Ban-Asbestos-India

asbestos victims appeal to Roshi Chadha has exported asbestos to India

2012-01-28T03:29:00.000-08:00

Below are moving letters sent from asbestos victims to St Mary’s Hospital Foundation requesting that Roshi Chadha be asked to resign from the hospital’s Board of Directors. Roshi Chadha has exported asbestos from the Jeffrey asbestos mine in Quebec to India and other countries for the past 16 years. She is involved in a plan to open a new Jeffrey underground asbestos mine and export millions of tons of asbestos to Asia for years to come.

If you believe a leading asbestos trader should not be a member of the Board of Directors of a hospital, send a brief message requesting that she be asked to resign. Send your message to Rachel Renaud, Cynda Heward, Dr Arvind Joshi and the Board of Directors at the following email addresses: cynda.heward@ssss.gouv.qc.ca ; arvind.joshi@ssss.gouv.qc.ca ; fondation.stmary@ssss.gouv.qc.ca .

Kathleen Ruff

== ==

January 18, 2012

Dear Ms. Renaud, Ms. Heward, Dr. Joshi and Members of the Board of St Mary’s Hospital Foundation

Over the last five years, each one of us has watched one of our immediate family die from a completely preventable form of cancer caused by asbestos exposure. Mesothelioma is an excruciating painful form of cancer that causes the victims to suffocate to death. We watched parents and spouses waste away, helpless to quench their unending thirst, and unable to fill their lungs with the air they desperately needed.

The World Health Organization, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Canadian Medical Association, the Quebec Medical Association and the Quebec government’s own sixteen Directors of Public Health are just a few of the many reputable health organizations that call for a ban of chrysotile asbestos, the product that Roshi Chadha, your board member, has been involved in exporting for the past 16 years to third world and developing nations. There is no safe form of asbestos, despite what the chrysotile asbestos exporters may tell the innocent people who work in the factories that use Canadian asbestos. Please watch the CBC report, Canada’s Ugly Secret. http://www.cbc.ca/thenational/indepthanalysis/story/2010/06/28/national-asbestos.html

It has been proven that chrysotile can’t be used safely in Quebec, according to government standards, so it would be impossible for it to be used safely in the developing world. Thousands of people are going to become victims of asbestos in these countries because of Seja Trade, Ms. Chadha’s export company.

According to the President’s message the board members “lead by example”. The Foundation’s mission is to “strive to provide Healthcare on a Human Scale”. We believe having an executive of Seja Trade on your board is like having someone from the tobacco industry on your board. We ask that you remove this asbestos exporter from your board as surely there can be someone to fill her spot that does not contribute to the painful deaths of 107,000 people a year.

We look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Canadian Voices of Asbestos Victims, speaking up for asbestos victims everywhere

Stacy Cattran

Leah Nielsen

Heidi von Palleske

Dr. Cathy Conrad

Michaela Keyserlingk

== ==
January 23, 2012

I am respectfully requesting that Roshi Chadha be removed as a member of the Board of St. Mary's Hospital Foundation. Her role as an asbestos exporter is in direct conflict with what a medical institution stands for. Please know that asbestos-related diseases are the #1 occupational killer across Canada, there is no known safe exposure limit, and there are no known cures for the diseases that it creates. The WHO has asked for a complete asbestos ban due to the serious and significant negative health impacts of asbestos worldwide.

I watched my Dad die from mesothelioma, a very painful, terminal cancer cause by asbestos, just as he and my Mum were settling into a well-deserved retirement. No one should have to go through what we went through, yet every year thousands more follow in our footsteps as loved ones fall ill and die due to asbestos exposure. My Dad was an electrician - he never worked in a mine or a factory; he never knew that he had been exposed. Back in1953 asbestos was listed as a carcinogen in one of the world's oldest, best known, and most respected medical journals. My Dad was just a boy in 1953, if we had heeded the warnings then, my Dad would still be alive today. This deadly mineral is odourless, tasteless and invisible. The only way to end these senseless deaths from this known carcinogen is to ban asbestos.

No one who supports the asbestos industry in any way should be a board member of any health organization. Your website uses the word "compassionate" over and over again to emphasize this characteristic of St. Mary's Hospital. Your board needs to lead by example; the example that Roshi Chadha is setting is not one to be followed, and is not one of compassion.

Please, I implore you, request that Roshi Chadha resign as a member of the St. Mary's Hospital Foundation Board.

Kind Regards,
Tracy
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tracy Ford
AREA Fund Co-Founder
tracy@areafund.ca
www.areafund.ca

Critics brand asbestos as Canada's latest global sin

2011-12-29T06:28:00.000-08:00

By Marianne White, Postmedia News December 28, 2011

QUEBEC — After the oilsands and the seal hunt, asbestos has become Canada's new sin, tarred as an evil at home and abroad.

In just three years, asbestos went from being one of the country's great exports. supported by all political parties at the House of Commons, to being vilified by politicians of all stripes, including some Conservatives.

"We've reached a tipping point in our attitude toward asbestos and so has the world. Canada's boy-scout image is being tarnished," said New Democrat MP Pat Martin, who has been fighting to ban asbestos mining since he was first elected in 1997.

"In many circles, we've become an international pariah. Clubbing baby seals, dumping asbestos in the Third World and tarsands are probably the three biggest embarrassments for Canada on the international stage," Martin said.

Canada's reputation took a hit earlier this year, when the government blocked international efforts to label the chrysotile asbestos — the kind mined in Canada — as a hazardous material under the UN Rotterdam Convention.

The European parliament also took shots at Canada earlier this year over the oilsands industry's environmental record, ongoing asbestos exports and the sealing industry.

In a news release, the members of parliament expressed concerns about the "serious harm to the health of workers mining asbestos, the processing and use of which is already banned in the EU."

In November, Australia's Upper House passed a motion urging the government to pressure Canada to stop producing and exporting asbestos — a insulating mineral used in construction that is linked to deadly lung diseases, including cancer.

Activists in Asian countries, notably in India, are increasingly holding demonstrations to protest against asbestos exports, which they say are causing harm to workers.

Mohit Gupta, co-ordinator of the Occupational and Environmental Health Network of India, called Canada's plan to eliminate tariffs on asbestos exports to India "an appalling travesty of all ethical codes of human behaviour."

"All of this is giving Canada an enormous black eye around the world. People can't believe that Canada is acting as a rogue country and that Canada is the biggest public health obstacle internationally to making any progress on the asbestos issue," said Kathleen Ruff, a prominent anti-asbestos campaigner.

But for the president of the Jeffrey Mine in Asbestos, Que., activists are "unrelentingly and unfairly" attacking chrysotile asbestos.

"I've been working at the mine, first as an engineer, for 42 years. My son worked here for 15 years. Do you really think we'd be stupid enough to stay on if it were as dangerous as they are claiming?" asks Bernard Coulombe.

He doesn't deny asbestos is a carcinogen, but he stressed it can be harmful only if people are highly exposed and for a long period of time.

"Just like the sun, or alcohol. If you drink too much or lay naked in the sun for hours, it can be dangerous," he said.

The industry and the federal government maintain chrysotile asbestos is safe to handle as long as proper guidelines are followed.

The mineral is banned in Canada and the government is spending millions to remove it from buildings across the country, including the Parliament buildings and the prime minister's residence.

Critics in Canada and overseas have been particularly concerned about exports to developing countries, such as India, that they say lack the safeguards to ensure asbestos is used safely.

A recent documentary of the Australian Broadcasting Corp. showed that, according to the World Health Organization, asbestos kills an estimated 8,000 people each year in India — a situation described as an "epidemic" in the documentary.

The WHO estimates that globally, more than 100,000 people die from asbestos-related illnesses, including cancer, every year.

Coulombe disputes that figure and said he has asked the WHO several times to explain how they came up with the number.

"The controversy is constantly fuelled by false information," Coulombe said, pointing to reports showing workers in India and other countries handling asbestos with their bare hands.

"We make sure it is used safely everywhere we export it. There might be some small mom-and-pops shops who buy asbestos from China and do a bad job, but that represents less than one tenth of a percentage of the industry in India," Coulombe said.

Leslie Stayner, an asbestos expert at the University of Illinois school of public health, says he fears that, in the future, there will be an epidemic of cancer and other diseases as a result of exposure to asbestos in developing countries.

"I'm afraid that the end results of Canada and other countries exporting asbestos will be that the developing world will be experiencing an epidemic of asbestos-related diseases some years from now as we are experiencing in Canada and the U.S.," he said.

Stayner was a key member of a federal government expert panel on asbestos who delivered a report that noted the "strong relationship" between lung cancer and chrysotile asbestos. That report was held back by Ottawa for 13 months before it was released in 2011.

Stayner has called for Canada to ban exports of asbestos and stressed the country could show a leadership role in taking a stand against the mineral.

"The science is very clear, and a number of international bodies have reviewed the issue and have all come to the same conclusion that all forms of asbestos, including chrysotile, are hazardous and cause cancers in humans. That's not going to change," he said.

Canada is facing a renewed push to ban exports of asbestos for good now that the country's two remaining asbestos mines, located in Quebec, have stopped producing the controversial mineral for the first time in 130 years.

In November, the Lac d'amiante du Canada operation in Thetford Mines suspended its operations because it was having operational obstacles accessing the mineral. In the town of Asbestos, about two hours east of Montreal, the Jeffrey Mine needs a bank-loan guarantee from the Quebec government before it can start digging a new underground mine.

Coulombe said he hopes to resume work next summer if he gets the green light from provincial officials. In the meantime, a small amount continues to be exported, but Coulombe noted that he will be out of stock in five or six months.

Asbestos is a hot-button issue in Quebec and the government is taking its time before deciding whether it will hand out the $58-million loan guarantee.

"We are still analyzing the project and the financial structure," said Quebec Economic Development Minister Sam Hamad.

He noted the government is committed to keep the mine open for economic reasons, but stressed the managers will not get a penny unless they can assure Quebec that asbestos will be used safely where it is exported.

NDP's Pat Martin called on Quebec to seize the opportunity to let the province's struggling asbestos mines die their natural death.

"Let it go. Stop writing the cheques and they'll be out of business. And then we can hold out head up high again," he said. "I think we're within striking distance of victory in terms of banning asbestos."

mwhite@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/whitma

Read more: http://www.canada.com/business/Critics+brand+asbestos+Canada+latest+global/5918574/story.html#ixzz1hvyo9YUP

Asbestos Trade Data (2010)
Top Five Producers(tonnes):
Russia 1,000,000
China 400,000
Brazil 270,000
Kazakhstan 214,000
Canada 100,000

Top Five Consumers(tonnes):
China 613,760
India 426,363
Russia 263,037
Brazil 139,153
Indonesia 111,848

most insulation workers to develop asbestosis

2011-12-15T18:44:00.000-08:00

This post was originally published on the CSRHUB blog

By Carol Pierson Holding
When a friend sent me this photo of a giant inflatable rat wearing a sign “Asbestos Kills,” the first thing I thought of was Bahar Gidwani’s March 2011 post on CSRHUB blog. Gidwani’s piece was inspired and also illustrated by a rat photo he’d taken near the Citicorp building in midtown New York, which in turn was inspired by the rat’s presence several years ago at a building next to his that employed non-union staff. Why had it reappeared?

Gidwani connected the return of inflatable union rats to the resurgence of union activism following the Wisconsin government union protests. Apparently, unions sense a change in public perception, a new acceptance of their role in maintaining worker’s rights. As union support grows, the huge inflatable rats, some up to 20 feet tall, have become somewhat beloved. According to the New York Observer, they even have a nickname, “Scabbies.”

Now the Scabbies have been adapted to bring awareness to a more pernicious issue, asbestos poisoning. By adding the sign “Asbestos Kills” around Scabbies’ necks, the Asbestos, Lead and Hazardous Waste (ALHW) Laborer’s Union 78 of NYC, Long Island and New Jersey is able to bring support for the Scabbies to their cause: only union labor is safe for asbestos removal.

Formed in 1996, ALHW has 4,000 members and 200 signatory environmental contractors, who remove about 90 percent of asbestos in the region. What they promise is safe removal of asbestos, in accordance with the maze of federal, state and local regulations.

But is the work the Asbestos Rats are protesting really sub-standard or just non-union? Or, as the Upper West Side blog asks, is this about a pissed-off union or a legitimate safety issue? The union arguments are the same at every protest location, that the landlord hired “a sub-standard company to perform deadly asbestos removal.”The fact is, removing asbestos safely is incredibly complicated. New York State’s 221 pages of requirements include special training for workers, an engineering survey, assessments of worker exposure, plans for dust suppression, decontamination of all equipment used, a water tight dumpster for disposing asbestos materials, decontamination of workers (a three-stage procedure) — the list seems endless and the rules difficult to understand and follow.

And there have been scandals around asbestos removal, with some companies having a record of violations and fines. So yes, there are substandard contractors that will cut the enormous expense involved in asbestos removal, which can run more than the cost of demolition. But crooked contractors are only one problem. In 2010, a federal EPA investigation uncovered a New York City safety inspector who had falsified results for 10 years, giving a clean report to over 200 buildings that were never inspected. So focusing a spotlight on the issue is warranted.

Despite all the precautions, 10,000 people in the US are killed by the toxin every year – most but not all workers who are exposed daily. In 1964, the American Medical Association published Dr. Irving Selikoff’s group’s study showing that over twenty years, most insulation workers would develop asbestosis.

Government union workers raised issues that are important to maintaining a just society, such as the right to collective bargaining. Now, the ALHW union is raising an issue that is even more serious, the removal of asbestos in a way that doesn’t release its lethal fibers. Asbestos poisons not only the ALHM’s workers, but also the apartments, workplaces and schools of American families. There’s still a lot of it that has to be removed. Regardless of their motivation, ALHM is right to bring attention to the issue of its safe removal.

Carol Pierson Holding writes on environmental issues and social responsibility for policy and news publications, including the Carnegie Council’s Policy Innovations, Harvard Business Review, San Francisco Chronicle, India Time, The Huffington Post and many other web sites. Her articles on corporate social responsibility can be found on CSRHUB.com, a website that provides sustainability ratings data on 5,000 companies worldwide. Carol holds degrees from Smith College and Harvard University.

CSRHUB is a corporate social responsibility (CSR) ratings tool that allows managers, consultants, academics and activists to track the sustainability performance of major companies. We aggregate data from more than 125 sources including seven leading socially responsible investing (SRI) analysts, Carbon Disclosure Project, indexes, NGOs, crowd sources, and government agencies to provide our users with a comprehensive source of employee, environmental, community, and governance information on nearly 5,000 publicly traded companies in 65 countries. CSRHUB is a B Corporation.

Canadian Red Cross May Remove Board Member Roshi Chadha Because Of Asbestos Ties

2011-12-15T18:40:00.000-08:00

Amid mounting pressure, the Canadian Red Cross likely will ask for the resignation of executive board member Roshi Chadha next month because of her strong link to the asbestos industry.

Mesothelioma is the deadly cancer caused by the inhalation of asbestos.

Chadha is an executive for Seja Trade Ltd, a shipping company that exports raw asbestos from Quebec. Seja Trade also is a subsidiary of Balcorp., which is awaiting a controversial, $58 million government loan guarantee to re-open an asbestos mine in Jeffrey. The president of Balcorp is Baljit Chadha, the husband of Roshi.

“It’s really hypocritical of her to be on the board of the Red Cross, which is a wonderful organization. If she doesn’t resign, they should remove her,” anti-asbestos advocate Stacy Cattran told The Mesothelioma Center on Tuesday. “I think the Red Cross will do the right thing.”

The Red Cross is considered the world’s leading humanitarian organization, providing much-needed disaster relief both at home and abroad, often to developing countries where the asbestos is being shipped.

The Red Cross also has been assisting victims of mesothelioma in Canada, including the father of Cattran, who died in 2008, just three months after being diagnosed. Her father died at age 72 after working much of his career as an electrician, where he was exposed to asbestos for many years.

“Having someone on the board who supports the export of asbestos just flys in the face of their mission,” Cattran said. “They support saving lives, not ending them with asbestos.”

Although the use of asbestos has been restricted dramatically in both the United States and Canada, Balcorp is hoping to capitalize on the growing demand for it in India and Asia. The last two asbestos mines in Canada were temporarily closed in November, although Balcorp is making plans to reopen at least one of them again.

Much of the asbestos production in the world now comes from Russia, Kazakhstan, China and Brazil. Canadian asbestos often has been viewed as a higher quality than that coming from other countries.

The mining of asbestos stopped in the United States in 2002, but 820 metric tons were imported in the first half of 2010, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and much of it came from Canada.

Cattran is a co-founder of Canadian Voices of Asbestos Victims, which joined with the U.S.-based Asbestos-Disease Awareness Group to present an official Declaration to both President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper to support a North America ban on asbestos.

Christopher Hilton, a spokesman for the Canadian Red Cross, told the Vancouver Sun that his organization will consider the concerns raised by anti-asbestos activists at a board meeting in January.

“It’s a matter for the board,” Hilton said. “I’m not going to presuppose what the board is going to do.”

According to the Sun, Chadha was elected to the Red Cross Board of Directors in 2008. She is one of four at-large members on the 16-person board. She also is on the board of directors for St. Mary’s Hospital Foundation and at McGill University Health Centre.

The asbestos issue in Canada generates considerable more debate than it does in the United States, at least partially because the Conservative Party has supported it with subsidies. The Canadian government also blocked the listing of chrysotile asbestos on the Hazardous Materials list of the Rotterdam Convention this summer in Geneva, Switzerland.

Putting asbestos on that list would have made it more difficult to export, allowing importing counties to refuse acceptance of it if they thought the asbestos could not be handled safely.

(Banjit and Roshi Chada both have jobs that link them to the asbestos industry. The Canadian Red Cross is likley to ask for Roshi Chada's resignation from its board of directors.)

About this Author:An award winning reporter and writer, Tim Povtak is a senior content writer for the Mesothelioma Center. He previously worked at the Orlando Sentinel and then at AOL. You can contact him directly tpovtak@asbestos.com with any story ideas or comments.

Google moves Supreme Court against Andhra Pradesh Asbestos firm

2011-12-15T18:36:00.000-08:00

New Delhi: Google India, a subsidiary of US-based Google Inc, has moved the Supreme Court seeking quashing of a criminal complaint filed against it for allegedly carrying defamatory material on its website against an Andhra-based asbestos manufacturing firm.

Visakha Industries, in its complaint before a civil court in Secunderabad, has alleged that the network service provider had hosted some defamatory articles aimed at it on its website.

Visakha had sent a legal notice to Google India in December 2008 alleging that articles authored by Delhi-based Gopal Krishna (coordinator of Ban Asbestos India) and hosted by the website violated its rights and were defamatory as they were aimed at a single manufacturer.

Subsequently, Visakha filed a case in the civil court, which summoned the Google India officials. However, on appeal, the high court stayed the order.

An apex court bench headed by Justice P Sathasivam, while seeking a reply from Visakha, also stayed the proceedings pending before the additional chief metropolitan magistrate at Secunderabad.

Senior counsel KK Venugopal argued that the service was not provided by Google India but by its parent company Google Inc and the entire complaint was bereft of any averment of its involvement in the defamation case.

Challenging the Andhra Pradesh High Court’s judgement that dismissed its plea, Google India said the high court grossly erred in concluding that the service provider did not initiate any action to expeditiously remove or disable access to the alleged defamatory material after the asbestos firm brought it to its notice.

Claiming that Google India doesn’t have any control over the website www.groups.google.com , counsel Mahesh Agarwal argued that the petitioner cannot be termed as ‘intermediary’ as per the Information Technology Act, 2000. Besides, the Indian arm has no control over the activities of its parent company and is not even providing hosting services on its website or any other platform.

“The high court failed to appreciate that to constitute an offence of defamation under the IPC only in the event of a publication, would the publisher be liable… The service provider merely provides a platform for third parties to post their contents and does not undertake the activity of publishing such content,” the search engine giant's petition stated.

According to the largest search engine, it is trite law that actions of intermediaries such as Google Inc in providing a platform to end users to upload content does not amount to publication in law and consequently, the question of holding such intermediaries or their employees liable for defamation would not arise.

Alleging that such complaint was malafide, it further added that it is the third party user who creates and disseminates information/content by posting such content.

“Consequently, the service provider is not the author and publisher of the allegedly defamatory content and neither Google Inc nor Google India can be termed as publishers of such content,” Agarwal stated.

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/google-moves-supreme-court-against-andhra-pradesh-firm/833943/0#

Last stand for asbestos?

2011-12-15T18:35:00.000-08:00

The LAB Chrysotile asbestos mining operation in Black Lake Que. (Dec. 13, 2010) Jacques Boissinot/THE CANADIAN PRESS

Kathleen Ruff

The Harper government is negotiating a free-trade agreement (Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement) with India, which would advantage our asbestos industry by removing the 10 per cent tariff on exports to its biggest customer, India.

This issue might seem academic, since asbestos mining has ceased in Canada. The Jeffrey mine at Asbestos, Que., (the biggest open pit asbestos mine in the world) closed two years ago and Canada’s last operating asbestos mine — LAB Chrysotile’s mine at Thetford Mines, Que. — closed in November this year.

These last two asbestos mines were facing financial and environmental disasters. Both were forced to seek bankruptcy protection several years ago, slashing wages and pensions. From being the world’s biggest exporter of asbestos, the asbestos industry represented only 0.1 per cent of Quebec exports in 2010. By 2011, after 130 years, Quebec asbestos mining finally stopped altogether. Other asbestos mines in British Columbia, Newfoundland and Ontario closed years ago.

One would think this was the end of a sorry chapter of Canadian history. But one would be wrong.

Undeterred, both Jeffrey Mine Inc. and LAB Chrysotile Ltd. are aggressively seeking financial and political assistance from the Quebec and Canadian governments to restart the asbestos disaster all over again.

When it comes to promoting the interests of the asbestos industry, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is no sluggard. In the weeks prior to the May 2 general election, the 14,000 citizens of Asbestos were treated to not just one, but two visits by the Prime Minister, who proclaimed his commitment to fight “discrimination” against the asbestos industry.

Harper’s courting of the citizens of Asbestos did not produce the desired result. The Bloc held the seat by a hair’s breadth over the NDP, with the Conservative candidate coming a humiliating third.

Harper’s dedication to the asbestos trade continued unabated, however, as evidenced by his sabotage of the UN Rotterdam Convention Conference in Geneva earlier this year to prevent chrysotile asbestos (100 per cent of the global asbestos trade) from being put on the convention’s list of hazardous substances, thus ensuring continued uncontrolled sale of asbestos.

Asbestos can only be sold if there are no safety controls. Safety measures are complex and costly, as Canadians well know, and are required for the whole life cycle of asbestos, thus pricing it out of the market. Even its biggest fan, Industry Minister Christian Paradis, admits this.

Chrysotile asbestos is listed under Canada’s Hazardous Substances Act but, according to our government, is not hazardous for people overseas. Around the world, Canada’s conduct was bitterly condemned as a despicable double standard.

When it comes to the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with India, Harper is likewise employing a double standard. He will not tolerate “discrimination” against the asbestos industry, but is undisturbed by discrimination favouring the asbestos industry.

While working to eliminate tariffs on asbestos, Harper is conspicuously silent over the $58 million subsidy that the Quebec government has offered to the consortium of “free enterprise” investors to cover 70 per cent of the cost of the underground Jeffrey asbestos mine they want to open in Asbestos.

Under free trade rules, such subsidies are prohibited and the Canadian government has responsibility for ensuring their elimination.

LAB Chrysotile will also receive a $58 million subsidy from the Quebec government, according to Thetford Mines Mayor Luc Berthold, who states that Quebec Minister of Municipal Affairs Laurent Lessard has agreed to offer LAB the same subsidy as offered to the Jeffrey mine investors.

Paradis, Harper’s Quebec lieutenant, is the MP for Thetford Mines and a powerful political ally of LAB Chrysotile. He has pledged the Harper government’s full support for the plan to restart mining asbestos. Since taking power, the Harper government has given $1.5 million to the asbestos industry’s lobby group, the Chrysotile Institute. Conservative MPs say the Harper government has cut the funding, but the institute’s president, Clément Godbout, says that federal government funding continues.

The Canadian Cancer Society has criticized this financing as promoting deceptive industry propaganda that will cause loss of life. The financing also clashes with CEPA.

In Quebec, Minister of Economic Development Sam Hamad is in charge of the $58 million loan guarantee to the asbestos investors. In 2003, Hamad gave the global asbestos industry a priceless PR gift. He recommended replacing “asbestos” with the word “chrysotile” in order “to give the industry nobility and growth.”

Harper and Quebec Premier Jean Charest refuse appeals to respect science and protect health. Perhaps, ironically, the free trade deal with India will succeed where scientific evidence and human compassion have failed: an end to taxpayer subsidies to the deadly asbestos industry.

Toronto Star, Dec. 15, 2011

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1102952--last-stand-for-asbestos

James Hardie Loses Bid to Overturn Asbestos Award

2011-12-13T22:38:00.000-08:00

Dec. 14 (Bloomberg) -- James Hardie Industries SE lost a bid to overturn an asbestos award to a cancer victim, allowing under people who contracted mesothelomia to seek compensation,
Turner Freeman Lawyers said in a statement. The Australian High Court today rejected James Hardie’s appeal, the law firm said.

CANADA'S CHRISTMAS GIFT TO POOR INDIANS: MORE CRUEL DEATHS BY ASBESTOS EXPORTS

2011-12-11T23:53:00.000-08:00

PRIME MINISTER STEPHEN HARPER’S CHRISTMAS GIFT TO POOR INDIANS: MORE CRUEL DEATHS BY ASBESTOS EXPORTS

(Photo: Grim Reaper Stephen Harper making it easier to kill Indians with asbestos!)

Asian Journal, Dec. 9, 2011 http://www.asianjournal.ca/dec%209_11/roar_2.html

“HARPER Government Plans to Increase Asbestos Exports to India,” was the heading of a press release by the federal NDP on Monday with the sub-heading: “CEPA Trade Negotiators Reveal Deliberate Strategy to Eliminate Tariffs on Dangerous Exports.”

Ironically enough, this was the heading of a Vancouver story this week: “Asbestos contractor faces jail” with the sub-heading: “Workplace Safety.”

I really don’t know whether I should LAUGH or whether I should CRY! But my blood sure BOILS at Canadian blatant criminality and sheer hypocrisy!

Readers of this newspaper have already seen the tons of scientific evidence that I have been presenting here about the deadly effects of asbestos from the world’s most respectable experts and organizations for such a long time.

Just go to our website at www.asianjournal.ca and type in the word “asbestos” in the search engine and you will see all the evidence there.

THE Vancouver story said that asbestos-removal contractor Arthur Moore of AM Environmental will be sentenced on January 23 for contempt of court for ignoring orders from both WorkSafeBC and the B.C. Supreme Court to stop exposing “vulnerable” workers – as young as 14 years of age - to asbestos.

Boy, if this is what is happening right here in Canada, can you imagine how those unscrupulous businessmen in India who can bribe judges, politicians and cops exploit poor, defenceless Indian workers in their asbestos workplace!

And while in Canada it is about REMOVING deadly asbestos, in India, it is about USING Canadian asbestos!

Even the Devil and his demons must be laughing and toasting Harper and his Conservative caucus perverts! As a Christian, I am mortified.

And guess what Workers’ Compensation Board lawyer Scott Nielsen told the judge?

Noting that WCB statistics on the effects of asbestos were unequivocal, he added: “ASBESTOS KILLS. It was the LEADING KILLER of workers in B.C. in 2009, responsible for 44 PER CENT OF ALL DEATHS arising from employment.” [Capitalizations mine for emphasis.]

SOUTH Asians should laud the NDP for having the MORAL COURAGE to oppose the export of death to India.

The federal NDP said that they have learned that the Harper government is trying to eliminate trade tariffs on exports of lethal Canadian asbestos to India.

“It is a disgrace that the Harper government has opposed the global effort to ban this substance,” said Official Opposition International Trade Critic Brian Masse , who is from Ontario. “Now we find out Conservatives are actually attempting to expand Canadian asbestos sales to the developing world. This represents another sad chapter for the Harper government.”

In response to questions from Masse, the Chief Negotiator for the Canada-India Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement admitted Canada is currently working to eliminate tariffs on asbestos exports to India. Currently there is a 10 per cent duty on asbestos exports to India, the world’s second largest consumer of asbestos.

