LIBBY, Mont. (AP) — Paul Resch remembers playing baseball as a kid on a field constructed from asbestos-tainted vermiculite, mere yards from railroad tracks where trains kicked up clouds of dust as they hauled the contaminated material from a mountaintop mine through the northwestern Montana town of Libby. He liked to sneak into vermiculite-filled storage bins at an adjacent rail yard, to trap pigeons that he would feed, during long days spent by the tracks along the Kootenai River.
Today, Resch, 61, is battling an asbestos-related disease that has severely scarred his left lung. He’s easily winded, quickly tires and knows there is no cure for an illness that could suffocate him over…
