May 01, 2007 — A family of talc miners in Jefferson County filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court yesterday. It claims three family members died of a rare cancer after exposure to asbestos-contaminated talc. Mines in St. Lawrence and Jefferson County have provided talc for industrial applications for decades. As David Sommerstein reports, scientists have long documented the link between respiratory illness and those talc mines.

CORRECTION: Jerrold Abraham is a pathologist at Upstate Medical University.