“We already dump hundreds of thousands of tons of asbestos each year into developing nations – and now we want to make it easier for asbestos magnates to do so?” said MP Pat Martin, who’s from Manitoba. “This is deplorable and Canadians need to let their government know they will not put up with this any longer.”

Despite being asked repeatedly in recent weeks about asbestos in the House of Commons, the government never mentioned their plan to increase asbestos trade to the developing world through axing tariffs.

To actively pursue exporting this deadly product to countries that have little to no protection for workers is reprehensible,” said Masse. “It’s time for our government to acknowledge reality and develop a plan to help transition asbestos workers into new, sustainable industries.”

-RATTAN MALL
EditorAsianJournal@gmail.com
The BEST READ South Asian column in North America at www.AsianJournal.ca

Asbestos contractor faces jail

2011-12-10T00:09:00.000-08:00

"Asbestos kills. It was the leading killer of workers in B.C. in 2009, responsible for 44 per cent of all deaths arising from employment."

An asbestos-removal contractor who ignored orders from both WorkSafeBC and the B.C. Supreme Court to stop exposing "vulnerable" workers to asbestos will be sentenced Jan. 23 for contempt of court.

WorkSafeBC inspectors found that Arthur Moore of AM Environmental used employees as young as 14 years of age to remove asbestos-contaminated drywall from homes being demolished without providing them any protection.

He continued to do this despite restraining orders from the B.C. Supreme Court.

Workers' Compensation Board lawyer Scott Nielsen told Justice Richard Goepel that Moore "contrary to the court's order exposed workers as young as 14 to a life threatening substance."

He said WCB statistics on the effects of asbestos were unequivocal.

"Asbestos kills. It was the leading killer of workers in B.C. in 2009, responsible for 44 per cent of all deaths arising from employment," said Nielsen.

Neilson asked for a jail sentence of between six to 12 months.

gbellett@vancouversun.com

By Gerry Bellett, Vancouver Sun December 5, 2011 http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Asbestos+contractor+faces+jail/5811651/story.html

National law organization joins call to ban asbestos

2011-12-08T21:46:00.000-08:00

A national environmental law organization has issued a statement today calling for a total ban on asbestos.

The Canadian Environmental Law Association is calling for broad support for banning asbestos across the US and Canada. The CELA endorsed a statement, The North American Declaration -- issued in Washington DC by the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization and the Canadian Voices of Asbestos Victims -- which calls on Canadian Prime Minister Harper and US President Obama to take immediate steps to prevent further production or export of asbestos.

"My father was exposed to asbestos while working as a labourer and electrician at the petro-chemical plants in Sarnia, Ontario. In 2008, he died from mesothelioma, just two months after his diagnosis, thirty to forty years after he was exposed," said Stacy Cattran, Canadian Voices of Asbestos Victims Co-Founder. "Sarnia, like so many industrial towns, has suffered the loss of too many of her citizens to asbestos-related disease. After 130 years of mining asbestos, it is time for Canada to close the mines and transition the affected workers to other forms of industry. . . "

"It is unconscionable that while Canadians are spending billions of dollars on health care costs for asbestos victims in Canada and on removing asbestos from our schools, homes, hospitals and public buildings -- including Prime Minister Harper's workplace and residence -- the Canadian government is providing political and financial support to the asbestos lobby and supports a plan to relaunch Canada's bankrupt and deadly asbestos industry,” asbestos campaigner Kathleen Ruff told the Tyee.

"The asbestos issue is a shocking example of denial of science and environmental racism by our government."

As reported earlier in the Tyee, many health, trade union and human rights groups across Canada, including the Canadian Labour Congress and the Canadian Medical Association, have called for an end of Canada’s national asbestos policy, which has allowed the known carcinogen (now rarely used in Canada itself) to be exported to 3rd World countries. There is no safe level of asbestos exposure, critics argue, and Canada should cease exports altogether.

"For the first time in decades, Canada's asbestos mines have stopped production. However, a decision to finance, reopen and expand the Jeffrey Mine in Quebec is expected by the end of the year", said Fe de Leon, Researcher at CELA in a press statement. "If the Quebec government supports a decision to restart these mining operations, it will entrench the Canadian export of this cancer causing substance for decades to come. For developing countries where there are markets for Canadian asbestos, workers and their communities will bear the burden of asbestos exposure since exporters are not required to provide information on the toxicity or safe handling of these hazardous substances. This year, Canada was one of several countries that opposed listing asbestos under the Rotterdam Convention for exchanging information on hazardous substances. Consequently, health and safety labeling need not accompany these exports to unsuspecting workers."

Tom Sandborn covers health policy and labour news for the Tyee.

By Tom Sandborn December 8, 2011

http://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/Environment/2011/12/08/CELA_Calls_For_Abestos_Ban/

Promotion of Asbestos Trade with Canada by Commerce Ministry & CCEA Condemnable

2011-12-06T23:58:00.001-08:00

Press Release

Promotion of Asbestos Trade with Canada by Commerce Ministry & CCEA Condemnable

WHO and ILO call for elimination of asbestos of all forms including chrysotile asbestos

Decontaminate asbestos laden buildings of Parliament, Supreme Court, houses of legislators, personnel from armed forces, airports, railway platforms etc

New Delhi: Public health and environmental groups demand that Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) should ensure that India desists from signing the "Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement" (CEPA) with Canada that allows the export of cancer causing Canadian asbestos to India.

CCEA cannot defend its promotion of asbestos trade given the fact that the WHO, the ILO, all medical health professionals, overwhelming scientific evidence is opposed to it. Support for asbestos trade is indefensible. There is not a single reliable study in the world that shows that asbestos can be used safely in a controlled manner. Had that been the case some 60 countries would not have banned it.

ToxicsWatch Alliance (TWA) appreciates the role of New Democratic Party (NDP) of Canada, the Official Opposition party for resisting the efforts Stephen Harper government of Conservative party of Canada to eliminate trade tariffs on exports of lethal Canadian asbestos to India. “It is a disgrace that the Harper government has opposed the global effort to ban this substance,” NDP said in a release dated December 5, 2011.

Every day, work is underway in the Canadian House of Commons to decontaminate offices and houses of Members of Parliament that contain asbestos. The offices are being decontaminated because asbestos is carcinogenic and harmful to human health. In India, will members of Indian National Congress led United Progressive Government, CCEA and Commerce Minister, Anand Sharma reveal whether they want the asbestos roofs in their own houses and offices to be made of carcinogenic chrysotile asbestos?

Don Stephenson, the chief negotiator of Canada for CEPA revealed to Canadian Parliamentary committee, "The potential impact of trade negotiations of asbestos is that the tariff applicable to imports of asbestos in India would be reduced. The current rate is 10% and there is a possibility that negotiations could lead to a reduction or elimination of this rate "on December 1, 2011.

In India, this amounts to disregarding the notice dated July 6, 2011 issued by National Human Rights Commission that seeks report on victims of asbestos and need for ban on chrysotile asbestos (white) asbestos. The proposed free trade agreement between India and Canada will boost asbestos trade and lead massive increase in deaths and diseases to the killer fibers of Canadian asbestos.

TWA demands that instead of reducing or eliminating tariffs on asbestos from Canada as is proposed in the CEPA negotiations, CCEA and Commerce Ministry should safeguard present and future generation of Indian citizens, consumers, workers and their families by banning trade in asbestos in every form.

TWA has been writing to Commerce Ministry since the inception of these free trade agreement negotiations that commenced in November 2010, warning it against continued asbestos trade with Canada. The CEPA is to be finalized by 2013. Unmindful of incurable asbestos related diseases, Canada exported 70 000 tonnes of asbestos to India in 2010 alone.

India rightly disassociated itself from Canada in June, 2011 who derailed the international consensus that categorizes chrysotile asbestos as a hazardous substance under the UN’s Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade. Thus, India has taken a position that it considers chrysotile asbestos as a hazardous substance. Now it should take the next logical step and phase out asbestos use. In an explicit case of hypocrisy and double standard, Canada categorizes chrysotile asbestos as a hazardous substance in Canada but promotes it as a harmless substance to India.

In a related development, on December 5, 2011 members of the public in Ottawa, Canada heard why Ms Michaela Keyserlingk thinks that the production and use of asbestos should be banned in Canada. Michaela's husband Robert died 2 years ago from asbestos cancer; since then, Michaela has been campaigning to raise awareness of the asbestos hazard. The event was organized by the Reverend Michel Dubord at St. John's Anglican Church in Ottawa. Six weeks ago, the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa passed a motion denouncing the Canadian Government's policy of exporting asbestos. TWA appreciates the efforts of Michaela and the Church.

According to WHO estimates, more than 107 000 people die each year from asbestos-related lung cancer, mesothelioma and asbestosis resulting from occupational exposure. About 125 million people in the world are exposed to asbestos at the workplace.

The World Health Assembly Resolution 58.22 on cancer prevention urges Member States to pay special attention to cancers for which avoidable exposure is a factor, including exposure to chemicals at the workplace. With Resolution 60.26, the World Health Assembly requested WHO to carry out a global campaign for the elimination of asbestos-related diseases "…bearing in mind a differentiated approach to regulating its various forms - in line with the relevant international legal instruments and the latest evidence for effective interventions…".

Eliminating asbestos-related diseases is particularly targeted at countries still using chrysotile asbestos, in addition to assistance in relation to exposures arising from historical use of all forms of asbestos.

WHO, in collaboration with the International Labour Organization (ILO) and with other intergovernmental organizations and civil society, -works with countries towards elimination of asbestos-related diseases in the following strategic directions:

• by recognizing that the most efficient way to eliminate asbestos-related diseases is to stop the use of all types of asbestos;

• by providing information about solutions for replacing asbestos with safer substitutes and developing economic and technological mechanisms to stimulate its replacement;

• by taking measures to prevent exposure to asbestos in place and during asbestos removal (abatement); and

• by improving early diagnosis, treatment, social and medical rehabilitation of asbestos-related diseases and to establish registries of people with past and/or current exposures to asbestos.

The resolution of the 95th Session of the International Labour Conference of ILO reads:

• Considering that all forms of asbestos, including chrysotile, are classified as known human carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a classification restated by the International Programme on Chemical Safety (a joint Programme of the International Labour Organization, the World Health Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme),

• Alarmed that an estimated 100,000 workers die every year from diseases caused by exposure to asbestos,

• Deeply concerned that workers continue to face serious risks from asbestos exposure, particularly in asbestos removal, demolition, building maintenance, ship-breaking and waste handling activities,

• Noting that it has taken three decades of efforts and the emergence of suitable alternatives for a comprehensive ban on the manufacturing and use of asbestos and asbestos-containing products to be adopted in a number of countries,

• Further noting that the objective of the Promotional Framework for Occupational Safety and Health Convention 2006 is to prevent occupational injuries, diseases and deaths,

1. Resolves that: (a) the elimination of the future use of asbestos and the identification and proper management of asbestos currently in place are the most effective means to protect workers from asbestos exposure and to prevent future asbestos-related diseases and deaths; and (b) the Asbestos Convention, 1986 (No. 162), should not be used to provide a justification for, or endorsement of, the continued use of asbestos.

2. Requests the Governing Body to direct the International Labour Office to: (a) continue to encourage member States to ratify and give effect to the provisions of the Asbestos Convention, 1986 (No. 162), and the Occupational Cancer Convention, 1974 (No. 139); (b) promote the elimination of future use of all forms of asbestos and asbestos containing materials in all member States; (c) promote the identification and proper management of all forms of asbestos currently in place; (d) encourage and assist member States to include measures in their national programmes on occupational safety and health to protect workers from exposure to asbestos; and (e) transmit this resolution to all member States.

Taking cognizance of the above mentioned facts and resolutions, TWA demands that the Commerce Ministry and CCEA should: (a) stop asbestos trade in CEPA in particular and ban manufacturing, use and import of asbestos and trade in asbestos products in general; (b) assist workers affected by diseases caused by asbestos fibers by developing a Just Transition Plan; (c) introduce measures dedicated to affected workers and their families to assure them of a decent standard of living; (e) support and compensate citizens and consumers who are victims of asbestos exposure through legal remedy, (f) decontaminate asbestos laden buildings of Parliament, Supreme Court and the houses of legislators, officials, personnel from armed forces, airports, railway platforms etc and (g) float global tender inviting companies who have competence, skill and capacity to remove asbestos from existing buildings.

India should act urgently to stop import of human misery on a monumental scale. Asbestos trade is morally and ethically reprehensible.

For Details: Gopal Krishna, ToxicsWatch Alliance (TWA), New Delhi, Mb: 9818089660, E-mail: krishna1715@gmail.com Web: toxicswatch.blogspot.com

Asbestos Trader, Roshi Chadha, sits on Board of Governors of the Canadian Red Cross

2011-12-05T01:56:00.000-08:00

Roshi Chadha is a member of the Board of Governors of the Canadian Red Cross. She is also an asbestos exporter.

Since 1981, she has been an executive of Seja Trade Ltd., a Montreal company that has for years been exporting asbestos from the open-pit Jeffrey asbestos mine in Quebec to India. Her husband, Baljit Singh Chadha, who is seeking to revive the dying Quebec asbestos industry, is not publicly identified with Seja Trade Ltd.

The Jeffrey open-pit mine has closed down, but Baljit Chadha is lobbying the Quebec government for a $58 million loan guarantee in order to open a new underground Jeffrey mine, which would export of millions of tonnes of asbestos to Asia for the next 25 to 50 years. He states that his project will be financially profitable.

The mandate of the Canadian Red Cross, however, is to promote human health, not financial profits. On its website, the Red Cross states that “All Red Cross programs and activities are guided by the fundamental principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntary service, unity and universality. These principles allow us to provide help immediately to whoever needs it, wherever they are, whatever their race, political beliefs, religion, social status or culture. We are a leading humanitarian organization through which people voluntarily demonstrate their caring for others in need.”

As an asbestos exporter, Roshi Chadha is violating the values and standards of the Red Cross. She is contributing to harming people overseas and contributing to a double standard under which asbestos is being removed from schools in Canada to protect Canadian children, while being placed in schools in India, where there are no safety protections and children will be exposed to asbestos harm.

When the Red Cross is involved in relief efforts after a natural disaster, such as the earthquake in Indonesia, asbestos-contaminated rubble is an additional health risk threatening survivors and Red Cross relief workers. For this reason, the World Bank has stated that no asbestos should be used in regions prone to earthquakes and other natural disasters.

Roshi Chadha is also a member of the Board of Directors of the St. Mary’s Hospital Foundation and a member of the Board of Directors of the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal.

At St Mary’s Hospital, she has championed the Chrysalis program, which links “women who share a belief that Knowledge is Power and pivotal to the decision-making process regarding health-related issues through regular seminars with leading medical practitioners.”

But when it comes to the asbestos she exports, Roshi Chadha has a different standard and refuses to heed reputable medical information. The Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Canadian Public Health Association, the Quebec government’s own sixteen Directors of Public Health, as well as numerous other medical authorities, have strongly and unanimously called for the export of asbestos to end and have opposed the re-opening of the Jeffrey mine, saying that asbestos from the mine would lead to loss of life.

Roshi Chadha’s role in exporting asbestos as an executive of Seja Trade Ltd is in direct conflict with her role as a board member of the Canadian Red Cross, St Mary’s Hospital Foundation and the McGill University Health Centre.

Asbestos victims have written to Roshi Chadha and to the Canadian Red Cross, St Mary’s Hospital Foundation and the McGill University Health Centre, asking that she support health and stop exporting asbestos harm or that otherwise she be asked to resign. To date, they have received no reply.

http://www.rightoncanada.ca/?p=1268

Marine Atlantic and the ship breaking yards of India

2011-12-02T21:33:00.000-08:00

He's got a state-of-the-art, environmentally first rate business and he had a plan to create 40 jobs in Cape Breton. But the decommissioned ferries Wayne Elliot wanted to buy and recycle were sold for millions more than he could even offer by the Canadian Crown corporation Marine Atlantic. They've since ended up at the ship-breaking beach at Alang India, a place notorious for injuries and industrial degradation that is supposed to be hands-off for all countries that have signed a deal called the Basel Convention including ours. So what happened?

Listen: (Pop-up)

Part Two of The Current

Marine Atlantic and the ship breaking yards of India - Gopal Krishna

The ship breaking yards of Alang, India are emblematic of a post industrial world. A blackened beach strewn with the rusting steel of ships that once proudly sailed from the world's harbours. Tearing the ships apart for scrap has made the beach look like a war zone, but the real bomb may yet detonate: the environmental damage from all the stuff that's spilled from those ships. And in this toxic graveyard are the remains of two Canadian ferries - The Joseph and Clara Smallwood and The Caribou. Both were once owned by Marine Atlantic, a crown corporation that operates ferries between Newfoundland and Cape Breton.

Canada is a signatory to the Basel Convention, an international agreement preventing the transport of hazardous waste from developed to less developed countries. And yet here sit the Canadian ferries. Part of the explanation is that the ships were sold first to a company in the Caribbean and another in the Marshall Islands. Then, they were sold to a company in Alang.

Gopal Krishna is the founder of Toxic Watch Alliance in New Delhi, India.

Marine Atlantic and the voyage to the breaking yards of India - Wayne Elliott

The president and CEO of Marine Atlantic, Wayne Follett, was unavailable for an interview today. So was the Federal Transport Minister. However a few days ago there was a naming celebration in Sydney Nova Scotia for one of the new Marine Atlantic ferries. It replaces one of the ferries now at Alang. Reporters in Sydney caught up with Steven Fletcher, Minister of State for Transport. We aired a clip.

Steven Fletcher, Minister of State for Transport is answering No to the question of whether the government bears any responsibility for the ships ending up in Alang. Megan Leslie disagrees. She's a Halifax MP and NDP's Opposition Environment Critic. We heard from her.

Wayne Elliott is the founder and director of business development for Marine Recycling Corporation of Port Colborne, Ontario. His company is the first ship-breaking yard to achieve the international standard for environmental management.

Marine Atlantic and the ship breaking yards of India - Tony Puthucerril

Tony Puthucerril is a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholar from India working on his doctorate in environmental law at Dalhousie University. He is author of the book: From Shipbreaking to Sustainable Ship Recycling. He was in Halifax.

Related Links:

http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2011/11/29/marine-atlantic-and-the-ship-breaking-yards-of-india/

Canada's chronic asbestos problem

2011-12-02T21:29:00.000-08:00

For a place of modest size, Asbestos has made an impressive imprint on the Canadian psyche. In 1949, the Asbestos Strike—which took place at the mines in Asbestos and nearby Thetford Mines—helped to usher in the Quiet Revolution that shaped the modern Quebec. And in 2011, the place’s eponymous product is giving a black eye to Canada’s international reputation as a fair dealer.

Most of the world, including the medical community, agrees that asbestos is desperately dangerous. The World Health Organization reports that more than 100,000 people die every year from lung cancer and other respiratory diseases due to asbestos exposure. And many more will die, because 125 million people are exposed to asbestos in their workplaces today and every day.

No surprise, then, that the stuff is effectively banned in Canada. And a surprise, to observers, that Canada exports it to other countries, most notoriously India, where public-health regimes are less vigorous than in Canada.

But that fact is no more mysterious than two forces that are as well known in India as they are in Canada. One is the power of supply and demand. The other is the vacuum of political indifference.

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The industry has seen better days. There are just two mines remaining in Quebec’s asbestos belt. The Jeffrey Mine in Asbestos is in semi-operational stasis while it awaits refinancing. According to some reports, the LAB Chrysotile mine in Thetford Mines will, by the time you read this, have stopped churning out the piles of tailings that define the town’s appearance. (“Chrysotile” is the recent rebranding of the white asbestos that the region produces.)

By any measure, it is weird geography. The huge open-pit mines were once the largest pits in the Western hemisphere. The massive rounded hills of tailings seem to have been dropped onto the landscape from above. Except for the trucks spiralling ever downward in the pits, you might figure you’re on the moon.

Over the years, the overburden of rock waste has acquired a rough patina of vegetation. But on the tailings, which is the fine gravel left after the rock has been crushed and the asbestos extracted, there is little sign of life. Some of the piles date from the first mines, more than a century ago.

Luc Berthold, the cheerful mayor of Thetford Mines, seems oblivious to the moonscape. In response to a recent report on local health risks posed by asbestos, the mayor said that no, the municipality would not fence off the tailings to stop young people from using them as an ATV playground. The mayor did concede, however, that the town would cease using the mine residue as a substitute for salt and sand on winter roads.

Defensive about his town’s reputation, Berthold told a Montreal reporter that the effect of asbestos dust on health pales compared to that of smog in Montreal. In the anteroom to Berthold’s office, piles of glossy flyers promote asbestos’s “safe and irreplaceable fibres,” with charts proving that tobacco and highway accidents are thousands of times more dangerous than asbestos in schools.

It’s hard to blame the place for this attitude. After all, it wouldn’t exist without the strange fibre that a farmer named Joseph Fecteau stumbled upon in 1876. He’d hit a rich vein of asbestos, long known in Europe as a miraculous substance that could not be burned or damaged by fire. Within a few years, the Thetford area was the asbestos capital of the world, and Quebeckers called the fibres white gold.

Asbestos was soon everywhere, in houses, in factories, in cars, in thousands upon thousands of industrial and household products—all kinds of insulation as well as everything from brake pads to paint, cement, siding, shingles, pipes, ceiling and floor tiles, clutch facings, even crayons.

For people in Thetford Mines, asbestos dust has been around forever and it’s hard to get excited about a disease that can take up to 40 years to have an effect. For those who live here, asbestos is just a fact of life.

Typical is Sylvain Gagné, who simply shrugs at the mention of asbestosis or cancer or mesothelioma. He is sitting on his veranda, facing a hillside of tailings across the street, contentedly eating a plateful of mashed potatoes. If there is any illness in Thetford Mines, it’s because of people drinking too much, he says, particularly young people who can’t get jobs.

Gagné hasn’t worked at the mine, but his father and grandfather, who is 87, both did, without apparent ill effect.

Gagné’s neighbour across the street, Sylvain Menard, has worked all over the country, much of the time on roofing jobs that called for handling asbestos shingles. Is he concerned? Not remotely. He moved to Thetford Mines only a few months ago and discovered, to his delight, that housing prices are low and the pace of life easy. He says that he could not care less about asbestos; rather, he should be more worried about cigarettes. With that, he lights another smoke with a defiant smile.

Menard’s arrival may be a sign of things to come. For a long time, there was a constant dark cloud over Thetford Mines. Like all one-industry towns, it’s vulnerable to fluctuations in resource markets. But the curse of asbestosis and other lung diseases made things worse. It was not surprising that people, especially youngsters, drifted away in search of work.

One person who stayed, Ritchie Harnish, has done every job there was to do in his more than 40 years in the mine, from bagging asbestos to the delicate task of grading the stuff by the length of the fibres. He worked in the open pit in the baking summer, underground in the bitter winter. For a time he was president of the United Steelworkers local.

Now 60, Harnish is a bridge between the old ways and the new. He remembers his grandfather coming back from the mine, sending off huge clouds of asbestos dust as he patted his jacket and pants. But nowadays they’re filtering the air six times an hour at the mine. The place is spotless.

Harnish, who retired a few months ago, is happy to see changes that might signal the survival of the town where he’s spent his entire life. In the schools, they are asking the kids what would persuade them to stay in Thetford Mines. And on the streets of town, he is meeting old friends he has not seen for 40 or 50 years: “They’re coming back. It’s really not a bad place to live!”

It may be that Harnish is on the sunny side of a generational divide when it comes to safety standards at the mine. Over in Asbestos, Donald Nicholls, who is 80, went to work at the Jeffrey Mine a few weeks after he finished high school in the summer of 1950, not long after the Asbestos Strike came to its bitter end. The momentous events weren’t particularly relevant to him. If you grew up in Asbestos, there really wasn’t anywhere else to work. It was a steady job for 2,500 people.

Nicholls will tell you he’s had a pretty good life. At least up to this point, he says, and a rueful smile flickers across his gaunt face. He and two friends who graduated from high school at the same time all went to work in the mill. One died of a heart attack, and one died from asbestosis, which leaves just Nicholls, and he too is suffering from asbestosis.

He moves slowly and breathes with difficulty because his lungs are scarred with asbestos fibre. There is no cure for asbestosis, so at the age of 80 the prognosis seems clear enough. Mine and mill operations may be much cleaner these days, but for more than a century asbestos dust in the air was as omnipresent as the air itself. If you left your shoes on the floor near an open window, they’d be outlined in dust when you picked them up in the morning.

There was nothing about asbestos that was seen as threatening for children. In fact, teachers and parents gave the kids asbestos to play with, as if it were Plasticine. Donald Nicholls smiles: “We used to make models all the time.” And outside, asbestos fibres were a handy ingredient if you wanted to throw a snowball at a scab during a strike.

*********************************************************

While Nicholls was at the mine, across the country young Chuck Strahl was working as a logger in the forests of British Columbia, running a machine known as a yarder. He had to sit two feet from masses of asbestos dust, breathing it in and out, nine or 10 hours a day.

Many years later, in 2005, Strahl was diagnosed with mesothelioma. This meant that the successful career he’d made for himself in federal politics would not go as far as it might have. And it meant that he was at loggerheads with his boss, Stephen Harper, on the issue of asbestos.

The problem was not the use of asbestos in Canada, which has practically been outlawed. Indeed, Harper’s government is paying millions of dollars to remove asbestos from the Parliament Buildings. Rather, the problem is what Canadian asbestos is doing in other countries.

Canada’s isolation was thrown into sharp contrast this year during debate at the United Nations over a proposal to include asbestos on the Rotterdam Convention watch list that warns trading countries of products’ potential toxicity. Importing countries have the option to refuse potentially hazardous materials. Canada, standing alone, blocked the measure.

Strahl’s appeal is simple and polite but unmistakably defiant. As he put it in The Globe and Mail earlier this year, “By listing chrysotile in the Rotterdam Convention as a product that deserves to be handled carefully and with proper warnings, safe use is more likely to occur. Workers from all countries will be grateful for that notification—if not today, then a generation from now.”

Having travelled alongside Harper from the early days of the Reform Party all the way to cabinet, Strahl must have had his doubts that the headstrong leader would change his mind. On the other hand, it cannot have been comfortable for Harper to be at odds with a respected veteran of his caucus. Strahl has not changed his mind about Canada approving the Rotterdam Convention: “I think it will. It’s just a matter of when.”

The former MP (whose cancer is in remission) discreetly says nothing about his dialogue with Harper about asbestos except that “people know my views....And obviously my views didn’t prevail.”

For root causes, Strahl points directly at the Quebec government and Ottawa’s reluctance to interfere in areas of provincial jurisdiction. But Harper’s calculus on the issue surely includes not just his reluctance to tread on Quebec’s turf but also his regional base in the province. One of his few stops in Quebec during this year’s election campaign was Asbestos, where he declared, “This government will not put Canadian industry in a position where it is discriminated against in a market where sale is permitted.”

In the end, of the five Conservatives elected in Quebec, four were in a belt of ridings beginning with that of Christian Paradis, whose home town is Thetford Mines. He is now the senior minister for Quebec in the Harper cabinet.

But Harper’s devotion to the asbestos industry is nothing new. A succession of Canadian governments have been nothing if not loyal to the industry. While other jurisdictions sounded warnings about asbestos, the Canadian and Quebec governments did their best to persuade the world that asbestos was just fine—not all kinds of asbestos, of course, but the asbestos that came from Canada.

The issue came to a head in the late ’90s, when France decided to ban asbestos. An unhappy Canada took the case to the World Trade Organization. It was embarrassing enough to be brawling with a G7 ally; more painful, it was a losing cause. The WTO rejected Canada’s appeal because, simply, “there is in fact a serious carcinogenic risk associated with the inhalation of chrysotile fibres.”

There is, however, a basis to Canada’s contention that chrysotile is less harmful than the blue and brown asbestos that came from other countries. But less harmful does not mean harmless. The World Health Organization says unequivocally that there is no safe level of exposure to asbestos. Yet a Natural Resources Canada fact sheet that appeared on the departmental website as recently as 2008 insisted that asbestos is not as dangerous as originally believed—“current knowledge and modern technology can successfully control the potential for health and environmental harm posed by chrysotile.” In another tack, the fact sheet pointed to alternatives that might compete against chrysotile, and warned that “there is no scientific proof that new alternatives are any safer.”

