KILLDEER (AP) - Environmental Protection Agency workers have been raking softball fields and parking lots containing gravel from an area near the Killdeer Mountains to test for erionite, a mineral similar to asbestos. The state Health Department collected samples last spring, and EPA sampling began this week.

"We'll come up with results from the EPA to try and determine the level, or any risk," said Scott Radig, director of the Health Department's division of waste management.

"The hope is for no high-level risk," Radig said. "I would be glad if it turned out to be worry over nothing."

Erionite was discovered in the Killdeer Mountains in the 1980s, and the state was considering mining it, Radig said. There were no known health risks then, he said.

State geologist Ed Murphy later found out about a study of a village in Turkey that found possible links to lung cancer and mesothelioma from high exposures of erionite, Radig said. Murphy contacted the state Health Department last spring to look into the matter further, he said.

Dunn County Auditor Reinhard Hauck said the pits in the Killdeer Mountains are the main source of gravel for the northern two-thirds of the county. "This is a brand new thing," Hauck said. "No other erionite has been found in the country that I'm aware of."

EPA coordinator Joyce Ackerman has been to the Killdeer sites. "This week, we are doing what's called 'activity based sampling,'" she said. "We send a sampler in protective gear with a pump near their face, at a site where gravel containing erionite minerals has been found."