it is - and it would be, if told by a more skillful writer - for instance, if this book had been written by Jonathan Harr, author of "A Civil Action."
April 21, 2004

Warning: This Book May Be Hazardous to Your Blood Pressure.

Let me say right up front that I am a steadfast supporter of the free market. However, it serves neither the free market nor humanity when giant corporations are run by people who are no better than mass murderers. Exaggeration? Read this book and see if you still think so. I read "Fatal Deception" because a friend of mine and his wife acquired a vacation cabin in Libby, Montana a few years back. When newspaper reports began appearing about the widespread asbestos poisoning there, I asked if that was the same town. "Yep," he replied with a disgusted sigh. "We call it our own little Three Mile Island, Montana." (Fortunately, the relative who'd given them the cabin later demanded it back.)

The straightforward language, excellent pacing, and suspense-building structure of "Fatal Deception" make it a hard book to put down. Author Michael Bowker skillfully weaves heartwrenching victims' stories with damning excerpts from documents proving that for over sixty years the asbestos industry and the U.S. government concealed scientific evidence that would have prevented thousands of agonizing deaths. At least as far back as the 1930s, industry higher-ups knew that exposure to asbestos was extremely dangerous. Yet not only did they fail to warn their workers, they brazenly lied and assured them all that dust they were breathing and taking home on their clothes was harmless. Faced with growing medical evidence to the contrary, the asbestos companies conspired in a long-lasting cover-up that successfully hid the truth from the public so that asbestos workers and their families wouldn't discover the dangers to which they were exposing themselves. The industry had help in this cover-up, of course, from good old Uncle Sam.

"Fatal Deception" is not merely a sickening portrait of coldblooded corporate greed, but a wake-up call that vividly illustrates why the U.S. government will never behave with integrity until Americans stop electing politicians willing to prostitute themselves to whichever special-interest groups stick the most money down their pants. Angry? You bet I am. By the time you finish this book, you will be, too.
June 02, 2003

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

An Air That Kills : How the Asbestos Poisoning of Libby, Montana, Uncovered a National Scandal
by Andrew Schneider, David McCumber

Libby, Montana: Asbestos and the Deadly Silence of an American Corporation
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Surviving Mesothelioma and Other Cancers: A Patient's Guide
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ABC News Nightline A Killer in Town: Asbestos (2 DVD set)
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Asbestos Litigation: Costs and Compensation
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