For both levels of government and the industry, the chosen instrument of pro-asbestos lobbying is the Chrysotile Institute, formerly the Asbestos Institute. Ottawa has contributed $250,000 every year to the institute since its foundation in 1984, with a similar amount coming from Quebec City. There was speculation last spring that Ottawa was backing away from its commitment to the institute. But its president, Clement Godbout, says he has heard nothing beyond an assurance that funding will continue until at least next spring—which is much the same kind of reassurance he has had every year. Godbout says there are no plans to give up on the institute’s intense lobbying activities at home and abroad.

What all the asbestos stakeholders—the towns, the industry, the provincial and federal governments, the Chrysotile Institute—share is a denial, reminiscent of the history of the tobacco industry, of some facts that have been around for almost a century. It was reported in a 1918 U.S. government study that “in the practice of American and Canadian life insurance companies, asbestos workers are generally declined on account of the assumed health-injurious conditions of the industry.” In the late 1970s, documents made public in American courts proved that asbestos industry officials had known of the dangers of asbestos since the 1930s but had concealed that knowledge.

Critics of the indulgent Canadian government policy toward the industry have amassed a list of what seems like every medical organization in the country—the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Canadian Lung Association, the Quebec Medical Association. Not even the World Health Organization tempers its judgment. As an official put it, “WHO’s position is extremely clear: that all forms of asbestos are carcinogenic to humans. WHO would be very happy to see as many countries as possible phase out asbestos. It has been clearly identified as a public health risk.” The respected British medical journal The Lancet said last year that “until recently, asbestos exportation was the elephant in the room in Canadian politics that no party was brave enough to take on, due to industry opposition.” This year, the Liberals got on board with an NDP motion to ban asbestos exports. It was defeated by the Conservatives, with the help of the Bloc Québécois, in November.

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For all the damage it has done to Canada’s reputation, asbestos is a small industry. In fact, by the time Ottawa gets around to banning the export of asbestos, there may be no asbestos industry left to argue about. There is still lots of asbestos fibre to be found in the 60-kilometre swath from Thetford Mines to Asbestos. But it’s expensive to mine when measured against the lower-cost and comparatively unconflicted industries in Russia, Brazil, Kazakhstan, China and Zimbabwe.

Thetford Mines was shaken last summer by a newspaper story that its LAB Chrysotile mine could run out of asbestos within the next year. Mine officials denied the forecast, but production at the mine has been declining sharply in recent years. Then came reports that the mine will be shut down indefinitely in November. (The company did not return calls.)

The Jeffrey Mine in Asbestos has been barely operational for the past eight years. The mine’s uncertain future is staked on the considerable talents and persuasion of a Montreal businessman who came to Canada in 1973 from his native India to study business. Three years later, Baljit Singh Chadha started his own company and teamed up with a Canadian asbestos firm that needed an agent in India or at least a Canadian who knew the Indian market. These days, his trading company annually ships about $100-million worth of nuts, dried fruit, wood and asbestos between India and Canada.

Chadha’s accomplishments, including his philanthropy, were recognized by former prime minister Jean Chrétien in 2003, when he appointed Chadha to both the Security Intelligence Review Committee and the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada. Chadha has had intimate ties to a succession of federal and provincial Liberal governments, most evident recently when he hosted fundraisers for former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and Premier Jean Charest and accompanied Charest on a trade mission to India.

For all that, Chadha was a low-profile figure until he made a bid to buy the Jeffrey Mine last year and started to champion the export of asbestos this year. The Quebec government is keeping the mine afloat with a $58-million loan guarantee, on the condition that Chadha find outside investors who will put $25 million into the project.

Both Chadha and provincial Economic Development Minister Clément Gignac have insisted that exporting asbestos to India is beneficial for the country’s impoverished millions. Chadha also told The Globe and Mail that WHO has set a safe threshold for chrysotile exposure. That statement was contradicted in a rare public rebuke from WHO.

“There is very little scientific evidence against us,” Chadha said subsequently. “In fact, there is none.”

*********************************************************

For 24 years, Durai Swami loaded and unloaded sacks of asbestos and piles of asbestos cement sheeting in Ahmedabad, the fast-growing hub of Gujarat state and India’s industrial capital.

Swami worked eight hours a day, six days a week. In return, the Shree Digvijay Cement Co. Ltd. each day dispensed 230 rupees ($5) and a 150-gram lump of dark, sticky cane sugar, called jaggery. His managers instructed him to suck on it through the day. “They told us if we ate it, all the dust that we breathed in would stick to it and move through our system and not hurt us,” he says.

That’s the sort of thing that passed for safety equipment at the factory, where Swami worked until recently. After 10 years of the sugar fix, the workers were given gloves, and cotton handkerchiefs to tie over their mouths. But for more than a decade, there has been nothing at all, Swami says.

India has a voracious market for asbestos, which is used to make a cement composite used in low-cost building products. Canada sent 69,575 tonnes of asbestos to India in 2010, according to the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database, with a value of $39.1 million (U.S.). The leading supplier to the country, by far, is Russia. In 2010, Canada ranked third after that country and Brazil.

A small network of activists and aggrieved workers across India argue that there is no such thing as safe use in a country where there is no tradition or practice of occupational safety, no enforcement of regulations, no monitoring of workers’ health—and such severe poverty that Swami went on showing up for work for years, long after he was winded by a half-block walk and had been diagnosed with asbestosis. He knew full well his job was killing him. “In Canada you have all these safety measures,” he says. “In my country they’ve left us to carry it and die.”

Near-identical working conditions are described by current and former employees of the cement factory (now called the Gujarat Composite Co.) and Gujarat Electric Co., operator of a giant power plant whose asbestos-sheathed towers loom over the city. The industries are two of the most common sources of exposure to asbestos here, but there are plenty of others, ranging from chemical production to auto parts manufacturing to ship breaking.

At the factory and power plant, the men have worked with sacks of asbestos displaying a maple leaf (although the workers recognized the Canadian symbol, they could not read the English words, including those that list the “safe” conditions for use of the product inside). None of the men has an education past the third-grade level. Their safety equipment consisted of, at most, cloth tied over their faces; often, they say, they shaped asbestos rope or smeared asbestos slurry on to boiler parts as insulation, with bare hands, their faces uncovered, the dust so thick in the air it was difficult to see.

Many of them began to have trouble breathing more than a decade ago, but they had no information that asbestos presented any risk to their health. “We used to make it into balls and throw them at each other when we were fooling around,” Ragunath Manwar says with bitter amusement.

Manwar worked at the electric company for 37 years, until he was fired in 2002 after asking the company why so many of his colleagues were dying. He says he only learned that he was working with asbestos in 1998 when a lawyer helping his union with a workers’ compensation case asked him to bring her a small chunk of this white powder he worked with. “That was the first I ever heard it was dangerous.”

*********************************************************

Today Manwar, jovial, white-haired and apparently tireless—so far unaffected by the breathing troubles that afflict many of his former colleagues—runs a one-man accountability effort from a battered desk on the veranda of his small home, fighting the companies for compensation. But as he sees it, he has another opponent as well: his own government, which, he says, knows full well that asbestos is causing a massive incipient epidemic in India, but is so in the sway of industry that it dismisses the legitimacy of a tower of medical evidence and obstructs all efforts, domestic and international, to put a ban on its use.

When the connection between asbestos and lung disease became irrefutable and the First World market for asbestos began to collapse in the late 1970s, the industry went looking for greener fields. None has proved greener than India, where economic growth has averaged 9% a year of late and the construction industry is growing at breathtaking speed. And as the Canadian industry made clear as it began to target the developing world, a country such as India would pose no messy problems with occupational health: Daniel Perlstein, then president of the asbestos company Société Nationale de l’Amiante, was quoted in The Globe in 1982 explaining that the question of health did not appear to be a concern “in some countries where life expectancy is only 35...most people die by age 35 of other causes than old age or of a cancer that takes 35 to 40 years to grow.”

Companies such as Gujarat Composite combine cement with fly ash and asbestos (at about 9% of the mixture) to create a durable sheet; the asbestos acts as a binder that prevents brittleness. “Canadian fibres are among the best in the world—that is why most companies prefer Canadian fibres first,” says John Nicodemus, an executive director of the Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers Association of India. He says that the asbestos cement industry produced 4.4 million tonnes of product last year (mostly roof sheets, but also some pipes); the industry has grown by about 14% year on year for the past decade and is currently worth about $1 billion annually. It uses about 90% of the asbestos imports to India.

Asbestos cement sheets are not just durable, they’re cheap—as little as $7 a sheet, and less than half the price of roofing made with galvanized steel or tin, with at least twice the lifespan. So, increasingly, asbestos is the material of choice for low-cost construction, and it has become a cornerstone of the numerous building upgrades in rural areas. “Asbestos is in every school and every train station and every hospital in this country,” says Gopal Krishna, India co-ordinator of the international Ban Asbestos Network.

But Nicodemus says there is no risk: “Governments do their own studies, and they are satisfied that there is no problem—there is no problem under pollution controls,” he says. He adds cheerfully, “I am living proof to this: I worked for 40 years with factories. I am an educated person—if I had sensed any problem, I would have left the industry a long time back and gone somewhere else.”

The industry has a showpiece asbestos factory in the south, Hyderabad Industries Ltd.; this is where the industry association likes to take journalists. There, automatic bag-opening equipment keeps sacks of asbestos in a pressure-controlled area away from workers, and an automated process mixes dry asbestos into slurry, so that the fibres do not become airborne. Contaminant levels in the air are monitored routinely and are well below the Indian government limits (although these are 10 times higher than those in the U.S.).

But the Ahmedabad workers tell a different story—that a “dry process” is still used routinely in their factory, that bags split open all the time, that the men leave the factory coated in white dust. The manager of the factory, D.K. Dutta, and the director of personnel, S.G. Shekawat, refused to allow a visit to the facility to investigate the workers’ allegations, or to answer any questions, in person, by phone or e-mail. In 2010 and 2011, the company was repeatedly cited, and nearly shut down by the pollution control authorities, for using the dry process.

Nicodemus insists in one breath that the dry process is not used anywhere in India any more and then admits in another that his association has no way to prove that. “As far as the Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers Association is concerned, we have tried our best to identify even small-scale producers so that we can educate them. Governmental regulations are there…and if people are not following, if enforcement is not there, what can we do? We tried our best to bring them [to follow the standards]. I do not know—they are not interested.”

Yet while the cement industry gets—and dodges—the scrutiny, its workers are only part of India’s asbestos exposure story. “The primary exposure is not factory workers; it’s the construction workers, the masons, the plumbers, the electricians, who cut through pipes and sheets and tiles all day—this is where maximum exposure happens,” says Tushar Kant Joshi, a doctor who is director of the independent Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health in New Delhi. The World Health Organization says that the greatest exposure to asbestos fibre happens when sheets and roofing are cut with abrasive tools; the only way to reduce the risk is to do the cutting under water.

Joshi says that rarely ever happens. India has four different laws covering occupational safety—but they apply only to organized, “formal-sector” workers, who are, at most, 10% of the workforce. The great bulk of work in the country’s roaring construction industry is done by day labourers, picked up from vast labour markets in the early morning and paid a dollar or two for a day of work on the high-rise towers of Mumbai and the new shopping malls of Delhi. The occupational safety laws lay out minimum requirements for ventilation, safety equipment, air quality and medical monitoring of workers. But, in practice, none of this ever happens, Joshi says, both because of lack of will and because the Ministry of Labour department tasked with the job has scant resources. Asbestos-related lung cancer is not a reportable illness here; neither, outside mining, is mesothelioma. So there are no statistics on whether they are increasing; and there are no independent epidemiological studies on affected populations in India. Asbestos products are sold without hazard warnings; there is no monitoring of what happens to asbestos sheets or pipes once they leave the point of sale. “They don’t even monitor the organized sector, forget unorganized,” says Joshi. The worker in a factory gets a mask, and ventilation—the person drilling a hole gets nothing.”

The worker drilling holes in asbestos cement sheets goes home at the end of the day in dusty clothes, and his wife or children wash them. “When I would wash the clothes, the smell and the dust would make me gag,” says Savita Mehra, whose husband, Narrayanprasad, made asbestos into fibre ropes at Gujarat Electric Co. for 22 years. “I would say to him, “Look at this, at this dust—you must leave that job.’ But he would say, ‘How can I? How else will I get a permanent job?’” Today Savita, 67, is breathless; when the family can afford steroids, she can move slowly around their two-room house; when they can’t, she stays in bed. Her husband has been diagnosed with occupational asthma. No one has ever investigated Savita’s asbestos exposure. Her husband says he developed breathing trouble after about 10 years at the factory; he went to the factory doctor and was told he had tuberculosis. He took TB treatment for seven years. Today he receives a pension of 300 rupees, or $6, a month—about a fifth of what the family spends on medical care for their breathing problems.

*********************************************************

Immediately outside the gates of the sprawling Gujarat Composite factory is a clump of about 300 small houses called Kali Gaon—Black Village—although the houses are mostly painted blue. Every roof is made of corrugated asbestos cement sheets, which are sold from vast stacks at the gate of the factory. “It is the most ideal roof for the Indian people,” enthuses Nicodemus.

But many of the sheets are broken; breakage releases fibres. Heat causes the sheets to break down—and every family cooks on wood or charcoal inside their low-slung houses. Broken pieces are taken home from the factory by workers who use them to make jerry-rigged fences.

Until recently, the factory also supplied water to workers from a well inside its walls. “You could see dust in the water, floating in it,” says C.R. Singh, who grew up in Kali Gaon and whose father still works in the factory. “I had no idea there was a risk—it’s just what people have done their whole life. Now I wonder what I drank for my first 25 years.”

His father, who has repeatedly been diagnosed with asbestosis, inventories bags of chrysotile in a storeroom. The elder Singh says the bags, which occasionally split on their own, are disgorged in the open instead of inside a sealed container, and that there has never been a way to vacuum the dust from his uniform before he leaves for home. All of these circumstances have been identified by the Canadian industry as unsafe. And if anyone has ever checked the particulate level in the factory, they’ve never shared the results with him. Nor the results of his infrequent health exams.

He was, however, given jaggery for years.

“The company was making a fool of these people,” says Ragunath Manwar. He hardly expects better of the employers. Canada is another story. “Doesn’t your government feel a moral responsibility that what they are doing is killing us?”

Whatever Canada’s government may feel, the Indian one apparently has no qualms: It has approved 10 new sites for asbestos cement factories to open next year. That’s no surprise, says Joshi, who—shades of Canada—describes a “close nexus of interests between the business and politicians.” There is, for example, an asbestos cement factory in the constituency of Sonia Gandhi, leader of the ruling All India National Congress. Another huge factory in Hyderabad is headed by Gaddam Vivekanand, a member of the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament. He continues to sit as vice-chairman on the company’s board of directors. The industry assiduously courts political favour, reminding politicians that it employs 100,000 people directly, and another 300,000 indirectly. A bill to ban asbestos pushed by activists has sat in the upper house of parliament for years. “The political will is not there. To ban it, to reduce consumption, to restrict use is a political decision,” says Joshi.

Manwar goes further than that. “It’s corruption: The industry buys out the labour department,” he says. No such complaint has been brought against the asbestos cement industry formally, but such practices, while common in India, are rarely investigated. The aging activist sits in the shadow of the cement factory, holding a tattered file of medical records from the men he once worked with, each one ending with a doctor’s scrawl of “asbestosis.”

“We have no power,” he says. “We have nothing.”

John Gray and Stephanie Nolen - The Globe and Mail

21 Nov 2011

Canada’s asbestos export must end

2011-12-02T21:06:00.000-08:00

AMWU National President, Paul Bastian, said the meeting held with the union and the Australian Diseases Foundation of Australia (ADFA), was an important opportunity to bring pressure on the Canadian government to outlaw asbestos exports once and for all.

“Canada has some of the most stringent domestic regulations in regard to the use of asbestos in the world. Earlier this year their politicians approved renovations to their parliament in order to have the deadly fibre removed.

“Yet Canada continues to condone the export of tonnes of asbestos to developing countries in Asia each year. They must bring an end to this, before millions more suffer and die as a result of this insidious product.“

He said it was unfathomable that asbestos was still traded nearly a century since the deadly affects of the material first came to light.

“The World Health Organisation makes it clear that there is no safe level of exposure and the colour of asbestos is irrelevant. It is an indiscriminate killer.

“125 million people are continually exposed to asbestos on a daily basis, the vast majority of whom reside in developing countries.

“Canada sees itself as a progressive country but its commitment to humanitarian principles stops at its borders when it comes to making a buck of out asbestos”

The meeting in Sydney, held as a conclusion to Asbestos Awareness Week brought the AMWU, ADFA campaigners, victims of asbestos related diseases and their families for a memorial service outside of the consulate.

Wreaths were laid to remember all those who have and will die through asbestos related diseases from Canadian asbestosis.

“As long as Canada continues its trade in deaths, the AMWU, ADFA and asbestos victims will continue to remind their government of the duty of care to those in developing countries,” Mr Bastian said.

The AMWU has demanded Canada end the export of asbestos to developing countries, during a rare meeting with the country’s Consular-General Mario Ste-Marie, in Sydney last Friday.

Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union, Dec 01, 2011

http://www.amwu.org.au/read-article/news-detail/840/Canada%E2%80%99s-asbestos-export-must-end-says-AMWU/

Union Carbide's Asbestos Legacy & Double Standard

2011-12-02T01:02:00.000-08:00

In January 2002, Dow settled a case brought against its subsidiary Union Carbide Corporation by workers exposed to asbestos in the workplace. The case was filed before acquisition of Union Carbide by Dow Chemicals Company.

Carbide’s new owner, Dow reached a settlement in the case. The company has set aside $2.2 billion to address future liabilities. Globally companies facing asbestos liabilities seem to be in the process of setting up compensation fund-as an out of court settlement exercise- to escape further civil and criminal liability for knowingly exposing workers, their families and consumers domestically and the world over.

Asia Pacific Fdn Pressured to Disavow Former Fellow's Pro-Asbestos Stance

2011-12-02T00:20:00.000-08:00

Baljit Chadha rebuts claim his views violate ethical standards.

By Tom Sandborn, Today, TheTyee.ca http://thetyee.ca/News/2011/12/01/Pro-Asbestos-Disavowed/

A group of scientists and anti-asbestos campaigners are demanding the prestigious Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada disavow pro-asbestos statements made by a former foundation fellow, Baljit Chadha.

In recent letters penned to the foundation, human rights lawyer Kathleen Ruff and a group of prominent scientists slammed Chadha's support of Canada's export trade in chrysotile asbestos. As The Tyee reported earlier this year, asbestos mining and export has come under fire from a long list of medical and public health bodies, including the Canadian Medical Association, and labour and social justice groups such as the Canadian Labour Congress.

A spokesperson for Chadha -- a key figure in an attempt to raise public and private money to revamp and re-open Quebec's Jeffrey Mine, which produces chrysotile asbestos primarily for the export market into Third World countries -- disputes the claims made in the letters. Chadha's group of investors hopes to win support from the Quebec government to re-open the operation as an underground mine.

It's the latest round in a long debate over the future of the industry, one that, while currently stalled, could see a second life should Chadha win Quebec's support.

'No intention of resigning': Chadha's rep

The Tyee obtained letters sent to the foundation by Ruff, a former director of the B.C. Human Rights Commission, as well as the group of scientists supporting her call for action on Chadha's statements. Chadha has made his pro-asbestos views known in various venues, including in a Montreal Gazette op-ed and on the foundation's website.

(The APF website currently hosts a discussion about asbestos export, including an essay by Chadha and a response by Ruff.)

"I believe that Mr. Chadha's conduct violates normal standards for any reputable research organisation and discredits the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada," states Ruff’s letter. "I request that you ask Mr. Chadha to stop denying the overwhelming, clear, reputable scientific evidence and to stop serving his vested interests by promoting deceptive misinformation concerning chrysotile asbestos."

Ruff's letter echoed a similar call from 25 scientists and physicians. They argue the foundation is "violating minimum ethical standards" by refusing to take action against Chadha, "who falsely claims that the World Health Organization supports the use of asbestos, when, in fact, the World Health Organization opposes the use of asbestos."

Guy Versailles, a public relations consultant representing Chadha, responded to The Tyee's request for comment, stating that Chadha has "absolutely no intention" of resigning from the foundation, and that he stands by his statements.

Foundation executive director Jill Price noted via email that Chadha's term as a Distinguished Fellow expired on Oct. 16 of this year, and that he no longer had any connection with the foundation as of that date.

She went on to say: "We know well that many trade and economic issues find Canadians divided, along with those involving human rights and the environment, among others. Our job is to provide an open platform and non-partisan approach for a reasoned discussion."

WHO: ban or no ban?

In Chadha's op-ed article in the Montreal Gazette, the Quebec financier wrote that: "There is peer-reviewed scientific evidence that exposure to chrysotile asbestos respecting the province’s industrial exposure standard of one fibre per cubic centimetre poses no health risk. That is the norm at the mine today and by the World Health Organization today."

In her letter to the foundation, Ruff calls this claim false, citing a 2006 statement from the WHO that reads in part: "Bearing in mind that there is no evidence for a threshold for the carcinogenic effect of asbestos and that increased cancer risks have been observed in populations exposed to very low levels, the most efficient way to eliminate asbestos related diseases is to stop using all types of asbestos."

In response, Versailles suggested that Ruff and other anti-asbestos campaigners are misrepresenting the position of the WHO. He said a later vote by the World Health Assembly, which he described as the top decision-making body of the WHO, declined to support a total ban on asbestos exports.

"WHO will work with Member States to strengthen the capacities of the ministries of health to provide leadership for activities related to workers' health... Its activities will include global campaigns for elimination of asbestos-related diseases -- bearing in mind a differentiated approach to regulating its various forms..." a 2007 WHO document reads.

Versailles said this statement, made in May 2007, trumps the call for asbestos eradication in the 2006 WHO statement that Ruff cites. "I fail to see how an information document published a year earlier could supersede a clear decision by the WHO's top decision making body," he wrote by email.

However, a 2010 WHO fact sheet states the organization "works with countries towards elimination of asbestos-related diseases in the following strategic directions: by recognizing that the most efficient way to eliminate asbestos-related diseases is to stop the use of all types of asbestos..."

And while criticizing what it characterizes as "inconsistency" in WHO policy on asbestos, a pro-asbestos industry website "No Chrysotile Ban," has also recognized that the U.N. body called for a ban in a major publication.

A question of science

Ruff argues that the evidence for asbestos harm and for a total ban is widely supported by medical experts and organizations around the world.

"What Mr. Chadha says in his presentation on your website is repudiated as dangerous, disreputable misinformation by Canada's medical authorities and international authorities," she writes in her letter, citing a slew of major health organizations including the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Cancer Society, and the Lung Association of Canada.

"Not a single reputable scientific or medical association supports the assertions put forward by Mr. Chadha on your website," she concludes.

Dr. Ferdinand Turcotte, one of the 25 scientists who also wrote a letter to the foundation, told The Tyee: "As far as independent science is concerned, the carcinogenic property of all forms of asbestos is a settled question, and it has been so for close to 50 years.

"It is a fundamental rule of conduct in public and occupational health practice that whenever a product is found to be carcinogenic, we have the duty to substitute a non-carcinogenic substitute when such is available, which has been the case with asbestos for a very long time."

Chadha's rep said that statements from the many medical organizations that call for asbestos bans do not persuade him.

"We should not throw away our judgment just because we hear from doctors," Versailles argued. "The evidence for harm is not there." He said that WHO estimates of 100,000 asbestos deaths annually around the world were not backed up with hard data.

Versailles also provided The Tyee with a letter signed by six figures variously identified as "independent toxicologist," "consultant in toxicology," academics associated with a foundation or with universities in the U.K. and Canada. The six authorities cited by Versailles say in the letter that:

"The latest scientific evidence published strongly supports the following views:

"1: Chrysotile is significantly less hazardous than the amphibole forms of asbestos (e.g. crocidolite and amosite);

"2: When properly controlled and used, chrysotile asbestos in its modern day high-density applications does not present risks of any significance to public and/or worker health."

At least one of the authorities who signed the pro-asbestos letter has a history of contracts with the asbestos industry.

According to the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Dr. David M. Bernstein, who is described in the pro-asbestos document as a "consultant in toxicology" based in Switzerland, was paid over $400,000 dollars for pro-asbestos consulting by Union Carbide, and has worked for other asbestos producing firms over the years.

Meanwhile, on Nov. 24, CTV reported that for the first time in 130 years, production of asbestos ore from Canadian mines had completely stalled, after production stopped at the Jeffrey Mine's only Canadian competitor, Thetford Mines.

However, Bernard Coulombe, president of the Jeffrey Mine that Chadha hopes to renovate, was quoted by CTV as saying he was optimistic that the Quebec government will provide the loan guarantee that Chadha is seeking, thus allowing another 25 to 50 years of asbestos export activity.

Tom Sandborn covers labour and health policy beats for The Tyee. He welcomes your feedback and story tips here.

India deal won't study asbestos: Analysts

2011-11-29T07:41:00.000-08:00

Note: ToxicsWatch Alliance (TWA) and Occupational Health India (OHI) demands that the Government of India should desist from signing any free trade agreement with Canada unless chrysotile asbestos trade is banned. 93 % of the workforce in India is in the unorganised sector where workers are routinely exposed. When they go back to the houses, their families are also exposed to the killer fibers of asbestos. The asbestos products are present every building in India, it exposes the present generation and will expose the future generation as well. Canada will be remembered as the worst human rights violators for having subjected the occupationally and environmentally vulnerable citizens of India for all times to come. It is and will be a black spot on Canada's reputation forever if it does not change its role as a merchant of death.

Gopal Krishna
TWA/OHI

But trade in the controversial material also likely won't rise if trade deal is signed, they say.

By Carl Meyer

Canadian exports of asbestos to India won't be examined as part of an environmental assessment recently launched in connection with the Canada-India free trade talks, say experts—and that has some calling on the government to widen its scope.

A Nov. 12 notice in the Canada Gazette, an official federal government publication, announced that Canada is now conducting a strategic environmental assessment as part of ongoing talks launched in September 2010 toward a Canada-India Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement.

The government is inviting Canadians to submit their views by Jan. 11 on "any likely and significant environmental impacts" that the proposed trade deal, which enters its third round of talks in Delhi from Dec. 13 to 15, might have on Canada.

In light of continued controversy over asbestos, some see the export of the material to India as a major environmental issue that is worth examining. Canada exported $40.3 million worth of asbestos-related products to India in 2010, according to Industry Canada, and the World Health Organization says asbestos causes an estimated 8,000 deaths each year in India—a phenomenon described in a recent Australian Broadcasting Corporation documentary as an "epidemic."

But the environmental assessment won't cover asbestos exports because the assessment's mandate is to only look at domestic environmental impacts, says Aaron Cosbey, associate and senior adviser for trade and investment at the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

While these environmental assessments have been a regular feature of trade negotiations for a decade, since the assessment is limited to impacts in Canada, asbestos exports would only likely be tackled, if at all, by the Indian government, agreed Dan Ciuriak, a former deputy chief economist at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade who sat on the committee that established the procedures and the manual for federal environmental assessments.

India, however, doesn't conduct any of its own environmental assessments for trade deals, said Mr. Cosbey. The Canada-India joint study that was released at the launch of the talks also says that India's current policy is not to include environmental issues in trade talks.

"I can't see this issue being addressed anywhere in the talks," he wrote in an email.

That has William Amos, director of the Ecojustice environmental law clinic at the University of Ottawa, calling on the government to widen its scope. There is merit to the trade talks looking at the impact of asbestos exports to India—even if it could be argued that the environmental assessment itself did not have the mandate to do so, he said.

"There's a purpose to a strategic environmental assessment, and I think its purpose is limited. There are bigger questions, and some of those questions don't extend beyond the scope of narrow [free trade agreements]; they go to the issues of, 'What are the impacts of increased Canadian exports of products to India, in particular, asbestos?'" said Mr. Amos.

Prominent anti-asbestos campaigner Kathleen Ruff agreed that the trade talks should look into Canada's exports of asbestos to India.

"It is a convenient way of having a double standard when the environmental impact of Canada's trading activities with India excludes the impact in India," she wrote in an email.

When asked about the potential to examine asbestos exports as part of the Canada-India trade talks, a spokesperson from Foreign Affairs and International Trade wrote in an email only that "As is routine for Canada's trade negotiations, an environmental assessment of the Canada-India CEPA will take place. Other countries assess trade negotiations according to their own laws and regulations."

Asbestos tariff unlikely to change

But all of this is not to say that the asbestos trade between Canada and India would rise if the trade deal goes through.

For that to happen, business would have to see an incentive to trade more. But Mr. Cosbey is quick to caution that the applied tariff rate for asbestos in India—the actual amount of duty that must be paid on the product—is at 10 per cent, relatively low compared to its technical upper limit of 40 per cent.

The trade talks would thus have to hammer out a deal on the upper limit to get the applied rate even lower, he said, meaning it would be unlikely to happen.

Environmental assessments are also typically angled toward more traditional issues associated with the environment, like greenhouse gas emissions, said Mr. Ciuriak.

He said they typically examine three things: whether a trade deal would make the Canadian economic structure adjust toward more or less greenhouse gas-intensive factors; whether the trade growth that is expected to occur will lead to a growth in greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption; and whether increased trade would lead to promoting the use of environmentally-friendly technology that may in fact offset other negative environmental outcomes.

But he said an environmental assessment is for the most part a vague exercise since there is little data that can be used to directly examine the environmental impacts of a trade deal. As well, they do not bind the country to halt progress on a trade deal if the outcome is environmentally negative.

Conservative government support

The asbestos issue has been back in the headlines ever since a failed Nov. 1 NDP vote in the House of Commons on banning asbestos exports saw five Conservative MPs abstain instead of voting with their colleagues, according to a Nov. 20 Canadian Press report.

CP also reported that on Nov. 14, industry scientists privately met with roughly a dozen Conservative parliamentarians.

The Harper government supports asbestos exports, even though it's a construction material banned in Canada and in several other developed nations, and while the government is spending millions of dollars removing asbestos from federal buildings in Ottawa.

The government demonstrated its support for the industry when it blocked asbestos from being included in a UN hazardous materials treaty on June 22. And Mr. Harper himself made clear his support when he visited an asbestos mining town in Quebec during the spring federal election campaign.

The government maintains the product is safe if handled properly, similar to other potentially dangerous industrial products regularly used in manufacturing or heavy industry.

The Chrysotile Institute, a non-profit industry group, says chrysotile asbestos can be encased in high-density products with no associated health risks, and can be used in fabrication safety if appropriate equipment is worn and procedures are followed. The group also says the world's asbestos mines have agreed to supply asbestos only to companies that show they are complying with national health regulations.

However, the WHO says all forms of asbestos can cause cancer in humans, as well as other diseases like fibrosis of the lungs. It estimates that over 107,000 people die from asbestos-related diseases each year.

Other prominent health organizations like the Canadian Medical Association also condemn asbestos use. At the CMA's general assembly in August, delegates voted almost unanimously to support a motion that opposed the Harper government's decision to block the listing of chrysotile asbestos at the UN as hazardous.

cmeyer@embassymag.ca

Published November 23, 2011

http://www.embassymag.ca/page/view/india-11-23-2011

Asbestos-cement company held guilty by Brussels Court

2011-11-29T07:24:00.000-08:00

A court in Brussels has ruled that the asbestos-cement company, Eternit, was responsible for the death of a woman who lived near their factory in Belgium (see article below in French). The court ordered Eternit to pay the family of Françoise Jonckheere $250,000 Euros. Jonckheere’s husband worked as an engineer at the factory and died of mesothelioma in 1987. Françoise Jonckheere died of mesothelioma in 2000. Before she died, she made her five sons promise to pursue the court case. Until now, Eternit had succeeded in getting other victims to sign settlements which provided compensation on condition that they stay silent. Françoise refused to stay silent.

The decision is a first in Belgium. Eternit is expected to appeal the decision.

In Italy, a decision is expected in February in a first-ever criminal case against Eternit top executives, Stephan Schmidheiny and Jean-Louis Marie Ghislain de Cartier de Marchienne, brought by over 3,000 asbestos victims.

Kathleen Ruff

एसबेस्टोस का कैन्सरपोशी प्रभाव और मौत के मुह में समाते मजदूर

2011-11-21T23:47:00.000-08:00

किसी उत्पाद लगभग 60 देशो में एसबेस्टोस का उपयोग इसके कैन्सरपोशी प्रभाव के कारण प्रतिबंधित है. भारत में भी सफेद ऐस्बेस्टॉस के उपयोग और आयात पर प्रतिबंध लगाने की तत्काल जरुरत है. आदिवासी जिला झाडोल में एसबेस्टोस खदानों में काम करने वाले मजदूरों के मरने का सिलसिला जारी है. 2007 में हुए सर्वे से पता चला की ५६ मजदूर एसबेस्टोस जनित रोगों के शिकार है. हाल के सालो में झाडोल के 126 मजदूरो में से 21 मर चुके है. उदयपुर के कलक्टर की मदद से, जून 2011 में 88 लोगो की तीन दिन तक जांच की गयी थी. इसी क्रम में नवम्बर 13 को एक और मजदूर की मौत हो गयी. राष्ट्रीय मानवाधिकार आयोग ने राजस्थान सरकार से एस्बेस्टस से हुए रोगी लोगो के सम्बन्ध में रिपोर्ट मांगी है.

The first-ever trial against an asbestos manufacturer

2011-11-21T02:43:00.000-08:00

End to a conspiracy of silence?
The first-ever Belgian trial against an asbestos manufacturer
Verdict expected in Belgium’s asbestos trial on 28 November

Brussels — Monday 28 November 2011, the Tribunal civil de Bruxelles (Brussels civil court) will deliver its verdict in the trial of Françoise Jonckheere versus the manufacturer Eternit.

Prepared over a period of 11 years by Maître Jan Fermon and his team, the first-ever Belgian trial against an asbestos manufacturer saw a speech for the defence lasting almost three hours, on 24 October last.

This verdict is eagerly awaited, because it could finally mark the end of a denial of the devastating effect of a fibre that still causes the death of 110,000 people every year, including over 800 in Belgium. Asbestos continues to be mined in Brazil, Quebec, Kazakhstan and Russia.

On Monday 24 October, at the Palace of Justice in Brussels, the defence speech of Maître Fermon focused mainly on the following points:

- The carcinogenicity of asbestos since the 1940s and the link between asbestos and pleural cancer (mesothelioma) has been scientifically established since 1964.
- Cancers resulting from asbestos (pleural, laryngeal, pericardial, etc.) can arise indiscriminately as a result of inhaling asbestos fibres, regardless of type.
- The exposure of Françoise Jonckheere, “an environmental victim of asbestos” (she did not work for Eternit, but lived close to the factory where her husband worked in Kapelle-op-den-Bos) lasted for over 30 years, until 1991. So there is no statutory limitation.

Françoise Jonckheere died of asbestos cancer in July 2000, 13 years after her husband. She had asked her five sons to see her legal action through to completion. Since then, two of the sons have died of the same causes, in 2003 and 2009.

“We sincerely hope that justice will be done on 28 November, to put an end to the conspiracy of silence maintained by employment blackmail and out-of-court compensation, which have resulted in the producers’ immunity from prosecution,” says Eric Jonckheere, co-chair of Abeva. “Above all we hope that this trial will help to raise awareness, so that prevention can be strengthened in Belgium and production of asbestos stopped abroad. We are
quietly confident, but we will go to appeal if we are not heard.”

16 and 29 November: the truth about asbestos shown on television

The documentary film ‘Poussière mortelle’ (deadly dust), about the asbestos trial in Turin, Italy (still ongoing) and the production of asbestos in Brazil and India, will be broadcast on Belgian TV channel La Une (RTBF) on Wednesday 16 November at 22.00 and on Arte on Tuesday 29 November at 20.40.

Journalists please note: The conclusions of the trial are expected on 28 November around midday. This information will be confirmed the day before, on Sunday 27 November.

For further press-related information
Eric Jonckheere, 0476 788 833 – jonckair@yahoo.com (abroad until 26/11 but contactable)
Christophe Koninckx, 0475 440 515 – chkoninckx@gmail.com

ABEVA - C/o Fondation Belge contre le Cancer
Chaussée de Louvain, 479 - 1030 Brussels - Tel: 02 743 45 95 (hotline Tuesday mornings)
e-mail: abeva.be@gmail.com - www. a b e v a . b e

Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers

November 04, 2011 10:45 ET
Families of Asbestos Victims Speak Out Against Canadian Exports to Developing World

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Nov. 4, 2011) - Families of asbestos victims came together today for a media conference hosted at Toronto's Delta Chelsea Hotel to express their opposition to imminent plans to re-open a Québec asbestos mine. The mine investors are proposing to export asbestos from this mine to the developing world, particularly India.

The families invited the lead investor, Baljit Chadha, to visit Sarnia, Ontario to meet with asbestos disease victims and families. Sarnia has lost hundreds of residents over the past two decades to asbestos cancers. The invitation was also extended by Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley, whose letter to Mr. Chadha was released today. You can read the letter here: http://www.ohcow.on.ca/press_release/mayorbradleyletter.pdf

Mayor Mike Bradley can be reached at 519-332-0330 ext.308 or 519-464-7300 (cell).

Stacy Cattran, whose father Bill Coulbeck, died of asbestos cancer in Sarnia three years ago: "We would like Mr. Chadha to meet us and see first hand the suffering that asbestos has caused to so many Canadians".

Linda Reinstein, co-founder of the US-based Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (http://www.asbestosdiseaseawareness.org), expressed her alarm at the investment proposal: "My husband Alan died from asbestos cancer, so I know first hand the devastating impact on asbestos victims and their families. I have travelled all over the world meeting families and health and safety experts. They are unanimous in condemning Canada's support of asbestos. Now is the time to end the exports. Governments can support the affected Quebec communities to develop alternative industries."

Background:

The Québec government is expected to make a decision within a few weeks whether to extend loan guarantees to the asbestos investors to allow them to re-open the Jeffrey mine.

The World Health Organization estimates that past asbestos exposure is causing over 100,000 deaths annually around the world.

Here in Canada, organizations such as the Canadian Cancer Society and Canadian Labour Congress have called for an end to Canadian asbestos exports.

A 37-year observation of mortality in Chinese chrysotile asbestos workers

2011-11-14T09:08:00.000-08:00

Abstract
Objectives This 37-year prospective cohort study was undertaken to provide additional evidence for mortality risks associated with exposure to chrysotile asbestos.

Methods 577 asbestos workers and 435 control workers in original cohorts were followed from 1972 to 2008, achieving a follow-up rate of 99% and 73%, respectively. Morality rates were determined based on person-years of observation. Cox proportional hazard models were constructed to estimate HRs of cause-specific mortality, while taking into account age, smoking and asbestos exposure level.

Results There were 259 (45%) deaths identified in the asbestos cohort, and 96 died of all cancers. Lung cancer (n=53) and non-malignant respiratory diseases (n=81) were major cause-specific deaths, in contrast to nine lung cancers and 11 respiratory diseases in the controls. Age and smoking-adjusted HRs for mortality by all causes and all cancers in asbestos workers were 2.05 (95% CI 1.56 to 2.68) and 1.89 (1.25 to 2.87), respectively. The risks for lung cancer and respiratory disease deaths in asbestos workers were over threefold that in the controls (HR 3.31(95% CI 1.60 to 6.87); HR 3.23 (95% CI 1.68 to 6.22), respectively). There was a clear exposure–response trend with asbestos exposure level and lung cancer mortality in both smokers and non-smokers.

Conclusion Data from this prospective cohort provide strong evidence for increased mortality risks, particularly from lung cancer and non-malignant respiratory diseases, associated with exposure to chrysotile asbestos, while taking into account of the smoking effect.

Xiaorong Wang1, Eiji Yano2, Hong Qiu1, Ignatius Yu1, Midori N Courtice1, L A Tse1, Sihao Lin1,Mianzhen Wang3

+ Author Affiliations 1 Division of Occupational and Environmental Health, School of Public Health and Primary Care, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
2 School of Public Health, Teikyo University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan
3 Department of Occupational Health, Huaxi School of Public Health, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

Correspondence to Professor Xiaorong Wang, School of Public Health and Primary Care, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 4/F School of Public Health, Prince of Wales Hospital, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong SAR, China; xrwang@cuhk.edu.hk

http://thorax.bmj.com/content/early/2011/09/21/thoraxjnl-2011-200169.short?rss=1

NHRC seeks report from Rajasthan Govt on asbestos related disease

2011-11-08T08:07:00.000-08:00

NHRC seeks report on use of asbestos

Jaipur: The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has sought a status report on the use of asbestos in the state and whether any compensation package is paid to victims of asbestosis here.The report has been sought from the chief secretary within four months.

The NHRC's orders was in the context of a complaint filed by Gopal Krishna of the Toxic Watch Alliance (TWA). In his complaint,Krishna has drawn the attention of the commission towards the death of nearly 50,000 people every year in the world due to asbestos-related cancer.

He has alleged that white asbestos is a fibrous material used for building roofs and walls and in various other forms.The complainant has sought the commission's intervention for a ban on the use of chrysotile asbestos (white asbestos) which is hazardous for the health of people and causes various incurable diseases.Citing contradictory position of various state governments,he has alleged that while mining of asbestos has been technically banned,many states allow the import of asbestos and that too from countries which do not prefer domestic use.

The complainant has also requested for grant of a compensation package for the present and future victims of asbestosrelated diseases.

It is in this context that the NHRC has issued a notice to the chief secretary of Rajasthan along with those of other states and the secretaries of the ministries of chemicals & fertilizers,environment and forest,health and family welfare,industry,commerce and labour.

In Rajasthan,the Mine Labour Protection Campaign (MLPC) has been fighting for the rights of asbestosis victims.Though a ban on mining of asbestos was passed by the state government on July 9,1986,but it continues as the lease of individual mines are yet to expire.

There are a lot of workers who have been affected by working for a long period of time in asbestos mines here, says Rana Sengupta,managing trustee of MLPC.In 2007,the National Institute of Occupation Health (NIOH),Ahmedabad conducted a medical examination of 167 such workers out of which 93 were suspected to be afflicted with asbestosis.However,the final test results were not made public though about 20 of those 93 are now dead, Sengupta said.

Later after MLPC raised the issue,NIOH carried out a re-check on these workers but the results are once again awaited.The MLPC on its own has also conducted similar checks on about 250 workers and 50 % of them are suspected to be afflicted.Since then MLPC has been fighting with the government for a proper compensation package to these victims.

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Toxic Trade & India's Killer Asbestos Industry

2011-11-08T07:53:00.000-08:00

Toxic Asbestos Trade

From his tiny, ramshackle home in Ahmedabad 71 year old Naran Mehra cuts a forlorn figure.

The former power station worker is sick after years of exposure to asbestos that's used as an insulator in his workplace.

'When it would blow, my hair would turn white'. Naran Mehra

Unwittingly, he brought the danger home. His wife Sevita Devi used to shake asbestos dust from his clothes before washing them and now she's also stricken with disease. With no money for proper medical care the couple have given up hope for the future.

Asbestos illness in India is under-diagnosed and mostly unrecognised as a health problem. But with the proliferation of factories making and using asbestos products and an import trade in asbestos building products booming, India has become a new frontier for what's sure to be a dramatic, devastating health crisis.

Indian asbestos workers have little in the way of safety equipment and if they contract a respiratory illness like asbestosis or a cancer like mesothelioma few are paid compensation.

And unlike many developed countries where asbestos products have been banned, India can't get enough of what's called poor man's roofing. Alarmingly it's a first world nation that's supplying the stuff. Canada won't use asbestos itself but it is selling it by the shipload to India. Business is so brisk Canada is breathing new life into its asbestos mining industry to bolster its exports.

'It amounts to Canada being a purveyor of death around the world. Our country is an exporter of a deadly substance, and we enjoy it ... at least our federal government does'. Professor Amir Attaran, University of Ottawa

The asbestos industry is pouring millions of dollars into a campaign to assure India and convince any other developing nation that may be in the market that white asbestos, or chrysotile, is safe.

'This particular asbestos has not been known to give cancer, so far' Abhaya Shanker, Managing Director, Hyderabad Industries

Reporter Matt Peacock has spent decades investigating and uncovering many of the health scandals caused by asbestos. In fact much of his reporting has helped to elevate awareness about the dangers of asbestos in Australia. He's encountered some shocking scenes in his career but India's asbestos drama shocked even this seasoned correspondent.

'I first began covering the story of its trail of death in Australia thirty years ago. Back home and in other developed countries the problem now is how to get rid of it. But India it seems is racing headlong into repeating the same mistakes only on a massive scale.

Source: Foreign Correspondent, Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Asbestos Exports: Opposition Parties Call On Government To Ban The Sale Of Dangerous Substance Abroad

2011-11-01T21:44:00.000-07:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2011/11/01/asbestos-exports-opposition-parties-call-on-government-to-ban-sale-abroad_n_1069224.html

Jail time sought for businessman who exposed workers to asbestos

2011-10-31T08:03:00.000-07:00

Asbestos exposure prompts B.C. arrest warrant
Man employed recovering addicts to demolish homes without protection, court told
The Canadian Press, CBC, Oct 21, 2011

An arrest warrant has been issued for a Metro Vancouver man accused of knowingly exposing his workers to asbestos without protection.

The B.C. Court of Appeal ruled this week that Arthur Moore is in contempt of court for continuing to operate his asbestos and drywall removal business in the fall of 2010 despite a court order that he stop doing such work.

His business operated in Surrey and other cities under the name AM Environmental, Tri City Hazmat, Surrey Hazmat, Pro Scan Environmental and other names.

The appeal court upheld a lower court ruling that Moore was violating an injunction, did not provide proper safety training or equipment to his workers and was posing a significant risk to public safety.

The court also said Moore was exploiting young recovering addicts as part of his work force.

WorkSafeBC, which brought the legal action against Moore after finding safety concerns on his work sites, says it will seek jail time for him.

In a judgment handed down in April, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Jeanne Watchuk said Moore posed a “significant public safety concern.”

Evidence presented in the Supreme Court case included an instruction Moore gave his young workers to “run” if WorkSafeBC inspectors visited a job site.

One worker, David Cooper, said in an affidavit that he worked for Moore for nearly two years at dozens of demolition sites and was given only gloves as protective equipment except on one occasion.

Cooper said he was never told about the health threats posed by asbestos.

The court also heard that most of Moore’s workers were under 18, some as young as 14.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/10/21/bc-arrest-warrant-asbestos-exposure.html

The asbestos disease epidemic: here today, here tomorrow

2011-10-31T08:00:00.000-07:00

Thorax, An International Journal of Respiratory Medicine
Editorial, Paul Cullinan, Neil Pearce

In what may be the best ever use of a Wellcome grant, Geoffrey Tweedale, in his fascinating history of the multinational asbestos company Turner & Newall,1 reminds us that asbestos was once known as the ‘magic mineral’. Indeed, in many ways, it is the ideal construction material: tough, durable, light in weight, fire-resistant and very cheap. Unfortunately, asbestos is also, as every respiratory physician knows, highly toxic when inhaled. Total bans on its use are in place in 52 countries including those of the European Union, Australia, Japan and South Africa2; and its use is tightly restricted in the USA, New Zealand and Canada—the last, ironically, among the world's largest exporters of the material.

Readers from these countries may be surprised to learn that elsewhere the production, sale and use of asbestos continue to flourish and even increase. In 1994, one of us (NP) edited a book3 on occupational cancer in developing countries for the International Agency for Research on Cancer and reported that global asbestos production and use had not declined; rather, the problem was simply being moved from Western countries to emergent economies. Unhappily, the situation has not improved in the intervening 17 years. In India, for example, the use of asbestos has doubled in the last decade to about 300 000 tonnes a year by an industry that now employs an estimated 100 000 workers.4Other major users include China, Brazil, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Indonesia. In these parts of the world, where occupational exposures may be difficult to control and enforce, the great majority of asbestos is mixed with cement in the manufacture of sheets for roofing or pipes for sanitation and irrigation in contrast to the uses once common in Europe and North America.

There is a further contrast in the nature of the asbestos used in contemporary manufacturing. Almost all of the estimated 2 million tonnes mined each year is now chrysotile (‘white’ asbestos) with very little extraction of crocidolite (‘blue’), amosite (‘brown’) or other amphibole (straight-fibre) types. In part, this is a result of the disputed belief that different types of asbestos have different toxicities. Certainly, all are both fibrogenic and carcinogenic but it is often argued that chrysotile is less so than the amphiboles—at least with regard to mesothelioma—and that the exposures required to induce asbestosis and malignancies are considerably higher when chrysotile alone is being handled. It is on this basis, with the message that ‘chrysotile is safe if it is used safely’, that the powerful mining, industrial and governmental interests (particularly in Canada and Russia) justify and fight for the continuing sale and use of the mineral across the developing world. On the other hand, there are a number of studies5–8 which indicate that chrysotile exposure does increase the rate of lung cancer, with risks comparable to those shown with amphiboles, although the risks of mesothelioma remain uncertain and are likely to be lower than those from amphiboles.9A corollary of this is that the ratio of lung cancer cases to mesothelioma cases is likely to be higher for chrysotile than for amphiboles; thus, estimates of asbestos-related lung cancer, which are based on reported mesothelioma cases, require a larger ‘multiplying factor’ for chrysotile than for amphiboles.

The Chongqing asbestos plant in China opened in 1939 and expanded rapidly between 1958 and 1996 using up to 6000 tonnes of raw asbestos annually to manufacture textiles, asbestos cement products, rubber products and friction and heat-resistant materials. Only chrysotile asbestos extracted from mines in Sichuan has been used in the plant; a limited analysis of ore samples from these mines in 2000 was unable to detect any contamination by amphibole (tremolite) asbestos.10 Thus a study of the employees in the plant should provide important insights into the toxicology of essentially pure chrysotile.

In this issue of Thorax, researchers from Hong Kong and Sichuan report the results of their 37-year retrospective cohort study of employees from the Chongqing asbestos plant.11 A reference group of workers in an electronics factory in the same city was established and followed for the same period. The findings are striking: a more than threefold increase in the risk of death from lung cancer (and also non-malignant respiratory disease) was observed among the asbestos workers after statistical control for smoking, in the asbestos cohort, with clear evidence of an exposure-response relationship in both non-smokers and smokers. There were two deaths from mesothelioma in the asbestos cohort—presumably the same two reported in an earlier 25-year follow-up study of the same cohort.10

The study has some significant limitations. The authors have been unable to verify the claim that the factory has only ever used tremolite-free chrysotile; and it is possible that the employees in the asbestos factory had had previous asbestos exposure elsewhere or that there were alternative, unidentified carcinogens in the study workplace, although these would have had to have been highly potent. While follow-up in the asbestos cohort was virtually complete, a quarter of the electronics workers could not be traced.

Nonetheless, we think this publication is important for at least three reasons. First, the setting is that of a rapidly industrialising nation, one of many where asbestos use is both common and increasing. Almost all of the asbestos literature in publication concerns the experiences of workforces in Europe, North America or other more established economies. Vital lessons have been learnt from these publications, but we urgently need to move beyond the hegemony and understand the risks in those parts of the world where asbestos is now increasingly being used. Second, this is a study of pure or near-pure chrysotile and provides further evidence against the ‘amphibole hypothesis’,12 which assumes that any carcinogenic risks associated with chrysotile are attributable to natural contamination by tremolite. Third, many journal editors are reluctant to publish material on the risks of asbestos, it being merely ‘old news’; most funding agencies have similar reservations. A danger of this collective lack of enthusiasm is that the only remaining sponsors of research and publication become those with a vested commercial interest in upsetting the consensus that all forms of asbestos are carcinogenic.13

These are not arcane matters. Recent changes in the global economy have shifted manufacturing and its attendant hazards out of Europe and North America to rapidly developing economies in which millions of workers are routinely exposed to serious risks, an issue that, disgracefully, is omitted from virtually every discussion of ‘global public health’. For example, an otherwise excellent paper on non-communicable disease in developing countries, recently published in The Lancet, made no mention of occupational exposures; instead, the emphasis was on lifestyle risks such as tobacco, salt and alcohol overuse and obesity.14 The tragedy of this focus on personal (lifestyle) factors is that they are difficult to change,15 while occupational risk factors are of major importance and are relatively easier to ameliorate.3Exposure to asbestos, widespread and often poorly controlled, is high on the list of these risks with a projected 10 million deaths estimated from its use.16 Regular calls for the extraction, sale and use of asbestos to be banned in every country17 and repeated efforts to ban or restrict chrysotile asbestos under the Rotterdam Convention are countered by equally regular rebuttals from the extraordinarily powerful lobbies that have an interest in its continuation. The experience of a Chinese factory reported here serves as a sobering reminder that agencies who claim that asbestos is safe if it is used safely are being disingenuous at best. The asbestos disease epidemic is not over, it has simply moved, and occupational health researchers in all parts of the world have an obligation to continue to study its hazards and to work to prevent it repeating itself.

http://thorax.bmj.com/content/early/2011/10/28/thoraxjnl-2011-201180.extract

Referenced Thorax study:
A 37-year observation of mortality in Chinese chrysotile asbestos workers
http://thorax.bmj.com/content/early/2011/09/21/thoraxjnl-2011-200169.abstract

Indians vulnerable to lung diseases like asbestosis

2011-10-31T07:49:00.001-07:00

Asbestos and asbestos related diseases; Asbestos is a silent killer and there is a lot of controversy whether to ban asbestos use in country or not. Most of the developed nations have either banned or restricted the use, of asbestos. However in India, it is still used mainly in the cement industry.

India is still very vulnerable country for its communicable occupational health diseases. As more than half of country’s population work as labor, the major occupational morbidities and diseases of concern in India are silicosis, muscular-skeletal injuries, coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, chronic obstructive lung diseases, asbestosis, byssinosis, pesticide poisoning and noise induced hearing loss.

For more information, visit: http://www.heroin-detox.com/rehab-treatment-centers/

http://www.marketpressrelease.com/Diseases-and-morbidities-concerning-Indian-workmen-1318674056.html

Canada hypocritical on a dangerous mineral

2011-10-31T07:43:00.000-07:00

We all no doubt remember the rushing cloud of whitish dust which ballooned out over southern Manhattan on the morning of September 11, 2001, as the iconic towers of the World Trade Centre fell in on themselves after the planes commandeered by terrorists crashed into them. In addition to the almost 3000 people who died in the towers themselves, dozens of rescue workers and others caught in the cloud have since died from exposure to the dust. Many others developed serious lung problems which have severely affected their health and which will invariably shorten their lives.

That cloud was a toxic mixture of all the materials contained in those towering structures - gypsum wallboard, floor and ceiling tiles, disintegrated concrete, shredded paper, furniture, carpets and draperies, office chemicals, metal residue, even food blown to bits in the devastation and, saddest of all, people and their clothing. Perhaps most crucial was the 400 tonnes of asbestos, used as a fire-retardant.

Asbestos is a family of minerals known to mankind for more than 4500 years. It is fibrous in form and doesn't burn. In ancient Greece, they used it to make wicks for oil lamps, funeral shrouds and ceremonial tablecloths. Asbestos came into its own during the industrial revolution, when engineers harnessed its fire-proof, heat-resisting and insulating properties in their new steam-driven factories. Asbestos covered hot pipes, was woven into steam packing and drive belts, lined furnaces and was compressed into pads used in brakes and clutches.

Between the two world wars, its applications expanded widely in office buildings, schools, factories and elsewhere. In the cold countries it insulated hot water pipes feeding radiators, was put into walls and ceilings as insulation - both for heat and sound - and sprayed onto structural members as a barrier against fire. It found its way into electrical installations and domestic appliances. Until the 1980s houses were full of products containing asbestos - roofing shingles and underlay, exterior siding, insulation for pipes and boilers, caulking, wallboard, decorative plaster, stucco, acoustic ceiling tiles, vinyl floor tiles, appliance wiring and heat-resisting pads for ironing boards and hair dryers and even clay pottery.

But today, asbestos has fallen out of fashion in many parts of the world, since it has been proven time and again that in addition to its many desirable properties, it is a serious health hazard.

People who have been exposed over many years develop illnesses caused by the extremely tiny fibres. These fibres are several times thinner than a human hair, are practically indestructible and lodge themselves in the lining of the lung. Lungs can handle inhaled matter quite well if the particles or fibres are relatively large. Tiny hairs lining the upper parts of the lungs whip back and forth to sweep this contamination up into the throat where it can be spat out.

But tiny fibres such as asbestos find their way deep into the lungs, and in any case are far too small to be swept out by the defence mechanism. As they lodge in the lining, the body reacts by encasing each tiny fibre in a pocket. This walling-in process eventually ends up thickening the lung lining and severely restricting its capacity to transfer oxygen and carbon dioxide between the blood and air, a condition called asbestosis. Suffering is the apt description of what this does to a person. Normal activity like walking across the room is a monumental effort, leaving the person gasping after a mere few steps. The use of oxygen supplied through a small plastic tube directly to the nose eases the discomfort and prolongs the victim's life, which now amounts to a life sentence.

The worst of the asbestos-caused afflictions is mesothelioma, a cancer of the lung and chest cavity. In this case the fibres react chemically with the body, acting as a carcinogen and actually altering the structure of the affected cells. Again, the patient is condemned to years of pain, discomfort and death.

All this became clear about a half-century ago when miners began complaining of lung problems and coughed up blood. Workers at companies which made products containing asbestos began filing complaints and claims. At first the companies fought back, challenging the merits of the complaints and throwing up a barrage of counter-measures. But as the years went by, study after study bore out the validity of the claims and contributed to the understanding of the seriousness of the various diseases asbestos inflicts on human beings.

Nowadays, asbestos is banned or severely restricted in several countries. In Canada, for example, a contractor renovating an older building who finds asbestos in the walls, ceilings or heating system, has to report this to the relevant environment authorities who then send in a special team to remove the product. They seal the area in a plastic cocoon and workers wearing sealed space suits remove all the stuffing, pack it away carefully in sealed bags which are then caefuly disposed of, completely wash down the entire area and don't return it to the contractor until the air has been found to be totally free of asbestos fibres.

These countries have introduced stringent regulations on the use of asbestos and in many cases ban it altogether. Many countries are now campaigning to have asbestos added to an international treaty on dangerous substances known as the Rotterdam Convention. This convention requires a country which wants to export a prohibited product to secure permission from the importing country.

In this connection, Canada has come out as a bad guy. The area in the province of Quebec known as the Eastern Townships has been the focus of asbestos mining in Canada since the 1870s. Asbestos mining is centred in the town of Thetford Mines, and there is another town actually called Asbestos, which is the site of the Jeffrey Mine, until recently the world's largest source of asbestos. Asbestos was good for the region until its dangers were confirmed. And while it's almost impossible in Canada these days to find any application in which asbestos is used, the prime minister, Stephen Harper, is foremost in supporting asbestos mining and export. In this he's being aided and abetted by an Indian-born tycoon, Baljit Chadha, who is putting together a bid to take over the Jeffrey Mine.

Last year India bought more than half the 135,000 tonnes of asbestos Canada produced, but it is there that Chadha is facing some of his fiercest opposition. He and others in the Canadian asbestos business argue that chrysotile - the curly fibrous form of the mineral produced in Quebec and known as white asbestos - is much safer than the crumbly type called amphibole once used in insulation.

Chrysotile is used in India to make asbestos cement roofing and water pipes. Proponents argue that this binds the mineral and renders it stable, and Chadha says it provides an inexpensive building material to India's poorest and neediest. He adds that independent health inspectors will monitor the material's customers, but those who oppose asbestos say it's difficult to track asbestos products and poor safety standards can render any safeguards meaningless.

Prime Minister Harper, who is known for his stubbornness, is determined to block any effort to add chrysotile to the Rotterdam Convention, putting Canada in the company of such environmentally conscious giants as Russia, Kazakhstan, Zimbabwe and China.

During the election campaign earlier this year Harper visited the town of Asbestos - population a mere 7000 - twice to reinforce his support of the industry. Environmental and health groups opposed to use of the product condemn his stance.

Christian Simard, executive director of Nature Québec, says, "Public policy should be based on science, not on politics," while Kathleen Ruff, senior human rights adviser to the Rideau Institute, says "Canada is becoming known as an immoral asbestos pusher and as an enemy of global public health... This is not the role Canadians want to play in the world."

Right on!

KEEBLE McFARLANE

keeble.mack@sympatico.ca

Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/Canada-hypocritical-on-a-dangerous-mineral_9977506#ixzz1cN2mWHXQ

Hyderabad Industries to sharpen focus on non-asbestos building products

2011-10-31T07:26:00.000-07:00

Hyderabad Industries, a C. K. Birla Group company, is expanding its business architecture by transforming itself from an asbestos cement (AC) roofing sheet products manufacturer to an innovative building materials and solutions provider.

Even while expanding its AC sheet manufacturing capacity, the company is sharpening focus on creating a domestic market for non-asbestos based building products, including tiles, walls and ceiling. It is also expanding its flat product line involving cement-based products that are suitable to replace plywood in certain building products.

As the first step, it has initiated trading in certain products such as mineral-fibre based ceiling tiles, steel roof sheeting products and AAC blocks. “At present we are sourcing these products primarily from China and Europe. Soon we will expand our portfolio of such products by sourcing them from Korea and Taiwan,” Mr Abhaya Shankar, Managing Director, told Business Line.
New units

To further consolidate this stream of business, HIL will be looking at setting up manufacturing facilities for these new products. “The market response so far is encouraging. We may begin to manufacture some of these products locally in two years, while other products could take about four years,” he said.

HIL, as part of this strategy, is open to acquiring or having joint ventures with companies that have strengths in this sector. “We have recently decided to be open for such buys or tie-ups with suitable overseas companies too,” he added.

Does this mean that the company sees an early end to asbestos-based products life cycle? “No. India will still require asbestos cement ceilings in the rural housing segment due to its cost and other advantages. Still, 50 per cent of our rural population live under thatched roofs,” Mr Shankar said.

HIL, which has 12 production lines in nine plants across India, is adding one more line at its UP plant at a cost of about Rs 50 crore, which is expected to be ready by January next year.

India, which imports 4 lakh tonnes of chrysotile (asbestos fibre) to produce about 4 million tonnes of AC roofing sheet, will be adding new capacities, with at least six new plants coming up in the next one to two years.

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/companies/article2526110.ece

Proposal for killer asbestos plant in Rajasthan

2011-10-28T22:33:00.001-07:00

Even as National Human Rights Commission awaits reply of Chief Secretary, Government of Rajasthan, the proposal of Asbestos Cement Sheets (1,08,000 TPA) manufacturing unit at # A-190 to A-193, A-196 & A-197, RIICO Industrial Area, P.S. Bagru, Tehsil Sanganer, District Jaipur in Rajasthan by M/s Bajrang Wire Products (India) Pvt. Limited came before Union Environment Ministry's EXPERT APPRAISAL COMMITTEE (INDUSTRY-1) considered it during 24th - 25th October for giving TORs to it.

Aren't Canadian & Indian Governments Subservient to Asbestos Companies?

2011-10-23T21:07:00.000-07:00

Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada (APFC) asks:
Who is responsible for these asbestos-related diseases?
Is it Thetford Mines?
The Canadian public?
The federal government?
Or is it ultimately the responsibility of Asian governments to enforce better protection of their workers and citizens?
Should Canadian companies be allowed to export a disease-causing product which is legal in Asian countries?

Leah Nielsen responded with a short video of Bruce Bradshaw, a coworker of her dad’s in the late 60’s and early 70’s. Her father died of mesothelioma. Bruce now has it. He spoke at our walk on October 1, 2011 in Sarnia, Ontario. He received a standing ovation.

Dr Barry Castleman, author of "Asbestos: Medical and Legal Aspects" responds: Canada is the central point of the global asbestos struggle. The propaganda used by the regional asbestos industry groups was all developed by Canada, which was the world’s largest exporter of asbestos as recently as the 1990s.

Canada’s leading presence among the asbestos exporting countries confers a patina of credibility that Russia, Kazakhstan, and smaller asbestos exporters simply do not have. And that is why undisclosed regional members of the global Asbestos Mafia want to keep Canada in the asbestos business, wrapping the Canadian flag around the asbestos business and using the government of Canada to legitimize their predatory business.

As someone very much involved in public health work on asbestos for the past 40 years, I regard Canada as a crucially important country where we must win if we are to fulfill the World Health Organization goal of banning asbestos globally.

If the national government of Canada goes on supporting the asbestos trade and the Quebec taxpayers are hit up for a $58 million subsidy to re-open a large mine in Quebec for another 25 years, it will be a disaster for public health, worldwide.

The world depends on the Canadian people to stop this crime against humanity, and we are at the point where the battle in Canada will be won or lost in the next days or weeks, months at the longest.

Laurie Kazan-Allen, International Ban Asbestos Secretariat responded:
This dialogue is extremely timely given the October 1, 2011 deadline set by the Quebec Government regarding its decision to make a $58 million gift (they call it a loan guarantee) to Mr. Chadha’s asbestos consortium.

As luck would have it, the publication this week of a scientific paper in Thorax, a peer-reviewed medical journal, totally demolishes the asbestos industry’s propaganda regarding the supposed safe use of asbestos.

The paper: “A 37-year observation of mortality in Chinese chrysotile asbestos workers” was categorical. It found that amongst a cohort of chrysotile-exposed Chinese workers there was strong evidence of “increased mortality risks, particularly from lung cancer and non-malignant respiratory diseases, associated with exposure to chrysotile asbestos…”

Chrysotile asbestos is what Chadha proposes to mine in Quebec and ship to India and other Asian countries. If Canadian workers refuse to work with it, why should workers in India, Indonesia and the Philippines do so?

Christopher W. Lee, MD responded:

The arguments put forward by Mr. Chadha are either intentionally misleading or demonstrate a willful ignorance of the risks of exposure to chrysotile. All forms of asbestos, including chrysotile, cause asbestos-related diseases, the most prominent of which are mesothelioma, lung cancer and asbestosis.

There may be a relatively lower risk of mesothelioma from exposure to chrysotile compared to other forms of asbestos, but it is disingenuous to argue that there is no risk. To emphasize the relative risk of mesothelioma, and then imply that there is no risk for lung cancer and asbestosis from chrysotile is deceitful. The risk of lung cancer and asbestosis from exposure to chrysotile is on par with other forms of asbestos. It is for that reason that rules and regulations governing the use and handling of asbestos in Canada (and other countries) do not make a distinction between the different forms of asbestos. Occupational safety and health provisions that apply to amphiboles also apply to chrysotile.

If amphiboles “cannot be used safely, so they are no longer mined anywhere in the world,” there is a logical conclusion that can be drawn regarding chrysotile that is obviously at odds with Mr. Chadha’s opinion.

Controlled use in developing countries is expected to “not present risks of any significance to public and/or worker health.” Despite provincial and federal rules and regulations on use that have been in place for decades, asbestos-related diseases continue to make a significant contribution to the morbidity and mortality of Canadians. Using mesothelioma as an indicator of the ineffectiveness of a controlled use strategy, the annual incidence in Canada has steadily risen since the 1970s.

A report in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in 2008 highlighted the increase in incidence from 153 cases in 1984 to 344 cases in 2003. The Canadian Cancer Statistics 2011 report that came out in May 2011 indicates that the number of new cases of mesothelioma in 2007 was 514.

Without provincial and federal rules and regulations, to the degree to which they are applied and enforced, the situation in Canada would be worse. It is naive at best to believe that controlled use will be effective in limiting the negative impact of chrysotile on public and worker health in developing countries.

The following documents related to the above are publically available on-line:
1. Chrysotile Asbestos Consensus Statement and Summary, 2007 report to Health Canada: http://www.canadianlabour.ca/sites/default/files/pdfs/Chrysotile_Eng.pdf

2. Five Deaths a Day: Workplace Fatalities in Canada, 1993-2005: http://www.csls.ca/reports/csls2006-04.pdf

3. Canadian cancer statistics at a glance: mesothelioma, CMAJ 2008: http://www.cmaj.ca/content/178/6/677.full Canadian Cancer Statistics 2011: http://www.cancer.ca/Canada-wide/About%20cancer/~/media/CCS/Canada%20wide/Files%20List/English%20files%20heading/PDF%20-%20Policy%20-%20Canadian%20Cancer%20Statistics%20-%20English/Canadian%20Cancer%20Statistics%202011%20-%20English.ashx

Gopal Krishna, Ban Asbestos Network of India responded: We urge you take cognizance of the newly released documents reveal that back in 2006 the Canadian government had rejected advice from Health Canada that asbestos be added to the UN list of hazardous substances. It is high time APFC advised Canadian government to pay heed to advice from Health Canada to act against a hazardous substance due to which billions of dollars are being spent over the next 20 years to remove asbestos from the Canadian Parliament Buildings because it’s a cancer-causing substance.

Supreme Court of India too has taken note of the fact that Canada mines and ships the majority of its asbestos to countries like India ignoring sharp increase in mortality and morbidity at present and in the decades ahead.

APFC ought to consider its influence over Mr Baljit S Chadha if any to persuade him to stop promoting production and trade in chrysotile asbestos, if he fails to act, we earnestly request you to disassociate APFC from Mr Chadha as it brings the Foundation into disrepute.

We also urge you to take note of the (NHRC), New Delhi that refers to "Banning use of white asbestos" (Case No.2951/30/0/2011) on page no. 5. NHRC took cognizance of how although the Government of India has technically banned the mining of all forms of asbestos including white asbestos (chrysotile asbestos) but it has allowed its import from countries which do not let it be used domestically referring to Canada. The NHRC has issued notices to the Secretaries of the Indian Ministries of Chemical & Fertilizers, Environment & Forest, Health & Family Welfare, Industry & Commerce, and Labour and to the Chief Secretaries of all States and Union Territories in India. This illustrates that Mr Chadha's proposal to re-open up the mines is against basic human rights.

Appeal to stop Mr Baljit S. Chadha from opening killer asbestos mines in Québec, Canada

2011-10-23T01:37:00.000-07:00

To

Mr John H. McArthur,
Chairman,
Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada (APFC)
220-890 West Pender Street
Vancouver, BC
Canada V6C 1J9

Mr Yuen Pau Woo
President
Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada (APFC)
220-890 West Pender Street
Vancouver, BC
Canada V6C 1J9

Subject- Appeal to stop Mr Baljit S. Chadha from opening killer asbestos mines in Québec, Canada

Dear Mr McArthur and Mr Woo,

Greetings from Ban Asbestos Network of India (BANI) and ToxicsWatch Alliance (TWA)!

This is to draw your urgent attention towards the role of Montreal businessman, Mr Baljit S. Chadha who has exported chrysotile asbestos, a well known carcinogen from Québec to India and other Asian countries for the past 16 years. Mr Chadha is in the process of opening new asbestos mines in Québec to export huge quantities of chrysotile asbestos to countries like India.

We seek your attention towards what Dr Ivan Ivanov, the team leader of occupational health at the WHO Department of Public Health and Environment, stated in the context of Mr. Chadha’s lobbying to promote asbestos as safe even as he seeks to reopen the largely unused Mine Jeffrey in the town of Asbestos. Dr Ivanov categorically said, “There is no safe threshold of exposure to all forms of asbestos”. This was published in Globe and Mail on October 17, 2011 stating “WHO rebukes would-be Quebec asbestos magnate”.

Unmindful of such outrageous track record, we are saddened to note the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada (APFC) appointed Mr. Chadha as its Distinguished Fellow in October 2009. It is quite disturbing that despite such acts against humanity, you find him "Honourable".

We visited your website. We were happy to note that APFC is grappling with questions like: "Who is responsible for these asbestos-related diseases?"

We submit that asbestos companies that have become more powerful than the national governments are responsible for asbestos-related diseases. It is the joint responsibility of all human rights loving governments to protect human beings from the hazards of Canadian asbestos. Indian Environment Ministry’s 19 page Vision Statement on Environment and Human Health (Para 4.3.1) on page 12 which reads: “Alternatives to asbestos may be used to the extent possible and use of asbestos may be phased out”. This is available on Ministry’s website. We wish to inform you that India's Kerala Human Rights Commission (KHRC) has recommended ban on use of asbestos roofs for schools and hospitals. The KHRC and its chairperson Justice N Dhinakar has ruled that exposing Indians to asbestos is a human rights violation. This paves the way for the eventual complete ban on asbestos and its products.

We draw your attention towards the order dated January 31, 2009 of KHRC where it ruled that the government should take steps to phase out asbestos roofing from all schools in the state. The commission has directed the state government to replace the asbestos roofs of those school buildings under the government control with country tiles in a phased manner. The government has been directed to initiate measures to ensure that asbestos roofs are replaced with country tiles within a fixed time-frame in the case of schools that are run under the private managements. The state government has been directed to make sure that no new school begins functioning with asbestos roofing in the future. The petition submitted to the commission complained that roofing school buildings with asbestos were hazardous to the health of children. Does APFC consider it safer for human beings like Mr Mr Chadha? We wish to know whether you are with Mr Chadha or with the present and future victims of asbestos?

We submit that it brings bad name to APFC if it continues to associate itself with Mr Chadha who has been disregarding overwhelming scientific evidence against use of chrysotile asbestos which represents 95% of all the asbestos every used in the world and is 100% of the global asbestos trade.

We submit that World Health Organization (WHO) seeks elimination of use of chrysotile asbestos to prevent incurable and fatal lung diseases contrary to Mr. Chadha’s misplaced claims. According to WHO more than 107,000 people die each year from asbestos-related disease.

We draw your attention towards the call of Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Cancer Society, trade unionists, environmental and public health groups besides groups from India to ban production, trade, manufacturing and use of the killer fibers of chrysotile asbestos.

It must be noted that chrysotile asbestos is the “perfect carcinogen” as it acts as both a promoter and initiator of cancer. The exposure to asbestos has been linked to several diseases including asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma. At the recent conference of the UN Rotterdam Convention in Geneva, the Harper government single-handedly prevented asbestos from being put on the Convention’s list of hazardous substances.

We urge you take cognizance of the newly released documents reveal that back in 2006 the Canadian government had rejected advice from Health Canada that asbestos be added to the UN list of hazardous substances. It is high time APFC advised Canadian government to pay heed to advice from Health Canada to act against a hazardous substance due to which billions of dollars are being spent over the next 20 years to remove asbestos from the Canadian Parliament Buildings because it’s a cancer-causing substance.

We submit that Supreme Court of India too has taken note of the fact that Canada mines and ships the majority of its asbestos to countries like India ignoring sharp increase in mortality and morbidity at present and in the decades ahead.

We submit that APFC ought to consider its influence over http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifMr Chadha if any to persuade him to stop promoting production and trade in chrysotile asbestos, if he fails to act, we earnestly request you to disassociate APFC from Mr Chadha as it brings the Foundation into disrepute.

We also urge you to take note of the (NHRC), New Delhi that refers to "Banning use of white asbestos" (Case No.2951/30/0/2011) on page no. 5. NHRC took cognizance of how although the Government of India has technically banned the mining of all forms of asbestos including white asbestos (chrysotile asbestos) but it has allowed its import from countries which do not let it be used domestically referring to Canada. The NHRC has issued notices to the Secretaries of the Indian Ministries of Chemical & Fertilizers, Environment & Forest, Health & Family Welfare, Industry & Commerce, and Labour and to the Chief Secretaries of all States and Union Territories in India. This illustrates that Mr Chadha's proposal to re-open up the mines is against basic human rights.

Therefore, we appeal to you recognise how production, trade, manufacture and use in chrysotile asbestos constitutes violation of the human rights of present and future generations and to ensure that Mr Chadha desists from acting in a manner that would make him a merchant of death and a butcher from Montreal .

We will be happy to share more information to facilitate your decision to safeguard the reputation of APFC and the lives of workers and citizens in India in particular and other asbestos consuming countries in general.

Thanking You

Yours faithfully

Gopal Krishna
Convener
Ban Asbestos Network of India (BANI)
ToxicsWatch Alliance (TWA)
New Delhi
Tel:91-11-65663958, Fax: 91-11-26517814, Mb: 9818089660
Email: krishna1715@gmail.com, Web: banasbestosindia.blogspot.com

We feel abandoned and betrayed by our government, say asbestos victims

2011-10-12T23:27:00.001-07:00

Shocking new figures, released by Statistics Canada, show a relentless rise in the number of Canadians with asbestos-related disease

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: OCTOBER 13, 2011

Medical doctors, health advocates and asbestos victims today appealed to federal Health Minister, Leona Aglukkaq, to take action on the increasing number of cases of asbestos-related disease occurring in Canada.

“Each of these cases represents terrible heartbreak and suffering for the person and their family,” said Heidi von Palleske, whose father and mother both died from mesothelioma from having been exposed to chrysotile asbestos from the Jeffrey mine (formerly the Johns Manville mine) in Quebec. “Victims of asbestos are demanding that the Minister of Health take action. We feel abandoned and betrayed by our government.”

“Shocking new figures, released by Statistics Canada, show a relentless rise in the number of Canadians with asbestos-related disease,” stated Dr Fernand Turcotte, professor emeritus of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Laval Univeristy. “In the past 15 years, the number of new cases of mesothelioma – a deadly disease known only to be caused by asbestos – has almost doubled from 276 cases in 1992 to 512 cases in 2007, the latest year for which statistics are available. For each case of mesothelioma, it is conservatively estimated that there are two or more cases of lung cancer caused by asbestos. This means that, in 2007, over 1,536 Canadians became victims of deadly asbestos-related disease. This is a tragedy of colossal proportions. It is a tragedy that the Minister of Health must address.”

“We demand that Minister Aglukkaq stop hiding her head in the sand and start acting like a Minister of Health,” said Stacy Cattran, who lost her father to asbestos. “She should be protecting the health of Canadians, not protecting the asbestos industry.”

“What makes these numbers particularly tragic is that they should never have happened,” said Kathleen Ruff, senior human rights adviser, Rideau Institute. “We have known for decades that asbestos kills and all use of asbestos should end. But politics have trumped science and the asbestos industry, to this day, maintains a stranglehold over government policy.”

“The Canadian Cancer Society and Canada’s leading medical organisations have asked you take action to ban the use and export of asbestos, to prevent further asbestos harm to Canadians and to create sustainable, healthy jobs for the asbestos mining region,” said Dr Kapil Khatter, former president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

“Please listen to Canada’s medical experts and Canada’s asbestos victims,” said Cathy Conrad, whose father died earlier this year from mesothelioma. “Do the right thing for Canadians.”

PR agency used by tobacco firm hired by asbestos group

2011-10-03T04:32:00.000-07:00

Anti-asbestos activists in Malaysia and Canada say a global asbestos lobby group has hired the Washington based APCO Worldwide public relations company to persuade the Malaysian government not to ban chrysotile asbestos.

APCO Worldwide was hired by the Philip Morris tobacco company in the early 1990s to set up a group called The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classified secondhand smoke as a known human carcinogen. The coalition's mission was to dismiss concern about second-hand smoke as "junk science," and to fight anti-smoking regulations.

Kathleen Ruff, an anti-asbestos activist and human rights adviser with the Ottawa-based Rideau Institute, sent a letter to APCO Worldwide president Margery Kraus on Thursday, demanding the company inform the government of Malaysia that it was hired by the International Chrysotile Association.

She said APCO brought Dr. David Bernstein, a Switzerland-based toxicologist who has produced studies on smoking funded by the tobacco industry as well as studies on chrysotile asbestos funded by the asbestos industry, to Malaysia to persuade the government the product can be used safely.

"The scientific consensus is clear - just as it is on tobacco - that all forms of asbestos, including chrysotile asbestos, cause mesothelioma, lung cancer, other cancers and asbestosis and that safe use is not possible," Ruff writes in her letter to Kraus.

"Only lobby organizations that have a financial interest in selling asbestos claim that asbestos can be safely used, just as the lobby organizations acting on behalf of the tobacco industry have denied the clear science on tobacco harm."

Krauss was unavailable for comment Thursday, an assistant at her Washington office said. Elizabeth Wolf, APCO's senior associate in corporate relations, declined to comment in an email message, saying: "APCO does not comment on client work as a matter of company policy."

A spokesperson for Baljit Chadha of Balcorp Ltd., the lead proponent of the Jeffrey Mine expansion, said the comparison to the tobacco lobby is unmerited.

"Frankly it is an unfair comparison because there is no socio-economic benefit to the tobacco industry, whereas asbestos sheets are used to build housing in the Third World," John Aylen said. "Both products (tobacco and asbestos) are carcinogens and everybody admits that, but safe handling of asbestos does not present a risk along the supply chain or to the end user."

Clément Godbout, who heads the Montreal-based Chrysotile Institute and is listed in Quebec's corporation registry as the first administrator of the International Chrysotile Association, said he sees nothing wrong with an industry lobby group, for tobacco or asbestos, making its case to a government considering a ban of its product.

"Of course we are concerned about the international campaign to ban chrysotile, especially in Quebec, and of course we have an association that is making efforts to convince governments not to embark on a ban," he said, adding he would "not be surprised" if the ICA had hired APCO to talk to the Malaysian government.

"We are not going to just let one side continue to present its arguments. We will take our turn to dissect the message to ensure they hear the whole story. Nobody is saying (asbestos) has no problems and you can put it in your coffee and drink it, but we say it can be used safely."

By MICHELLE LALONDE, Montreal Gazette, September 30, 2011 http://www.montrealgazette.com/agency+used+tobacco+firm+hired+asbestos+group/5480322/story.html#ixzz1ZSUEW9Yx

Baljit Chadha exporting death

2011-09-26T22:18:00.000-07:00

Powerful comments, denouncing asbestos profiteer, Baljit Chadha, posted by asbestos victims on Globe & Mail website

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/quebec/yes-we-have-the-25-million-quebec-firm-says-of-asbestos-plan/article2181160/comments/

* 11:56 PM on September 26, 2011

First of all, has anyone asked themselves why the heck Baljit needs $58 million of taxpayer’s money if he is projecting sales of $3.4 billion? He doesn’t need one penny from any Canadian – which brings me to the next point. Has anyone thought about these ‘undisclosed’ investors? Seriously, I cannot imagine anyone in his or her right mind donating from Canada, which leaves possibly Russia? China? Other countries that also mine and export asbestos? Who else would do this? Do we want dirty money from other countries helping to put a Canadian stamp on asbestos and ruin this country any more than it already has been ruined?

Baljit has no idea of the passion behind these anti-asbestos warriors. Watching your loved ones fight for every breath before they die an agonizing death will fuel you for the rest of your life. There isn’t some high-powered anti-asbestos organization behind this battle – there are housewives who are now widows, children who are now parentless and men who are now widowers. What I cannot comprehend is why Baljit wants to do this to his own people? What kind of karma will that bring…

Come to Sarnia on Saturday and see some of these warriors!

* 10:12 PM on September 26, 2011

This guy is deluded if he thinks asbestos isn't harmful...he's deluded by the millions of dollars he's going to make selling a product that kills thousands of people each year. What a disgrace to Canada and to the board of Concordia University.

I hope the thousands of dollars he donates to charities eases his conscience over the millions he will make on the backs of the poor. Shameful
*10:10 PM on September 26, 2011

Anyone who has done ANY proper research on the topic knows that chrysotile causes terminal cancer just like all the other forms of asbestos. http://www.prweb.com/releases/prwebmesothelioma/asbestos/prweb8797970.htm Baljit and his PR firm have done a good job trying to muddy the waters, but those of us who have watched parents suffocate to death from mesothelioma are only just getting started. We will not back down until asbestos has been banned. On Saturday, October 1st, we will walk to honour victims of asbestos in Sarnia, Ontario and rally support to end such a deceitful and murderous industry. We will not stand idly by as the likes of Baljit Chadha and his PR groupies seek to make billions off the deaths of innocent workers and their families. asbestos.

* 10:03 PM on September 26, 2011

"I have done a lot of soul-searching on this and have come to a conclusion that we are not exporting death" he says...

Meanwhile, the following organizations CONDEMN this and believe that Canada is exporting death:

The Canadian Medical Association

The Canadian Cancer Society

The Lung Association of Canada

The Quebec Medical Association

The Canadian Public Health Association

The Canadian Nurses Association

The Quebec Association for Public Health

The Association of physicians specializing in community Health of Québec

The Lung Association of Quebec

The National Specialty Society for Community Medicine

The Quebec Association for Occupational Hygiene, Health & Safety

The College of Family Physicians of Canada

The Quebec College of Family Physicians

The International Commission on Occupational Health

The International Social Security Association

The World Federation of Public Health Associations

The World Health Organization

The International Labour Organization

The Canadian Labour Congress

All of Canada’s national trade union organisations

The Building Trades Councils feel especially strongly on this issue as asbestos has killed so many construction workers

The International Trade Union Confederation, representing 175 million workers in 151 countries

Building Workers International

Public Service International

WHICH SIDE DO YOU WANT TO ALIGN YOURSELF WITH?
SEEMS PRETTY STRAIGHT-FORWARD TO ME.

Anyone who invests in this is investing in death.

Baljit Chadha Callous Towards Death Toll from Quebec’s Asbestos Industry

2011-09-26T18:51:00.000-07:00

‘Yes, we have the $25-million,’ Quebec firm says of asbestos plan

A year ago, over a lunch of oysters and fine wine at a posh downtown restaurant, Baljit Chadha held himself out as the potential saviour of Quebec’s faltering asbestos industry. This week, he plans to deliver. Days before a provincial government deadline this Saturday to find private funding for the Mine Jeffrey in Asbestos, Que., the wealthy and well-connected Montreal businessman says he has “letters of intent” from unnamed investors in three different countries – enough to breathe new life into an export trade critics decry for causing death.

“I have done a lot of soul-searching on this and have come to a conclusion that we are not exporting death,” said Mr. Chadha, who combines an almost evangelical fervour for asbestos with the clout needed to pull off his controversial plan.

Mr. Chadha, whose company already handled much of the mine’s asbestos sales to his native India, offered to buy the mine outright in August of 2010, for “tens of millions.” But to clinch the deal, he had to secure an additional $25-million from outside investors while the Quebec government kept the mine afloat with a $58-million loan guarantee.

“Yes we have the $25-million,” he told The Globe and Mail.

If Quebec approves his investment plan, he hopes to ramp up annual export sales from the sprawling but largely unused mine to at least $150-million within two years. He projects $3.4-billion in sales over the next two decades.

That’s a prospect that appalls health experts who note that last spring Canada stood virtually alone in blocking a proposed United Nations treaty that would have added asbestos to a list of hazardous materials restricted worldwide.

“Asbestos is causing death and it can be prevented by stopping the export of it,” said Paul Lapierre, the vice-president of public affairs for the Canadian Cancer Society

Mr. Chadha came to Canada in 1973 to study science and business. Three years later, he set up Balcorp, an international trading company that today sells more than $100-million worth of Canadian goods to India annually – including between $5-million and $15-million in asbestos products.

A staunch Liberal, Mr. Chadha was appointed to the Privy Council of Canada in 2003 by then-prime minister Jean Chrétien to serve on the committee that oversees the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

In 2009, he held a private fundraiser in his Westmount home for Quebec Premier Jean Charest but he insists “we have never ever asked for any business favours from any government.”

For more than a decade, he has accompanied prime ministers and premiers on every major trade mission to India, which last year accounted for more than half of Canada’s 135,000 tonnes of asbestos sales.

And it is in his native India where Mr. Chadha faces his fiercest opposition.

“When most of the world, including Canada, has either banned or restricted the use of asbestos domestically due to health reasons, it’s hypocrisy bordering on racism to expose people from poorer countries to harm knowingly,” said Madhumita Dutta of the Occupational and Environmental Network of India, one of the groups that organized noisy protests when Mr. Chadha accompanied Mr. Charest on a 2010 trip to the subcontinent to promote the province’s exports.

Mr. Chadha, like other defenders of the modern asbestos industry, says the white chrysotile product of today – tightly “bonded” to reinforce cement in roofing sheets – is much safer than the loose, amphibole asbestos widely used in the past as insulation.

He says asbestos provides inexpensive roofing to India’s neediest people and vows that independent health investigators will monitor his customers there. But opponents say poor safety standards and the difficulty of tracking tons of asbestos products cast serious doubt on those promises.

Even Mr. Chadha acknowledges he has a tough sale. “I have to commend our enemies, they’ve done a fantastic job,” he said. “And I have to change that image.”

Monday, he sat down for a tense hour-long encounter on Parliament Hill with NDP backbencher Pat Martin, one of the harshest critics of Canada’s asbestos trade.

“I told him to his face that his business is morally and ethically reprehensible,” said Mr. Martin, who worked for two years in a Yukon asbestos mine back in the 1970s. “The jig is up for asbestos in this country. Mr. Chadha is the last man standing and he shouldn’t get any corporate welfare for a dying, deadly industry.”

But Mr. Chadha remains undaunted and plans to meet with the Canadian Cancer Society next month to continue his campaign.

“There have been times where with all the missiles that are being thrown at me you think: am I doing the right thing?” he said. “I have a very clear conscience. I don’t feel shame at all.”

By the numbers:

• 107,000 people die each year from asbestos-related diseases (World Health Organization);

• 70,000 tonnes of Canadian asbestos were exported to India in 2010 – more than half of Canada’s worldwide sales (Statistics Canada);

• Canada is the fifth-largest producer of asbestos, ranking behind Russia, China, Brazil and Kazakhstan, but it is the only country in that group to severely restrict domestic use while encouraging exports.

(Balcorp Ltd. president Baljit Chadha poses at his office in Montreal, Sept., 19, 2011. Mr. Chadha, a prominent asbestos merchant, is headed to Parliament Hill as part of a broader counter-offensive to salvage the reputation of his beleaguered industry.
Photo:Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press)

julian sher
Globe and Mail
Published Monday, Sep. 26, 2011

Dubai company sets up roofing plant in Chennai

2011-09-26T18:49:00.000-07:00

DUBAI — Sreevaas Corporate Investment Company, promoted by a UAE-based entrepreneur Siddharth Balachandran, has made an entry into India’s manufacturing sector by launching a subsidiary company.

The new company, Sreevaas Roofing Pvt Ltd, in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, has an initial capital investment of Dh20 million.

Sreevaas Roofing manufactures roofing sheets from galvanised iron and galvalume sheets. This product is expected to eventually replace the potentially hazardous asbestos sheets that are currently being used very extensively in India. In addition to being safe, it also provides strong and aesthetically enhanced roofing solution for every category of buildings.

Siddharth, who is the managing director of Dubai-based Bumga Group, said the creation of Sreevaas Roofing was an attempt to help India achieve its full potential, thereby benefiting the entire region, including the Middle East.

He said Sreevaas Roofing seeks to achieve a turnover of $25 million by the year 2014. The next phase of expansion will be expedited in the year 2015, keeping with the management’s strategy of steady and fundamentally solid growth.

Sreevaas Roofing had commissioned its state-of-the –art factory in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, after acquiring nearly five acres of industrial land. The built up area of the factory is approx. 50,000/- square feet. The factory is equipped with the latest available technology and the best quality machinery from  Germany.

Sreevaas Roofing will cater to both the domestic and the international markets, with an emphasis on quality and excellent supply chain management. A team of dynamic managers will provide the executive thrust for the company and the company will be governed by a strong board comprising of experienced professionals.

24 September 2011
Email:issacjohn@khaleejtimes.com

Mortality in Chinese Chrysotile Asbestos Workers

2011-09-26T18:42:00.000-07:00

Note: The medical journal Thorax, one of the world's leading respiratory medicine journals, has just published a large, damning 37-year study of mortality among chrysotile asbestos workers in China. The study was carried out by health researchers at the Division of Occupational and Environmental Health, School of Public Health and Primary Care, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China, at the School of Public Health, Teikyo University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan and at the Department of Occupational Health, Huaxi School of Public Health, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China.

The authors found double or triple the mortality rate for "all causes, and all cancers in the asbestos workers, in comparison with the controls... particularly from lung cancer and non-malignant respiratory diseases, associated with exposure to chrysotile asbestos."

This latest study provides yet more compelling evidence that asbestos - be it chrysotile or any other form, and regardless of how carefully or poorly it's handled - is unsafe to use anywhere in the world.

Kathleen Ruff

A 37-year observation of mortality in Chinese chrysotile asbestos workers

Key messages: What is the key question?

What is the major cause-specific mortality in the cohort of workers who were exposed to chrysotile asbestos, and how strong are the associations between the cause-specific mortality and asbestos exposure?

What is the bottom line?

This 37-year prospective cohort study observed significantly greater mortality of all causes, and all cancers in the asbestos workers, in comparison with the controls. However, the strongest association with asbestos exposure was seen in lung cancer and non-malignant respiratory disease, which showed a clear exposure response trend.

Why read on?

Chrysotile asbestos continues to be mined and used heavily in China, largely because a controversy remains on carcinogenic potency of chrysotile asbestos. This prospective cohort study with the longest observation time to date, and high follow-up rate delivers a strong message that exposure to chrysotile asbestos can cause substantially high mortality risk for lung cancer as well as non-malignant respiratory disease.

Authors: Xiaorong Wang,1 Eiji Yano,2 Hong Qiu,1 Ignatius Yu,1 Midori N Courtice,1 L A Tse,1 Sihao Lin,1 Mianzhen Wang3

ABSTRACT

Objectives This 37-year prospective cohort study was undertaken to provide additional evidence for mortality risks associated with exposure to chrysotile asbestos.

Methods 577 asbestos workers and 435 control workers in original cohorts were followed from 1972 to 2008, achieving a follow-up rate of 99% and 73%, respectively. Morality rates were determined based on person-years of observation. Cox proportional hazard models were constructed to estimate HRs of cause specific mortality, while taking into account age, smoking and asbestos exposure level.

Results There were 259 (45%) deaths identified in the asbestos cohort, and 96 died of all cancers. Lung cancer (n¼53) and non-malignant respiratory diseases (n¼81) were major cause-specific deaths, in contrast to nine lung cancers and 11 respiratory diseases in the controls. Age and smoking-adjusted HRs for mortality by all causes and all cancers in asbestos workers were 2.05 (95% CI 1.56 to 2.68) and 1.89 (1.25 to 2.87), respectively. The risks for lung cancer and respiratory disease deaths in asbestos workers were over threefold that in the controls (HR 3.31 (95% CI 1.60 to 6.87); HR 3.23 (95% CI 1.68 to 6.22), respectively). There was a clear exposureeresponse trend with asbestos exposure level and lung cancer mortality in both smokers and non-smokers.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Conclusion Data from this prospective cohort provide strong evidence for increased mortality risks, particularly from lung cancer and non-malignant respiratory diseases, associated with exposure to chrysotile asbestos, while taking into account of the smoking effect.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Division of Occupational and Environmental Health, School of Public Health and Primary Care, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
2 School of Public Health, Teikyo University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan
3 Department of Occupational Health, Huaxi School of Public Health, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

http://thorax.bmj.com/search?fulltext=chrysotile&submit=yes&x=0&y=0

Asbestos critics refuse to be converted after meeting with industry powerhouse

2011-09-26T18:40:00.000-07:00

MONTREAL — Critics of Canadian asbestos say they weren’t won over by face-to-face meetings Monday with a prominent businessman who argues that his industry has been unfairly maligned.

Some of the industry’s most vocal opponents agreed to a meeting with Montreal businessman Baljit Chadha, who was in Ottawa as part of his effort to revive the reputation of the asbestos trade.

Chadha’s public-relations initiative comes as he seeks a $58-million government loan guarantee from Quebec that would help him reopen one of this country’s last two asbestos mines. The province has set Saturday as the deadline to finalize the deal that would extend the life of the Jeffrey Mine for another 20 years.

But Chadha’s meetings Monday appeared to have left industry critics unswayed: one group quickly issued a news release condemning the asbestos sector shortly after their rendezvous.

Another opponent, New Democrat MP Pat Martin, said he and Chadha had a spirited exchange about the impact on poorer countries — where most Canadian exports of the hazardous mineral are shipped.

Martin, a former asbestos miner who has long opposed Canadian exports, questioned the businessman’s assertions that the hazardous substance can be adequately monitored by safety inspectors overseas.

During their 90-minute talk, he said Chadha also asked him to support his project to extend the life of Quebec’s Jeffrey Mine, for the sake of jobs in Canada and affordable housing in India.

“And I told him I thought that what he’s doing is morally and ethically reprehensible — I (said) that to his face,” Martin said.

“It was a frustrating meeting because either he doesn’t get it, or he thinks we’re stupid.”

Chadha maintains that Canadian chrysotile asbestos, blamed by medical experts for causing cancer and other diseases, can be used safely — even in poorer countries.

He is now determined to correct what he describes as misconceptions about the controversial mineral, which he argues has been tarred by a well-organized lobby.

In an attempt to burnish the industry’s image, he is planning to launch an ad campaign.

Chadha also spoke Monday for about an hour with asbestos opponents from the Rideau Institute — president Steven Staples and senior adviser Kathleen Ruff.

But less than an hour after their discussion, the organization had already issued a news release condemning Chadha for ignoring health experts in pursuit of personal gain.

“It was extremely disappointing,” said Ruff, adding the parties were civil with each other, but clashed on every issue.

“He’s completely fixed, it seems, in denying the scientific evidence and in (his) determination to try and go ahead with this project.”

Chadha, who is a member of Canada’s Privy Council, is also hoping to meet with the editorial boards of major newspapers as well as other groups that have criticized the asbestos industry, including the Canadian Cancer Society and the Canadian Medical Association.

The CMA, however, says it has no intention of attending any such meeting.

Waterloo Record, Sept. 26, 2011
By Andy Blatchford, The Canadian Press

http://www.therecord.com/news/business/article/600424--asbestos-critics-refuse-to-be-converted-after-meeting-with-industry-powerhouse

Bangladesh Doesn't Want Asbestos Laden Ship

2011-09-26T18:37:00.001-07:00

Chittagong, Bangladesh - Officials in Bangladesh’s Chittagong region, an
area where hundreds of old ships are dismantled each year, have announced
that they will refuse to accept a Korean ship that is said to contain large
amounts of harmful asbestos and other hazardous materials.

According to a BBC News article written by Anbarasan Ethirajan, officials
are taking a stand after receiving complaints about the ship from several
environmental groups. The vessel, the MV Asia Union, was built in South
Korea in 1982, a time when most countries had ceased the use of asbestos
materials. However, because asbestos was not banned in South Korea until
2009, there is an assumption that it contains large amounts of the material.

“We haven't received any application for MV Asia Union,” said Department of
Environment Director General Monowar Islam. “We have not provided any
environmental clearance for this ship.”

However, a port official in Chittagong noted that they would be sending a
team of inspectors out to the ship to determine exactly what remains on
board. At that point, they will make a recommendation and a decision will be
made as to whether or not to allow the ship into Bangladeshi waters.

Thousands of workers in Chittagong make their living in so-called
ship-breaking yards, dismantling old vessels that come to Bangladesh from
countries around the world. According to the BBC article, Bangladesh gets
about 60 percent of its steel from these ship-breaking yards.

However, such a job can be extremely hazardous because, for decades, ships
were fitted with all sorts of asbestos materials because of the mineral’s
excellent heat-resistant qualities. Throughout the world, individuals who
worked in shipyards or aboard ships that were built while asbestos use was
widespread, including U.S. veterans, have been sickened with asbestos
diseases such as malignant mesothelioma.

http://www.mesothelioma.com/news/2011/09/bangladesh-doesnt-want-asbestos-ship.htm

New Asbestos Free Brake Plant in Chennai

2011-09-26T18:28:00.000-07:00

Federal-Mogul Constructs New World-Class Brake Friction Manufacturing Plant in Chennai

Facility will produce portfolio of market-leading, environmentally-friendly brake friction products without asbestos for all market segments

SOUTHFIELD, Mich., Sept. 26, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Federal-Mogul Corporation (NASDAQ:FDML - News) today announced the development of a new brake friction manufacturing facility in Chennai, India. The company, through one of its Indian subsidiaries, broke ground earlier this year on a 10-acre site for construction of the new 38,000-square-meter facility to manufacture the company's broad portfolio of leading-edge technology, environmentally-friendly brake friction materials for the OE and aftermarket segments for automotive, construction, railway and industrial customers. Production is scheduled to begin before the end of 2011.

"India is one of Federal-Mogul's strategic bases of operations for serving the fast-growing Indian automotive market in Southeast Asia and other global markets. Our newest manufacturing facility in Chennai will enable us to better serve brake friction technology requirements for existing and new customers in several markets in the region and globally," said Federal-Mogul President and CEO Jose Maria Alapont. "When we bring on-line the Chennai manufacturing facility later this year, Federal-Mogul will have the ability to manufacture our global market-leading brake friction products in every major geographic automotive market around the world, complemented by our strong base of regional technology and engineering centers supporting our brake friction customers."

The new Chennai facility will initially produce non-asbestos organic disc brake pads for light vehicles, half block linings for commercial vehicles and brake blocks for railway and industrial customers. The company expects to employ approximately 300 people when the facility is in full operation. Federal-Mogul's investment is expected to be approximately US $15 million.

"The combined Indian automotive, commercial and railway markets are expected to grow on average by 14 percent per year over the next five years," said Jean de Montlaur, president and managing director, Federal-Mogul Group of Companies - India. "The aftermarket is also rapidly growing as the influx of new vehicles has expanded the total Indian car parc, resulting in new requirements for high quality OEM-style repair and maintenance parts. Demand in India for technology is becoming increasingly sophisticated as the world's vehicle makers are all competing for a share of this expanding market. India is a strategic market for Federal-Mogul and we have invested in the capacity and infrastructure to maintain and grow our leadership position in India and globally."

"The new Chennai facility will help Federal-Mogul broaden its portfolio of global-leading technologies produced in India," Alapont added. "Bringing the production of new friction technologies to India supports the company's sustainable global profitable growth strategy, which is based on delivering leading high-tech and innovative solutions for improving fuel economy, reducing emissions and enhancing vehicle safety."

Federal-Mogul established joint venture operations in India in the 1950s. The company has since established several wholly owned operations and majority joint ventures in the country. The company has grown its revenue from its Indian operations to approximately $250 million and currently employs more than 6,600 employees in seven manufacturing facilities in Bangalore, Bhiwadi, Parwanoo, Patiala and Radrapur. The new Chennai facility is the company's eighth manufacturing facility in India.

Federal-Mogul's Indian headquarters is in New Delhi, and one of the company's 18 globally-networked technical centers is in Bangalore. Together these facilities design, develop and manufacture a broad range of Federal-Mogul's market-leading vehicle powertrain components, including pistons, piston rings, engine bearings, ignition and sintered products; for both OE and aftermarket customers.

About Federal-Mogul

Federal-Mogul Corporation is a leading global supplier of powertrain and safety solutions to the world's foremost original equipment manufacturers of automotive, commercial, aerospace, marine, rail and off-road vehicles; industrial, agricultural and power generation equipment; as well as the worldwide aftermarket. Federal-Mogul's leading technology and innovation, lean manufacturing expertise, and global distribution network deliver world-class products, brands and services at a competitive cost. The company's sustainable global profitable growth strategy creates value for its employees, customers and shareholders. Federal-Mogul was founded in Detroit in 1899. The company is headquartered in Southfield, Michigan, and employs approximately 45,000 people in 35 countries.

Federal-Mogul's aftermarket products are sold under a variety of well-known brands, including: Abex®, AE®, ANCO®, Beral®, Carter®, Champion®, FP Diesel®, Fel-Pro®, Ferodo®, Glyco®, Goetze®, MOOG®, National®, Necto®, Nural®, Payen®, Precision®, Sealed Power®, Speed-Pro® and Wagner®. All trademarks are owned by Federal-Mogul Corporation, or one or more of its subsidiaries, in one or more countries. Visit the company's website at www.federalmogul.com.

CONTACT:Jim Burke, +1-248-354-4530, Jim.burke@federalmogul.com

Gujarat Composites Cement Limited's asbestos plant closed?

2011-09-21T03:00:00.000-07:00

Shree Digvijay Cement Company was started in 1949. A plant to manufacture asbestos cement pipes and a sheets plant was commissioned by it in November 1962, with Johns Manville Corporation, US, being the technical consultant and the sole selling agent in West Asian and African countries.

In 1994-95, the company approved a scheme of arrangement for transfer of four of its divisions viz.
1) Ahmedabad Cement Mill fibre products division, 2) Shreeram Silk division and Coir & Felt division and investment in shares in 3) Shree Synthetics and 4) Fort William Company to Gujarat Composites Cement Limited with effect from 1 July 1994.

In 1999-2000, the company was declared as a sick industrial company as per the reference made to the BIFR and has appointed ICICI as the operating agency. The company has completed a modernisation programme in 2000-2001 with close circuiting and installation of pre-grinding system for its cement mill.

Sources from Ahmedabad has revealed that the Gujarat Composites Cement Limited's asbestos plant has been closed from 20th September, 2011.

Personal Film about Asbestos, Mesothelioma turns into ‘Breathtaking' Experience

2011-09-10T06:26:00.000-07:00

Kathleen Mullen started making a documentary as a personal tribute to her father, as a way to honor and remember his life.

She finished the film as an indictment of the industry that killed him — and a government that allowed it to happen.

The transformation — the bridge between the two — is what makes “Breathtaking,” so powerful.

Richard Mullen, her father, died in 2003 of mesothelioma, the cancer caused by an exposure to asbestos. He spent 40 years as a project engineer, often inspecting oil pipes where he unknowingly was inhaling asbestos fibers.

“I wanted to do something from a personal standpoint, something from the heart,” she told Asbestos.com. “But the more research I did, the more I understood: this wasn’t a family issue, this was a global problem effecting people around the world. It really motivated me to tell the whole story.”

The 43-minute film is a love-hate interaction, filled with touching, father/daughter memories alongside stark, cold realities about the hurtful business of asbestos and the deadly path that it still takes.

The film can be seen for free Sept 26 at 6:30 p.m. EST through live streaming at asbestosdiseaseawareness.org.

Mullen Witnessed Asbestos Mining

“I’m proud of this film, very proud that it’s getting out there for people to see,” said Mullen, who is the director of programing at Planet in Focus, a Toronto-based annual film festival that focuses on environmental issues. “It was uncanny, really shocking in fact, at how many people we met during the filming, who had been impacted by this disease.”

During her work, Kathleen traveled to Arizona, where her father originally lived, to the family home in British Columbia, to Quebec, where asbestos is being mined today, and then to India, where asbestos is being sold and used extensively to help build low-income housing.

The film includes personal photographs and home movies that taken before her dad was diagnosed in 2001. It includes footage of his legal testimony against the industry before he died and frank, touching discussions with him and his wife as he battled the illness to the end.

With her camera, she toured both underground and open-pit asbestos mines, talking to people who worked there, listening to conflicting stories about the safety and the need of their jobs. She spoke with those it was killing and with those who were proud of its uses. Canadian governmental officials, who allow the mining of asbestos to continue, declined to be part of her film.

In India she met with people opposed to the importation of asbestos and those who buy it for manufacturing, despite its toxic history. She watched the harvest of asbestos and the end result of its use.
Abestos Lobby Sees Film

Previous screenings of the film have been met with enthusiastic support and sometimes energetic debate. During one screening in Toronto, there was a member of the asbestos lobby who came from Montreal just to be heard.

“It was exciting when he spoke. It really energized people,” she said. “It’s good to know how the other side feels, to know where it is coming from.”

It took Mullen five years to make the film, which was first shown almost a year ago. In it, she moved deftly from first-person experiences to third-person accounts of what she saw, moving from emotional to dispassionate through the film.

According to its latest statistics, the World Health Organization estimates that 90,000 people died annually from an asbestos-related illnesses. Yet the Canadian government still allows the mining and the export of asbestos, even when its use nationally is nearly non-existent.

The dangers of asbestos have been well-documented for more than 50 years. And its use in both the United States and Canada has dropped dramatically since the late 1970s, when regulations began. Many industrialized countries have banned its use in new products, but not every country has such a strict stance. It’s one reason that Mullen still feels the need to tell her father’s story. Not just for him, but for all those around the world who might suffer a similar fate.

“One of our driving forces, as we came to the end, was the desire to hold these companies accountable for what they did and are doing still,” she said. “I don’t know if we can make a difference, but I know we can try.”

http://www.asbestos.com/news/2011/08/29/kathleen-mullen-turns-personal-film-about-asbestos-mesothelioma-into-breathtaking-experience/

Barry Castleman on why asbestos should be banned in India

2011-08-28T02:08:00.000-07:00

International environmental activist Barry Castleman talks about the hazards of using asbestos, in any form including the so called safe 'white asbestos' in building materials. He makes a compelling argument for its elimination.
http://youtu.be/Y_87TapCdxY

Sahyadri Asbestos Company Makes Unturthful Claims About Asbestos

2011-08-27T22:41:00.001-07:00

Ban Asbestos Network of India (BANI) has come across a two page excerpts from its 17th Annual Report 2010-11 titled "Misconceptions About Asbestos" that is being distributed by Pune-based Sahyadri Industries, an asbestos manufacturing company. It misrepresents facts by saying that asbestos manufacture and use is harmless. The "Truth About Asbestos" is that it kills at every level of exposure through incurable diseases. There is no alternative to eliminating use of asbetsos.

On 6th July 2011, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) issued notices to central government and state governments taking cognizance of a complaint alleging that about fifty thousand people die every year in the country due to Asbestos related cancer. The complainant has sought Commission's intervention for a ban on the use of Chrysotile Asbestos (White Asbestos), which is hazardous for the health of people and causes various incurable diseases. The white Asbestos is a fibrous material used for building roofs and walls and various in other forms.

Citing contradictory position of the Government on the issue the complainant Toxics Watch Alliance has argued that though the mining of Asbestos has been technically banned by the government, but it allows its import and that too from the countries which do not prefer its domestic use.

It is also alleged that white Asbestos is considered a hazardous chemical substance for environment by a number of countries in the world. However, it is being used in a number of industries in India affecting the workers employed their in.

The complainant has also requested for grant of a compensation package for present and future victims of Asbestos diseases.

The NHRC has issued notice to Chief Secretary, Maharashtra besides the Secretaries of Ministries of Chemical Fertilizers, Environment and Forest, Health and Family Welfare, Industry and Commerce, Labour and Chief Secretaries of all the other States/Union Territories calling for status reports within four weeks on the issues raised in the complaint.

Asbestos is a "perfect carcinogen" because it acts as both a promoter and initiator of cancer. Asbestos fibres are dangerous when inhaled and the dustiest processes are, in general, the most hazardous. That asbestos is a toxic material has been known for decades. Exposure to asbestos has been linked to several diseases including asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma.

Asbestosis: Evidence presented in 1907 to a government enquiry by Dr. Montague Murray described the first diagnosed case of fatal, non-tubercular, diffuse pulmonary fibrosis in an asbestos worker: asbestosis. Asbestosis is an irreversible and progressive lung condition which results from the inhalation of asbestos fibres over an extended period. In asbestosis, lung tissue is scarred and thickened by the abrasive action of the asbestos fibres in the alveoli, the air sacks. The latency period for asbestosis is usually at least ten years and the higher the exposure, the greater the chances of developing the disease. Asbestosis tends to be linked to heavy occupational exposure although cases of asbestosis among those not occupationally exposed have been known.

Lung Cancer: An article which appeared in The Lancet in 1934 presented evidence of a link between asbestos and lung cancer. Dr. Richard Doll's landmark paper: Mortality from Lung Cancer in Asbestos Workers was published in 1955; Doll's research showed that the incidence of lung cancer among men at an asbestos factory in Rochdale was ten times the national norm. Asbestos-related lung cancer can occur from occupational or environmental exposure: it is virtually incurable. The chances of recovery for those whose lung cancer is caused by asbestos are worse because the lungs may already damaged by the dust. One type of lung cancer asbestos causes, undifferentiated, small-cell type, is the one with the least hope of treatment. The latency period for lung cancer associated with asbestos exposure is usually between fifteen and thirty-five years. An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association estimated that an asbestos insulation worker who smokes had ninety two times the chance of dying from lung cancer as a non-smoking, non-asbestos worker.

Mesothelioma: Mesothelioma is a formerly rare, but increasingly common cancer of the lung or the abdominal cavity; the only known cause of mesothelioma is exposure to asbestos. Malignant mesothelioma can be contracted from very low exposures to asbestos and accounts for the majority of victims who contract an asbestos-related disease through environmental exposure. The latency period for mesothelioma is generally between thirty to fifty years although British courts have accepted a latency period as short as ten years. On average, mesothelioma patients survive for eighteen months to two years following diagnosis although some poeple survive considerably longer. Currently, there is no known cure.

A routine analysis of British statistics by Professor Julian Peto of the Institute of Cancer Research in 1995 uncovered a rapid acceleration in the number of British mesothelioma deaths which, he predicted, would continue to increase from 1,000 to 3,000 per year by the year 2024. According to him, the most worrying aspect is the discovery that the rate of mesothelioma deaths is rising in men aged 50 and younger and that most victims have only had secondary links with asbestos, often as construction workers, carpenters, plumbers or electricians.

The inhalation of asbestos fibres can cause serious diseases of the lungs and other organs that may not appear until years after the exposure has occurred. For instance, asbestosis can cause a build-up of scar-like tissue in the lungs and result in loss of lung function that often progresses to disability and death. There are four main diseases caused by asbestos: mesothelioma (which is always fatal), lung cancer (almost always fatal), asbestosis (not always fatal, but it can be very debilitating) and diffuse pleural thickening (not fatal). According to the UK Health and Safety Executive, abestos-related conditions are responsible for about 4,000 deaths a year in UK.

In the context of a proposed Asbestos cement sheet and accessories manufacturing unit of 1,80,000 Tonnes Per Annum capacity at Narsimharaopalem Village, Veerulupadu Tehsil, Krishna District, Andhra Pradesh by M/s Sahyadri Industries Limited, BANI had written to S V Prasad, Chief Secretary/Chairman, Andhra Pradesh Pollution Control Board, Government of Andhra Pradesh, drawing his attention towards the TOR for the proposed plant dated October 25, 2010 issued by Union Environment & Forests Ministry wherein 45 paragraph refers to “Detailed action plan for compliance of the directions of the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India regarding occupational health and safety measures in asbestos industries should be included” and how an order dated January 21, 2011, of Supreme Court’s bench of Chief Justice of India Justice S.H. Kapadia, Justice K.S. Panicker Radhakrishnan and Justice Swatanter Kumar has not been taken note of.

In the order of Chief Justice of India bench it is observed in para 15 that, “the Government has already presented the Bill in Rajya Sabha. The statement of objects and reasons of this Bill specifically notices that the white asbestos is highly carcinogenic and it has been so reported by the World Health Organisation. In India, it is imported without any restriction while even its domestic use is not preferred by the exporting countries.”

The Bench of Chief Justice of India notes, “Canada and Russia are the biggest exporters of white asbestos. In 2007, Canada exported 95% of the white asbestos, it mined out of which 43% was shipped to India. In view of these facts, there is an urgent need for a total ban on the import and use of white asbestos and promote the use of alternative materials. The Bill is yet to be passed but it is clearly demonstrated that the Government is required to take effective steps to prevent hazardous impact of use of asbestos.”

BANI has submitted that the Environmental Management Plan mentioned in the Chapter 10 of the DREIA submitted to the Andhra Pradesh Pollution Control Board (APPCB) does one respond to the work of WHO and International Labour Organization (ILO) towards elimination of asbestos-related diseases “by recognizing that the most efficient way to eliminate asbestos-related diseases is to stop the use of all types of asbestos and by providing information about solutions for replacing asbestos with safer substitutes and developing economic and technological mechanisms to stimulate its replacement.”

BANI has argued that the TOR for Sahyadri Industries Limited’s proposed asbestos sheet plant must be revised in the light of the above mentioned order of the Hon’ble Supreme Court. It is clear that the company in question should be made to submit the above mentioned observations of the Hon’ble Court and the Expert Appraisal Committee-1 (Industry) must re-visited.

In the light of the above, BANI, Human Rights Forum and Jana Vignana Vedika have demanded a blanket ban on asbestos production and usage.

thanks
Gopal Krishna
Ban Asbestos Network of India (BANI)

Stop use and trade of white asbestos

2011-08-05T21:40:00.000-07:00

To

Dr Kellie Leitch,
Member of Parliament for Simcoe-Grey,
Ontario, Canada

Subject-Stop use and trade of white asbestos

Dear Dr Leitch,

Let me congratulate you on your election. I am an environmental and occupational health researcher. I wish to draw your attention towards the victims of asbestos in India, Quebec, Canada and other countries.

We, in India are grappling with the epidemic of chrysotile asbestos (white asbestos) -related disease and death that continue to increase. On 6th July, 2011, National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), India has issued notice to all the concerned ministries and state governments taking note of diseases caused by white asbestos imported from countries like Canada.

There is a bitter protest struggle going on against asbestos plants in Bhojpur, Muzaffarpur and Vaishali in Bihar, India amidst police firing. Similar is the situation in Andhra Pradesh, which is the capital asbestos manufacturers. They have least regard to human health of present and future generation because they are blinded by 'profit at any human cost' dictum.

In India, mining of all forms of asbestos including white asbestos is banned but Canada continues to export white asbestos to India due to an incestous relationship between canadian asbestos producers and political parties of Canada and India.

In such a backdrop, NHRC, India has issued notices to different Union Ministries, States, Union Territories on the issue of banning use of White Asbestos. The statement of NHRC is available here: http://nhrc.nic.in/disparchive.asp?fno=2334

We are disturbed by the fact that white asbestos which Canada exports to us represents 100% of the global asbestos trade and it represents 95% of all the asbestos sold in the world over the past century. As you are aware chrysotile asbestos is a deadly carcinogen, which causes mesothelioma, lung cancer, other cancers and asbestosis, and safe use is not possible.

I submit that there is not a single reputable scientific or medical organisation that supports the position of the asbestos industry that chrysotile asbestos can be safely used and that exposure to high levels of chrysotile asbestos causes no harm to health. The Chrysotile Institute, Canada and Asbestos Information Centre, India work on behalf of the white asbestos industry have mastered the art of misinformation campaign where they promote the myth that asbestos can be safely used.

We have taken note of the National Public Health Hero Award given by the Canadian Public Health Association, specifically for exposing the deadly misinformation disseminated by the asbestos industry.

I earnestly submit that asbestos should be treated as a health issue, not as a political issue and we are calling for your support on this crucial public health issue. We are glad to note that Ontario Conservative MP Ed Holder and Ontario Conservative MP Pat Davidson, who represent the constituency of Sarnia-Lambton, where so many Canadians have died from asbestos-related diseases have expressed their support.

I urge you to take cognisance of your fellow legilslator, Mr Holder who said, “Mr Holder cannot in good conscience support asbestos.”

I sincerely hope that you would respect the clear scientific evidence about asbestos and to reject the naked lust for profit from selling asbestos to countries like India. You would not expose Canadian children to asbestos harm. It is ethically indefensible to expose children in developing countries to asbestos harm, by placing Canadian asbestos in their homes and schools, all the while falsely assuring them that the asbestos will not harm them.
It would be unbecoming of any medical professional to collude with the promotion of asbestos disease which endangers both the present and the future generation.

I submit that it does not behove the stature of a civilized nation to use and promote white asbestos in India as an allegedly safe product.

With this letter I appeal to you to support the recommendation of the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Canadian Public Health Association and all of Canada’s leading medical associations that the use and export of all forms of asbestos including white asbestos must stop.

I will be happy to share the notice of the NHRC, India to facilitate your decision.

warm regards
Gopal Krishna
Convener
Ban Asbestos Network of India (BANI)
ToxicsWatch Alliance (TWA)
New Delhi
Mb: 9818089660
Email:krishna2777@gmail.com
Web:banasbestosindia.blogspot.com

Protest Against Killer Asbestos Plants in Bhojpur Continues

2011-07-31T20:31:00.000-07:00

(Owner of Koilwar, Giddha's asbestos plant that is facing consistent opposition from villagers and environmental groups)
Villagers of Koilwar and Bihiya region in Bhojpur, Bihar are protesting against the three lung cancer causing asbestos plants in the district in the face of an incestous relationship between ruling parties in Bihar. Several left party organisations are supporting the struggle against asbestos plants in Bhojpur.

The villagers and environmental groups are demanding that Bhojpur plants be stopped in the same way as Muzaffarpur based plant has been stopped. Human biology is same everywhere, how can same thing be deemed poisonous in one district and non-poisonous in another district.

It must be noted that the “Research has found that needle-like crystals permanently penetrate the lung tissue when dust-sized particles of asbestos are inhaled. The crystals can eventually cause scarring of the lungs, called asbestosis, and can cause cancer of the lining of the lung, called mesothelioma. Both diseases are incurable and terminal.” Alarmed by such a trend, Federico Demaria, a Italian researcher based in University of Barcelona, Spain who visited Bhojpur wrote a letter to the Chief Minister.

In Bhojpur’s Bihiya, there is a proposal to set up a 120,000 MT/Annum capacity of Asbestos Cement Sheet Plant and 2 00000 MT/Annum capacity of Asbestos Grinding Plant. The total project area is 20 acres and land is allotted by the state government on lease for 90 years.

On 10th May, 2010, the project was discussed by the Experts Appraisal Committee (EAC), Industry. In the minutes of the EAC, there explicit reference to “Health Management Plan for Mesothalimoa, Lung cancer and Asbestosis related problems in asbestos industries”. The plant being established by Tamil Nadu based Ramco Industries Ltd. Bihar’S State Investment Promotion Board (SIPB) cleared its establishment on 23rd November, 2009 with a total investment of Rs 60.20 crore.

In Bhojpur’s Giddha village, Tamil Nadu based Nibhi Industries Pvt. Ltd is establishing the 100000 MT Capacity Asbestos Fiber Cement Corrugated Sheet, Flat Sheet and Accessories and Light Weight Fly Ash Block Plant. This has been approved in SIPB meeting on 19th October, 2009 with a total investment for of Rs 31 crore.

In an order dated January 21, 2011, Hon’ble Supreme Court’s bench of Chief Justice of India Justice S.H. Kapadia, Justice K.S. Panicker Radhakrishnan and Justice Swatanter Kumar has observed in para 15, “the Government has already presented the Bill in Rajya Sabha. The statement of objects and reasons of this Bill specifically notices that the white asbestos is highly carcinogenic and it has been so reported by the World Health Organisation. In India, it is imported without any restriction while even its domestic use is not preferred by the exporting countries.” It is noteworthy that once a Bill is introduced in Rajya Sabha, it never lapses.

The Bench of Chief Justice of India notes, “Canada and Russia are the biggest exporters of white asbestos. In 2007, Canada exported 95% of the white asbestos, it mined out of which 43% was shipped to India. In view of these facts, there is an urgent need for a total ban on the import and use of white asbestos and promote the use of alternative materials. The Bill is yet to be passed but it is clearly demonstrated that the Government is required to take effective steps to prevent hazardous impact of use of asbestos.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a new factsheet on asbestos:http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs343/en/index.html It re-iterates that the most efficient way to eliminate asbestos-related diseases is to stop the use of all types of asbestos and specifically states that its strategy is particularly targeted at countries still using chrysotile asbestos. The factsheet notes that “more than 107 000 people die each year from asbestos-related lung cancer, mesothelioma and asbestosis resulting from occupational exposure.”

The work of WHO and International Labour Organization (ILO) must be taken cognisance of by Bihar Government in its efforts towards elimination of asbestos-related diseases “by recognizing that the most efficient way to eliminate asbestos-related diseases is to stop the use of all types of asbestos and by providing information about solutions for replacing asbestos with safer substitutes and developing economic and technological mechanisms to stimulate its replacement.”

The New Delhi Declaration Seeking Elimination of cancer causing all forms of asbestos including Chrysotile from India was adopted and endorsed by eminent scientists and doctors on 24th March, 2011. This happened at a Round Table which was organized immediately after the conclusion of International Conference on “Emerging Trends in Preventing Occupational Respiratory Diseases and Cancers in Workplace” at Maulana Azad Medical College that expressed grave concern about asbestos related diseases like lung cancer in the national capital. The Declaration is given below for your perusal and immediate consideration.

The delegates at the Round Table discussed the asbestos policy of Bihar. These delegates shared their views and gave their valuable hand written notes so that it can be used in a credible way while strongly recommending the need for immediate ban on asbestos to Government of India, State Governments and the relevant ministries.

During a visit to New Delhi in March 2011, Dr Alec Farquhar, Managing Director, Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers, Canada said, “We now have around 500 asbestos cancer cases every year in Ontario from a population of 13 million. If you (India) continue on your current path, you will multiply our death count by 100 times. That would be 50, 000 Indian workers dying every year from asbestos. In Ontario, we learned that safe use of asbestos is impossible. I urge you from the bottom of my heart, please do not make the same mistake as we made in Canada. Stop using asbestos and use a safe alternative.”

Professor Elihu D Richter MD MPH, Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Medicine, Israel said, “All form of asbestos kill. India should bury asbestos, not people. Here is a case for examining whether those countries which export asbestos to India are committing a crime against humanity, because they are engaging in willful neglect. India should not repeat the mistakes of going back some 70 years which will kill tens of thousands of workers and their families.” Prof. Richter too was in New Delhi in March 2011.

It must be noted that “No matter what mis-information comes of Canada or the Indian asbestos industry about Chrysotile, there is no question that science has shown that Chrysotile causes asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma. This is the conclusion of World Health Organisation. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, and other organizations that have no biases except for protecting people’s health,” said Prof. Arthur L Frank, MD, PhD, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Drexel University School of Public Health, US. He has over 40 years work experience in dealing with asbestos related health effects. He was in India to make a presentation at an International Conference on Occupational Health.

The Collegium Ramazzini, a Italy based independent, international academy founded in 1982 by Irving J. Selikoff, Cesare Maltoni and other eminent scientists has called for the elimination asbestos of all kinds. Presenting her views, Prof (Dr) Qamar Rahman, fellow of National Academy of Sciences, Dean, Integral University, Lucknow & former Deputy Director, Industrial Toxicology Research Centre, Lucknow asserted, “This is high time that Government of India should ban the use of asbestos in India. It has been proven scientifically that asbestos based articles such as roof ceilings, storage tanks will release fibers. The asbestos fibers will be the cause of exposure to our coming generations.” This merits Chief Minister’s immediate attention.

In such a backdrop, in short, the Chief Minister ought to take steps on the following points:

· Do not grant environmental clearance to the proposed asbestos sheet plant

· Deny Consent to Establish to this hazardous factory unit

· Create a Registry of Incurable Lung Cancers and Mesothelioma besides a registry of asbestos related diseases

· Start efforts to decontaminate asbestos laden buildings including schools and hospitals

· Create a building registry of those buildings and products which have asbestos.

· Include environmental and occupational health study in the medical education of all the medical colleges in the state

· Stop procurement of cancer causing asbestos based products in Bihar

· Adequately compensate the victims of asbestos-related diseases, create a database of asbestos exposed people and victims as well besides providing legal and possible medical relief and taking preventive measures

The Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) reports of the proposed asbestos plants reveals that they will procure asbestos from Canada and Russia.

The petitions (Parivaad Sankhya-454/3-2/2011, 948/17/3/2011) have been submitted the District Magistrate but there has been no response. Letters have also been submitted to Managing Director, BIADA, Principal Secretary, Environment, Bihar, Principal Secretary, Industry, Bihar and Principal Secretary, Health in March 2011 but so far villagers have not got any relief.

(Owner of Bihiya's two asbestos Plants which is facing bitter protest)

NHRC issues notices on banning use of White Asbestos

2011-07-06T03:53:00.000-07:00

National Human Rights Commission, New Delhi

Press Release

NHRC issues notices to different Union Ministries, States, Union Territories on the issue of banning use of White Asbestos

Dated: 6th July 2011: The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has taken cognizance of a complaint alleging that about fifty thousand people die every year in the country due to Asbestos related cancer. The complainant has sought Commission's intervention for a ban on the use of Chrysotile Asbestos (White Asbestos), which is hazardous for the health of people and causes various incurable diseases. The white Asbestos is a fibrous material used for building roofs and walls and various in other forms. The pdf version of the NHRC statement is attached.

Citing contradictory position of the Government on the issue the complainant Gopal Krishna of Toxics Watch Alliance has alleged that though the mining of Asbestos has been technically banned by the government, but it allows its import and that too from the countries which do not prefer its domestic use.

It is also alleged that white Asbestos is considered a hazardous chemical substance for environment by a number of countries in the world. However, it is being used in a number of industries in India affecting the workers employed their in.

The complainant has also requested for grant of a compensation package for present and future victims of Asbestos diseases.

The Commission has issued notices to the Secretaries of Ministries of Chemical Fertilizers, Environment and Forest, Health and Family Welfare, Industry and Commerce, Labour and Chief Secretaries of all the States/Union Territories calling for status reports within four weeks on the issues raised in the complaint.

*********
For further details: kindly contact National Human Rights Commission, Faridkot House, Copernicus Marg, New Delhi, PIN 110001 Tel.No. 23382742 Fax No. 23384863 E-Mail: covdnhrc@nic.in, ionhrc@nic.in

Gopal Krishna, Convener, ToxicsWatch Alliance (TWA), Mb: 9818089660,
E-mail: krishna2777@gmail.com, Blog: banasbestosindia.blogspot.com, toxicswatch.blogspot.com, Web: www.toxicswatch.com

Note: Earlier, ToxicsWatch Alliance (TWA) has sought appropriate directions to all the States/UTs and the Central Government with regard to the following:

I) How many industries/factories exist in the State where asbestos is used. Is there an inventory of products wherein the said material is used?

II)Total number of workers in the said industry?

III)Whether there is regular medical check-up and whether medical facilities exist?

IV)Whether there is any record of persons who died because of asbestosis?

V)How many persons suffer from asbestosis and whether they are receiving regular treatment for the said disease?

VI)What steps States/UTs has taken to check/prevent occurrence of asbestosis and how many hospitals dealing with the occupational diseases exist in the State/UT.

VII)What measures have been taken to decontaminate the existing buildings and products from the asbestos fibers

VIII)How many institutions in the country have the competence to decontaminate asbestos and how many medical, occupational health and scientific institutions can diagnose asbestos exposure

IX) How do our armed forces deal with cases of asbestos exposure? Is there a record of soldiers who have suffered from asbestos related diseases

X) What action has been taken by the central government and the state governments to protect children from asbestos exposure in future?

The applications seek necessary directions for its prevention and appropriate remedial steps are suggested/recommended and suitable directions are issued to the Central Government/State Governments and UTs.

Letter to NHRC

To

Chairman,

National Human Rights Commission (NHRC)

New Delhi

Date: 15/6/2011

Subject- Reference Complaint No. 41418/15 April, 2010, seeking recommendation for listing of chrysotile asbestos in the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) procedure list of hazardous materials at the 5th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP5) to the UN's Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade (20 to 24 June, 2011, Geneva)

Sir,

I wish to congratulate you for ensuring that NHRC (India) retained its “A” status in its accreditation with the International Coordinating Committee of the National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs), Geneva which it has been holding since 1999 under UN’s “Paris Principles”.

This status has been achieved and maintained because of the pro-active role of NHRC for the protection of human rights causes not only within the country but even in International Conventions as an independent body.

I would, in particular, like to mention the bold and independent stand taken by NHRC in the matter of ban on Endosulfan wherein it urged the Government of India to join the international consensus against it in the UN's Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). This position of NHRC has been deemed quite progressive world over. Endosulfan was banned in most of the countries but Government of India had not taken a pro-public health position on it.

I submit that NHRC’s recommendation in the matter of Preventive Remedial Rehabilitative and Compensation for victims of lung disease-Silicosis. Such steps of NHRC and sensitivity towards environment and pollution related crimes are commendable.

Similar to silicosis, asbestos related diseases are also incurable. Asbestos death toll has surpassed traffic fatalities in Australia. In US, every year 10, 000 people are dying because of asbestos related disease. There is an epidemic of asbestos diseases in Europe. In India, a silent Bhopal disaster is happening every year. The rate of consumption of asbestos in India is rising at an alarming rate due to budgetary support. Nearly all of Indi 's asbestos is mixed with cement to form roofing sheets. Bolstered by asbestos import tariffs that have been reduced from 78% in the mid-1990s to 15% by 2004, the country's asbestos-cement industry is increasing by roughly 10% every year. Since 2003, companies no longer require a special licence to import chrysotile asbestos.

Since 1960, India has incorporated about 7 million tonnes of asbestos into its buildings. The health consequences are already apparent, but the scale of the problem is not clear because there is no documentation of disease caused by environmental and occupational factors. “The Government of India has a very poor, almost non-existent, system to record death and disease”, explains Arthur Frank from Drexel University , Philadelphia , PA , USA who was in New Delhi in March 2011. Besides, cancer is not a notifiable disease. Prof. Frank cited a hospital in Mumbai which sees a dozen cases of mesothelioma every year. Studies have shown high rates of asbestosis among workers in the industry, including in those whose exposure to the material has spanned less than 5 years. There has been no real assessment of [asbestos-related disease] to the point that you can get accurate figures.

Like Endosulfan, several attempts have been made to include chrysotile asbestos (White Asbestos) on the UN’s prior informed consent list of hazardous chemicals due to non-cooperative role of the Government of India and exporting countries like Canada, the UN Convention has failed to do so.

Chrysotile asbestos is banned in 55 countries, including the European Union and Japan etc. The verdict even by the World Trade Organization (WTO)’s Appellate Body (AB) which validated the rights of Member States to prohibit the import and use of goods which contain carcinogenic substances such as chrysotile asbestos (white asbestos) is noteworthy. On March 12, 2001 the WTO's Appellate Body (AB) issued its ruling in the case of Canada vs. the European Communities Measures Affecting Asbestos and Asbestos-Containing Products. It noted that safe and controlled use of chrysotile asbestos is impossible.

India is the largest importer of asbestos, according to the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database. Most of it goes into making corrugated roofing sheets as building material.

In such a backdrop, it is submitted that in an order dated January 21, 201, Hon’ble Supreme Court’s bench of Chief Justice of India Justice S.H. Kapadia, Justice K.S. Panicker Radhakrishnan and Justice Swatanter Kumar has observed in para 15, “the Government has already presented the Bill in Rajya Sabha. The statement of objects and reasons of this Bill specifically notices that the white asbestos is highly carcinogenic and it has been so reported by the World Health Organisation. In India, it is imported without any restriction while even its domestic use is not preferred by the exporting countries.”

The Bench of Chief Justice of India notes, “Canada and Russia are the biggest exporters of white asbestos. In 2007, Canada exported 95% of the white asbestos, it mined out of which 43% was shipped to India. In view of these facts, there is an urgent need for a total ban on the import and use of white asbestos and promote the use of alternative materials. The Bill is yet to be passed but it is clearly demonstrated that the Government is required to take effective steps to prevent hazardous impact of use of asbestos.”

It is also noteworthy that the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) too has passed an order in Case No: 693/30/97-98 recommending that the asbestos sheets roofing be replaced with roofing made up of some other material that would not be harmful.

I submit that the Annual Report of NHRC 2003-2004 refers to a Report entitled “Asbestos – Health and Environment – an in-depth Study “submitted by the Institute of Public Health Engineers, India. The study underlines that safe and controlled use of asbestos is not possible.

It is relevant to point out that asbestos waste (dust and fibers) has been treated hazardous in all forms and has been banned under Hazardous Wastes Management Rules farmed under the Environment Protection Act, 1986. In our country, approximately 50, 000 people die every year due to asbestos related cancer. But so far Government of India has failed to take a pro-people’s health position and a scientific stand on the import of chrysotile asbestos whose mining is technically banned in India.

I submit that there is a nexus of political class and business class which is not allowing Government of India to take steps to protect human health from the lethal fibers of chrysotile asbestos. It is relevant to note that Kerala State Human Rights Commission has recommended ban on use of asbestos roofs for schools and hospitals.

In this regard, I may point out that NHRC’s urgent attention is required towards the 5th Conference of the Parties (COP5) to the UN's Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade to be held in Geneva during June 20-24, 2011 wherein the fate of Endosulfan, Chrysotile asbestos and some other chemicals will be decided for inclusion in the UN list of hazardous chemicals.

Having succeeded in, blocking UN recommendations on, four previous occasions, there is little doubt that, chrysotile asbestos producers will repeat their obstructive, behaviour at the COP-5, Rotterdam Convention held in Geneva. It is high time Government of India is asked to detach itself from the unethical practice of chrysotile asbestos producing countries.

The objective of the Rotterdam Convention “is to promote shared responsibility and cooperative efforts among Parties in the international trade of certain hazardous chemicals in order to protect human health and the environment from potential harm.”

In order to meet its objective, COP5 of Rotterdam Convention will consider the inclusion in Annex III of chrysotile asbestos, Endosulfan and other chemicals under agenda item 5 c.

It is noteworthy that the inclusion in Annex III does not equate to a prohibition of trade. It imposes requirements on exporting nations to provide basic information to consumers and customers environmental health hazards due to certain hazardous chemicals and pesticides in international trade.

It appears that Government of India has been misled about the toxicity of to chrysotile asbestos. As a consequence, the global public opinion and Indian citizens have begun to consider Indian chrysotile asbestos companies as the main obstacle to the inclusion of chrysotile asbestos in the list of UN agreement on hazardous chemicals.

I submit that a just transition program for asbestos workers, their families and communities around asbestos plants and products is urgently required, the NHRC may recommend to Government of India to adopt such a program.

In such a context, I appeal to NHRC to ask Government of India:

• To comply with the resolutions of WHO and ILO (2005 and 2006 seeking elimination of future use of asbestos including chrysotile asbestos worldwide

• To announce the compensation package for present and future victims of asbestos diseases as it has done in the case of Silicosis and make the asbestos companies criminally liable for knowingly exposing citizens and consumers of asbestos products

• To take note of Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare Ministry's statement in Rajya Sabha saying: "Studies by the National Institute of Occupational Health, Ahmedabad, have shown that long-term exposure to any type of asbestos can lead to the development of asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma'' on August 18, 2003

• To take cognisance of the order of Hon’ble Supreme Court’s bench of Chief Justice of India dated January 21, 2011

• To take note of The White Asbestos (Ban on Use and Import) Bill, 2009 introduced in Rajya Sabha and the order of the Kerala State Human Rights Commission dated 31st January 2009 banning the use of asbestos in schools and hospitals

• To consider the deliberations of the International Conference on "Emerging Trends in Preventing Occupational Respiratory Diseases and Cancers in Workplace" at Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi in March 2011 following which New Delhi Declaration Seeking Elimination of all forms of Asbestos including Chrysotile from India on 24 March, 2011

• To take note of the fact that every international health agency of repute including the World Health Organization, the International Labor Organization, International Agency for Research on Cancer, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and the American Cancer Society agree there is no safe level of asbestos exposure. Most recently, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) reconfirmed that all commercial asbestos fibers - including chrysotile, the most commercially used form of asbestos - cause lung cancer and mesothelioma. In addition, IARC newly confirmed that there is sufficient evidence that asbestos causes ovarian cancer and reconfirmed asbestos causes laryngeal cancer

• To recall that the World Health Organisation's latest estimate notes that asbestos already claims 107,000 lives a year. Even that conservative estimate means every five minutes around the clock a person dies of asbestos related disease. The ongoing use of the asbestos fibre kills at least 300 people every day

• To respect the scientific process of the Rotterdam Convention and approve the recommendations of the Chemical Review Committee to list chrysotile asbestos in the PIC list of hazardous substances

• To refer to World Bank's Asbestos Good Practice Guidelines. These Guidelines, as well as its earlier Environmental, Health & Safety General Guidelines, require that the use of asbestos must be avoided in new construction in projects funded by the World Bank around the world. The Guidelines also provide information on available safer alternatives to asbestos.

In such a backdrop, it is germane to ask as to why India still a leading importer of chrysotile asbestos.

It is submitted that Canadian government which exports chrysotile asbestos to India has removed it from Canadian Parliament and its Prime Minister's Home. India has technically banned mining of asbestos (including chrysotile) but allows import, manufacture and use of asbestos based products which are proven to be deadly!

The UN's Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade is an important tool to protect human health and the environment by controlling trade in hazardous chemicals and pesticides that meet the requirements of the Convention.

It is indeed unbecoming of a small number of Parties to the UN agreement (like Government of India), who have been misguided by commercial interest of chrysotile asbestos companies to the Convention hostage by refusing to cooperate with the scientific process of the Convention and the will of the overwhelming majority or Parties.

It does not behove the stature of Government of India to wield a veto over the Convention against the listing of chrysotile asbestos as a hazardous substance and deny itself the sovereign right to utilize the prior informed consent procedure. When a hazardous substance is listed under Annex III of the Convention, Parties like Government of India has the sovereign right to utilize the procedure.

It is an act of immorality of Government of Canada to have prevailed upon Government of India to obstruct the recommendation of the Chemical Review Committee regarding chrysotile asbestos to protect the blind lust for commercial profit at the cost of the health of Indian citizens and workers. It is quite sad that Government of Canada has misinformed and misguided Government of India to deny itself the right to control its own borders from hazardous substances under the manifest influence of chrysotile asbestos companies.

The Rotterdam Convention is based on the principle of environmental justice. It has been witnessed that increasingly, hazardous chemicals and pesticides that are banned or severely restricted in industrialized countries are being shipped to developing countries or countries with economies in transition, where resources to safely monitor and manage these dangerous substances are often lacking or non-existent.

The Rotterdam Convention addresses this inequality in exposure to environmental and human risk by empowering countries with the right to Prior Informed Consent. All Parties to the Convention have a legal and moral obligation to support the right to Prior Informed Consent in the Convention as an important tool for overcoming the widening gap.

You will agree that human biology is same everywhere if the asbestos is deemed hazardous in the developed countries; it must be deemed so in India too.

In view of the above, it is your solemn duty of NHRC to protect Indian citizens from the exposure of fibers of chrysotile asbestos. In pursuance of the same as a first step there is a compelling reason for Government of India to support listing of chrysotile asbestos in the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) procedure list of hazardous materials at the 5th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP5) to the UN's Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade (20 to 24 June, 2011, Geneva).

All the groups working on human rights, labour rights, health rights and environmental justice will appreciate if NHRC intervenes urgently in the matter of Chrysotile Asbestos as it did in the case of Endosufan.

We will happy to meet and share additional information.

Yours Sincerely

(Gopal Krishna)
ToxicsWatch Alliance (TWA)
Web: www.toxicswatch.com

Roofs can turn carcinogenic

2011-07-01T21:41:00.000-07:00

Asbestos, a commonly used construction material, is now drawing as much heat for its carcinogenic properties as endosulfan has for its debilitating side-effects.

Fifty-five countries across the world have banned asbestos and people in the US are suing builders for billions of dollars for health problems caused by exposure to asbestos, but it appears as though Tamil Nadu just cannot get enough of the hardy sheets.

They are used in everything from cramped, makeshift quarters provided for construction workers who build roads and flyovers or as roofing for garages. Asbestos is close to indispensable in the state.

Asbestos is considered a sturdy, waterproof, fire retardant material that can be bought for as low as Rs 250 per sheet, making it the poor man’s delight. However, the fibrous mineral is constantly shedding particles that cause irreversible damage to the lungs, and even trigger dangerous cancers when inhaled continuously.

“Asbestos use was restricted in the ’60s, but the cheap construction material is used widely these days. Around 80 per cent is used for roofing purposes in slums and temporary shelters. Asbestos waste is not biodegradable, and these fibres tend to get lodged in the lungs. Initially, exposure causes allergic symptoms of coughing, sneezing and weight loss, but chronic exposure can cause pneumoconiosis and cancers of the lungs and bronchi,” said Dr S. Elango, former state director of public health.

“At a time when most nations, including Australia, and the European Union, have banned asbestos, Tamil Nadu is using copious amounts of the material. After the Kumbakonam fire tragedy, asbestos lobbyists convinced the TN government to replace all eco-friendly thatched roofing in government schools with asbestos roofs — a deadly move for the state’s children,” says Mr Gopal Krishna, founder of the Ban-Asbestos Network in India.

“India’s asbestos industry is now worth Rs 4,500 crore and some of the key private players are based in Tamil Nadu. What’s worse is that the state government runs asbestos factories under the Tamil Nadu Cements Corporation label. There are PSU plants in Virudhunagar, Perambalur, Karur and Cuddalore districts, where workers, their families and the surrounding communities are exposed to the toxic fibres,” he laments.

In addition to using asbestos in all its constructions, the government is promoting the killer material by waiving sales tax on asbestos sheets.

The Central government had banned mining of white asbestos (chrysotile) in 1989 as the asbestos dust was recognised as a severe health hazard. However, Indian companies continue to import asbestos from Canada and Russia, and employ hapless workers to mould the toxic material into the ubiquitous corrugated sheets.

On June 23 however, the Indian delegation to the ongoing Rotterdam convention in Switzerland agreed to include asbestos in their list of harmful chemicals. The Rotterdam convention is a United Nations Treaty that promotes responsible handling of hazardous chemicals, and India’s move may encourage other nations like Canada, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Vietnam to discourage asbestos use.

“Maybe this is the beginning of the end,” says a hopeful Gopal Krishna.

July 1, 2011
By Anisha Francis

Source URL: http://www.deccanchronicle.com/channels/cities/chennai/roofs-can-turn-carcinogenic-852

Phase out plan for asbestos industry

2011-07-01T20:27:00.000-07:00

To
Smt Sonia Gandhi
Chairperson
United Progressive Alliance (UPA)
National Advisory Council
New Delhi

Dr Manmohan Singh
Prime Minister
Cabinet Committee on WTO Matters
Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs
Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs
Cabinet Committee on Infrastructure
Government of India
New Delhi

Subject-Phase out plan for asbestos industry

Dear Smt. Gandhi and Dr Singh,

On behalf of Ban Asbestos Network of India (BANI), I wish to express my gratitude for your exemplary leadership in changing Government of India's position on chrysotile asbestos (white asbestos) that clears the way for its elimination in near future. I had written to you on 13th June stating " the global public opinion and Indian citizens have begun to consider you as the main obstacle to the inclusion of chrysotile asbestos in the list of UN agreement on hazardous chemicals" and urged you to urged you to "resist undue influence of chrysotile asbestos companies". I salute you for resisting the influence of twins of asbestos companies- Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers' Association and Asbestos Information Centre.

Now I say, the global public opinion and Indian citizens consider you a supporter of ban on chrysotile asbestos unlike the Canadian Prime Minister whose act has compelled European Union (EU) to call for sanctions against Canada for derailing a United Nations protocol to protect vulnerable populations from the hazards of asbestos on June 30, 2011.
It is indeed quite sad that both national and regional media is so obsessed with vulture stories that when something as historic and dramatic as a reversal in the position of Government of India with regard to support for the demand for inclusion of chrysotile asbestos (white asbestos) in the UN list of hazardous chemicals and pesticides This happened at the 5th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP5) to the UN's Rotterdam Convention on the PIC Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade in Switzerland on 22nd June, 2011

At this UN Meet, Indian delegation received was greeted with standing ovation from the delegates from all over the world. But when this happened there was deafening silence in Indian media.

It is appropriate in such a situation that the Press Council of India and Union Ministry of Information & Broadcasting seek an explanation from the news channels, newspapers, business newspapers, news magazines, radio and news websites who chose to make this global news of seminal importance because it paves the way for eventual phase out of all chrysotile asbestos based product to safeguard the health of present and future generation of Indians, a non-news in India.

I wish state that Ban Asbestos Network of India (BANI) applauds the role of Shri Jairam Ramesh, Union Ministry of Environment & Forests and Shri M. K. Alagiri, Union Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers at the 5th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP5) to the UN's Rotterdam Convention on the PIC Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade in Switzerland on 22nd June, 2011 in the matter of listing of chrysotile asbestos (white asbestos) in the UN list of hazardous chemicals and pesticides.

BANI wishes to take the opportunity to thank you and Chairman, National Human Rights Commission, Shri L K Advani, Smt Sushma Swaraj, Shri Arun Jaitley, Union Finance Minister, Union Commerce Minister, Union Health Minister, Union Law Minister and Cabinet Secretary, Government of India for supporting the demand for inclusion of chrysotile asbestos in the UN list of hazardous chemicals. Smt. Swaraj had informed the
Parliament that all forms of asbestos causes incurable diseases as a Union Health Minister.

BANI places on record its appreciation for the work of Ms Mira Mehrishi, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Environment and Forests, Mr Manoranjan Hota, Mr Sanjay Bansal, Director, Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers and Ms Jyoti Singhal, Under Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture in announcing that Government of India considers chrysotile asbestos suitable for listing in the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) procedure list of hazardous chemicals.

BANI takes the opportunity ask you to suggest following logical next steps to your decision in view of the fact that both present and future generation of Indians are at risk:

1. Create an inventory of all asbestos based products and public and private buildings which are laden with asbestos

2. Start a program to remove asbestos from public and private buildings such as legislatures, courts, hospitals, schools, railway platforms, buildings of armed forces, National Human Rights Commission and State Human Rights Commissions

3. Issue an order to all the Chief Secretary of States and Administrators of Union Territories to stop construction of new asbestos based plants, stop procurement and use of asbestos based products and construction materials;

4. Issue an order to start the process of decontaminating the buildings of legislators, judges, hospitals, schools and railway platforms with immediate effect;

5. Ask all the departments of Government of India, state governments and Union Territories to submit inventory of asbestos products, list of asbestos based factories and a register of victims of asbestos related diseases;

6. Recommend to all the 300 medical colleges in India to include study enviro-occupational diseases in their courses so that they can diagnose asbestos and other enviro-occupational exposures;

7. Initiate a rehabilitation and compensation program for victims of incurable diseases caused by asbestos and other enviro-occupational exposures;

If these measures are undertaken, present and future generation of Indians will remember you as a seemingly silent but effective minister who left his mark despite all odds.

An appropriate order may be passed with regard to the above and my previous submissions to you.

I will be happy to share relevant information and documents.

Thanking You

Your Sincerely
Gopal Krishna
Ban Asbestos Network of India (BANI)
Patna/New Delhi
Mb: 9818089660
E-mail: krishna2777@gmail.com, toxicswatchalliance@gmail.com
Blog: banasbestosindia.blogspot.com
Web: www.toxicswatch.com

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter to Smt Sonia Gandhi and Dr Manmohan Singh on Chrysotile Asbestos

To
Smt Sonia Gandhi
Chairperson
United Progressive Alliance (UPA)
National Advisory Council
New Delhi

Dr Manmohan Singh
Prime Minister
Cabinet Committee on WTO Matters
Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs
Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs
Cabinet Committee on Infrastructure
Government of India
New Delhi

Subject- Support listing of chrysotile asbestos in the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) procedure list of hazardous materials at the 5th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP5) to the UN's Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade (20 to 24 June, 2011, Geneva)

Dear Smt Gandhi and Dr Singh,

This is an earnest appeal to you to ensure that Government of India votes to list chrysotile asbestos (white asbestos) as a hazardous substance, which it has been refusing to do so since 2004 (COP1) years under the influence of asbestos companies unmindful of the human rights violation it entails.

During 20- 24 June, 2011, India will get yet another opportunity to rectify its untenable position on hazardous nature of chrysotile asbestos in Geneva at the 5th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP5) to the UN's Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade. Having succeeded in, blocking UN recommendations on, four previous occasions, there is little doubt that, chrysotile asbestos producers will repeat their obstructive, behaviour at the COP-5, Rotterdam Convention held in Geneva. It is high time Government of India detached itself from their unethical practice.

It appears that you and Chairperson of UPA has been misled about the toxicity of to chrysotile asbestos. As a consequence, the global public opinion and Indian citizens have begun to consider you as the main obstacle to the inclusion of chrysotile asbestos in the list of UN agreement on hazardous chemicals. It is public knowledge that chrysotile asbestos based plant is operating in Raebarelly, Utter Pradesh in the face of countries after countries banning it. It is also an open secret that the plant is owned by a Member of Parliament of Indian National Congress who runs a chrysotile asbestos company. In such a context,

We appeal to you to:
Resist undue influence of chrysotile asbestos companies
Support listing of chrysotile asbestos in the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) procedure list of hazardous materials at the 5th meeting of the Conference of Parties to the UN's Rotterdam Convention to be held from 20 to 24 June, 2011 in Geneva
Prohibit import, manufacture and use of asbestos based products
Institute just transition program for asbestos workers, their families and communities around asbestos plants and products
Join the United Nations in banning the production and export of chrysotile asbestos worldwide
Announce the compensation package for present and future victims of asbestos diseases
Make the asbestos companies criminally liable for knowingly exposing citizens and consumers of asbestos products
Take note of Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare Ministry's statement in Rajya Sabha saying: "Studies by the National Institute of Occupational Health, Ahmedabad, have shown that long-term exposure to any type of asbestos can lead to the development of asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma'' on August 18, 2003
Take cognisance of the order of Hon’ble Supreme Court’s bench of Chief Justice of India dated January 21, 2011
Take note of The White Asbestos (Ban on Use and Import) Bill, 2009 introduced in Rajya Sabha and the order of the Kerala State Human Rights Commission dated 31st January 2009 banning the use of asbestos in schools and hospitals
Consider the deliberations of the International Conference on "Emerging Trends in Preventing Occupational Respiratory Diseases and Cancers in Workplace" at Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi in March 2011 following which New Delhi Declaration Seeking Elimination of all forms of Asbestos including Chrysotile from India on 24 March, 2011
Take note of the fact that every international health agency of repute including the World Health Organization, the International Labor Organization, International Agency for Research on Cancer, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and the American Cancer Society agree there is no safe level of asbestos exposure. Most recently, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) reconfirmed that all commercial asbestos fibers - including chrysotile, the most commercially used form of asbestos - cause lung cancer and mesothelioma. In addition, IARC newly confirmed that there is sufficient evidence that asbestos causes ovarian cancer and reconfirmed asbestos causes laryngeal cancer
Recall that the World Health Organisation's latest estimate notes that asbestos already claims 107,000 lives a year. Even that conservative estimate means every five minutes around the clock a person dies of asbestos related disease. The ongoing use of the asbestos fibre kills at least 300 people every day
Respect the scientific process of the Rotterdam Convention and approve the recommendations of the Chemical Review Committee to list chrysotile asbestos in the PIC list of hazardous substances
Recall the verdict even by the World Trade Organization (WTO) which validated the rights of Member States to prohibit the import and use of goods which contain carcinogenic substances such as chrysotile asbestos (white asbestos). On March 12, 2001 the WTO's Appellate Body (AB) issued its ruling in the case of Canada vs. the European Communities Measures Affecting Asbestos and Asbestos-Containing Products
Refer to World Bank's Asbestos Good Practice Guidelines. These Guidelines, as well as its earlier Environmental, Health & Safety General Guidelines, require that the use of asbestos must be avoided in new construction in projects funded by the World Bank around the world. The Guidelines also provide information on available safer alternatives to asbestos.

It brings discredit to the scientific temper of India as a nation that it has failed to factor in the fact that asbestos is banned in 55 countries, including the European Union and Japan in its policy making. India is the largest importer of asbestos, according to the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database. Most of it goes into making corrugated roofing sheets as building material.

In such a backdrop, it is germane to ask why is Government of India still a leading importer of asbestos?

It is submitted that Canadian government which exports chrysotile asbestos to India has removed it from Canadian Parliament and its Prime Minister's Home.

Believe it or not, India has technically banned mining of asbestos (including chrysotile) but allows import, manufacture and use of asbestos based products which are proven to be deadly!

The UN's Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade is an important tool to protect human health and the environment by controlling trade in hazardous chemicals and pesticides that meet the requirements of the Convention.

The Chemical Review Committee plays a critical role by ensuring that the review mechanism of the Convention is used objectively and that science is the cornerstone of the review process. If the recommendations of the Chemical Review Committee are obstructed (which India has done since 2004), the Convention will fail in achieving its mandate. Instead of being based on science, public health decisions will be based on political expediency.

It is indeed unbecoming of a small number of Parties to the UN agreement (like Government of India), who have been misguided by commercial interest of chrysotile asbestos companies to the Convention hostage by refusing to cooperate with the scientific process of the Convention and the will of the overwhelming majority or Parties.

It does not behove the stature of Government of India to wield a veto over the Convention against the listing of chrysotile asbestos as a hazardous substance and deny itself the sovereign right to utilize the prior informed consent procedure. When a hazardous substance is listed under Annex III of the Convention, Parties like Government of India has the sovereign right to utilize the procedure.

It is an act of immorality of Government of Canada to have prevailed upon Government of India to obstruct the recommendation of the Chemical Review Committee regarding chrysotile asbestos to protect the blind lust for commercial profit at the cost of the health of Indian citizens and workers.

It is quite sad that Government of Canada has misinformed and misguided Government of India to deny itself the right to control its own borders from hazardous substances under the manifest influence of chrysotile asbestos companies.

The Rotterdam Convention is based on the principle of environmental justice. It has been witnessed that increasingly, hazardous chemicals and pesticides that are banned or severely restricted in industrialized countries are being shipped to developing countries or countries with economies in transition, where resources to safely monitor and manage these dangerous substances are often lacking or nonexistent.

The Rotterdam Convention addresses this inequality in exposure to environmental and human risk by empowering countries with the right to Prior Informed Consent. All Parties to the Convention have a legal and moral obligation to support the right to Prior Informed Consent in the Convention as an important tool for overcoming the widening gap.

In such a backdrop, it is submitted that in an order dated January 21, 201, Hon’ble Supreme Court’s bench of Chief Justice of India Justice S.H. Kapadia, Justice K.S. Panicker Radhakrishnan and Justice Swatanter Kumar has observed in para 15, “the Government has already presented the Bill in Rajya Sabha. The statement of objects and reasons of this Bill specifically notices that the white asbestos is highly carcinogenic and it has been so reported by the World Health Organisation. In India, it is imported without any restriction while even its domestic use is not preferred by the exporting countries.”

The Bench of Chief Justice of India notes, “Canada and Russia are the biggest exporters of white asbestos. In 2007, Canada exported 95% of the white asbestos, it mined out of which 43% was shipped to India. In view of these facts, there is an urgent need for a total ban on the import and use of white asbestos and promote the use of alternative materials.
The Bill is yet to be passed but it is clearly demonstrated that the Government is required to take effective steps to prevent hazardous impact of use of asbestos.”

It is also noteworthy that the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) too has passed an order in Case No:693/30/97-98 recommending that the asbestos sheets roofing be replaced with roofing made up of some other material that would not be harmful. The Annual Report of NHRC 2003-2004 refers to a Report entitled “Asbestos – Health and Environment – an in-depth Study “submitted by the Institute of Public Health Engineers, India. The study underlines that safe and controlled use of asbestos is not possible.

You will agree that human biology is same everywhere if the asbestos is deemed hazardous in the developed countries, it must be deemed so in India too.
In view of the above, it is your solemn duty to protect Indian citizens from the the exposure of fibers of chrysotile asbestos. In pursuance of the same as a first step there is a compelling reason for Government of India to support listing of chrysotile asbestos in the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) procedure list of hazardous materials at the 5th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP5) to the UN's Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade (20 to 24 June, 2011, Geneva).

We will be happy to meet and share additional information.

Your Sincerely
Gopal Krishna
Ban Asbestos Network of India (BANI)
ToxicsWatch Alliance (TWA)
New Delhi
Mb: 9818089660
E-mail: krishna2777@gmail.com, toxicswatchalliance@gmail.com
Blog: banasbestosindia.blogspot.com
Web: www.toxicswatch.com

Cc
President of India
Chairman, National Human Rights Commission
Vice President of India
Speaker, Lok Sabha
Union Finance Minister
Union Commerce Minister
Union Health Minister
Union Law Minister
Union Environment Minister
Union Agriculture Minister
Cabinet Secretary, Government of India

Azhagiri's decision about Asbestos appreciated

2011-07-01T19:05:00.000-07:00

Azhagiri's decision about Asbestos appreciated
N. ASOKAN | Chennai

The Union minister for Chemicals and Fertilizers, MK Azhagiri, has received a rare appreciation from NGOs which normally complain about the functions of government. His Ministry's decision in a global forum to reverse a years long stand about Asbestos has fetched him the appreciation.

In the 5th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP5) to the UN's Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade in Switzerland on 22nd June, 2011, India has given its consensus for the listing of Asbestos in the UN hazardous and harmful chemicals list.

The moment the Indian decision was announced, the gathering comprised of international delegates gave a half a minute standing ovation. Now Canada, which is the largest exporter of Chryosotile asbestos (White asbestos) is opposing this move which means after Asbestos is listed in the PIC procedure, it is mandatory for the exporting country to provide the data about the asbestos mineral that is being exported.

In a letter to M.K. Azhagiri, Ban Asbestos Network of India (BANI) and Toxics Watch Alliance (TWA) have expressed their appreciation to him and his team of officials in the Ministry. ''BANI and TWA salute you for resisting the influence of twins of asbestos companies- Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers' Association and Asbestos Information Center”, the letter reads. It further states that this decision clears the way for the elimination of Asbestos in the near future.

They have also made some recommendations to the Ministry which include removing of asbestos from public and private buildings, banning the use of asbestos based products and initiating a rehabilitation programme for those affected with asbestosis. ''Azhagiri has restored the reputation of Indian Government by taking a decision based on Science. He has successfully resisted the powerful Asbestos Industry lobby," Gopal Krishna, an Environmentalist associated with BANI told TSI.

According to World Health Organisation's latest estimate, asbestos claims 107,000 lives a year. NGOs and activists all over the World are calling for stopping its use.

The Sunday Indian
June 30, 2011

BANI & TWA Appreciate role of Union Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers at UN Meet

2011-06-30T00:53:00.001-07:00

To

Shri M. K. Alagiri
Union Minister
Union Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers
Government of India
New Delhi

Subject-BANI & TWA Appreciate role of Union Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers at UN Meet

Dear Shri Alagiri,

On behalf of Ban Asbestos Network of India (BANI) and ToxicsWatch Alliance (TWA), I wish to express my gratitutde for your exemplary decision of Union Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers, Government of India in reversing India's long held position on chrysotile asbestos (white asbestos) that clears the way for its elimination in near future.

I had written on 16th June, 2011 urging you"to rectify its (Government of India) untenable position on hazardous nature of chrysotile asbestos in Geneva" at the UN Meet on Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides. The letter is given below.

BANI and TWA salute you for resisting the influence of twins of asbestos companies- Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers' Association and Asbestos Information Centre.

Now I say that unlike the Canadian Prime Minister whose act has compelled European Union (EU) to call for sanctions against Canada for derailing a United Nations protocol to protect vulnerable populations from the hazards of asbestos on June 30, 2011, your ministry has worked silently but made its impact at a global level.

It is indeed quite sad that both national and regional media is so obsessed with vulture stories that when something as historic and dramatic as a reversal in the position of Government of India with regard to support for the demand for inclusion of chrysotile asbestos (white asbestos) in the UN list of hazardous chemicals and pesticides This happened at the 5th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP5) to the UN's Rotterdam Convention on the PIC Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade in Switzerland on 22nd June, 2011

I am aware that your Ministry is the Focal Point for the Rotterdam Convention. At this UN Meet, Indian delegation recieved was greeted with standing ovation from the delegates from all over the world. But when this happened there was deafening silence in Indian media.

It is appropriate in such a sitiation that the Press Council of India and Union Ministry of Information & Broadcasting seek an explanantion from the news channels, newspapers, business newspapers, news magazines, radio and news websites who chose to make this global news of seminal importance becasue it paves the way for eventual phase out of all chrysotile asbestos basesd prodfuct to safeguard teh health of present and future generation of Indians, a non-news in India.

I wish state that BANI and TWA applaud your ministry's role at the 5th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP5) to the UN's Rotterdam Convention on the PIC Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade in Switzerland on 22nd June, 2011 in the matter of listing of chrysotile asbestos (white asbestos) in the UN list of hazardous chemicals and pesticides.

BANI places on record its appreciation for the work of Ms Mira Mehrishi, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Environment and Forests, Mr Manoranjan Hota, Mr Sanjay Bansal, Director, Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers and Ms Jyoti Singhal, Under Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture in annoucing that Government of India considers chrysotile asbestos suitiable for listing in the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) procedure list of hazardous chemicals.

BANI and TWA take the opportunity ask you to suggest followng logical next steps to your decision in view of the fact that both present and future generation of Indians are at risk:

1. Create an inventory of all asbestos based products and public and private buildings which are laden with asbestos

2. Start a program to remove asbestos from public and private buildings such as legislatures, courts, hospitals, schools, railway platforms, buildings of armed forces, National Human Rights Commission and State Human Rights Commissions

3. Issue an order to all the Chief Secretary of States and Administartors of Union Territories to stop construction of new asbestos based plants, stop procurement and use of asbestos based products and construction materials;

4. Issue an order to start the process of decontaminating the buildings of legislators, judges, hospitals, schools and railway platforms with immediate effect;

5. Ask all the departments of Government of India, state governments and Union Territories to submit inventory of asbestos products, list of asbestos based factories and a register of victims of asbestos related diseases;

6. Recommend to all the 300 medical colleges in India to include study enviro-occupational diseases in their courses so that they can diagnose asbestos and other enviro-occupational exposures;

7. Initiate a rehablitation and compensation program for victims of incurable diseases caused by asbestos and other enviro-occupational exposures;

If these measures are undertaken, present and future generation of Indians will remember you as a seemingly silent but effective minister who left his mark despite all odds.

An appropriate order may be passed with regard to the above and my previous submission to you.

I will be happy to share relevant information and documents.

Thanking You

Yours faithfully

Ban Asbestos Network of India (BANI)

ToxicsWatch Alliance (TWA)

New Delhi

Mb: 9818089660

E-mail: krishna2777@gmail.com, toxicswatchalliance@gmail.com

Blog: banasbestosindia.blogspot.com

Web: www.toxicswatch.com

Letter to Union Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers

Date: 16 June, 2011

To

Shri M. K. Alagiri

Union Minister

Union Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers

Government of India

New Delhi

Ph: 011-23386519

Shri M. Raman

Secretary

Union Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers

Government of India

New Delhi

Ph:011 23384196(o), 23382467(o), 24645798(R)

Dr. V. Rajagopalan

Additional Secretary

Union Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers

Government of India

New Delhi

Ph: 011-23382468

Shri Suresh Chandra Gupta

Joint Secretary (Chemical Division)

Union Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers

Government of India

New Delhi

Ph: 011-23383756

Shri Sanjay Bansal

Director

Union Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers

Government of India

New Delhi

Ph:011-23387761

Subject- Support listing of chrysotile asbestos in the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) procedure list of hazardous chemicals at the 5th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP5) to the UN's Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade (20 to 24 June, 2011, Geneva)

Sir,

This is an earnest appeal to you to ensure that Government of India's delegation votes to list chrysotile asbestos (white asbestos) as a hazardous substance, which it has been refusing to do so since 2004 (COP1) years under the influence of asbestos companies unmindful of the human rights violation it entails.

I submit that during 20- 24 June, 2011, India will get yet another opportunity to rectify its untenable position on hazardous nature of chrysotile asbestos in Geneva at the 5th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP5) to the UN's Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade. Having succeeded in, blocking UN recommendations on, four previous occasions, there is little doubt that, chrysotile asbestos producers will repeat their obstructive, behaviour at the COP-5, Rotterdam Convention held in Geneva. It is high time Government of India detached itself from their unethical practice.

It appears that your Ministry has been misled about the toxicity of to chrysotile asbestos. As a consequence, the global public opinion and Indian citizens have begun to consider you as the main obstacle to the inclusion of chrysotile asbestos in the list of UN agreement on hazardous chemicals.

It is public knowledge that chrysotile asbestos based plant is operating in Raebarelly, Utter Pradesh in the face of countries after countries banning it. It is also an open secret that the plant is owned by a Member of Parliament of Indian National Congress who runs a chrysotile asbestos company. In such a context,

I appeal to you to:

Resist undue influence of chrysotile asbestos companies

Support listing of chrysotile asbestos in the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) procedure list of hazardous materials at the 5th meeting of the Conference of Parties to the UN's Rotterdam Convention to be held from 20 to 24 June, 2011 in Geneva

Prohibit import, manufacture and use of asbestos based products

Institute just transition program for asbestos workers, their families and communities around asbestos plants and products

Join the United Nations in banning the production and export of chrysotile asbestos worldwide

Announce the compensation package for present and future victims of asbestos diseases

Make the asbestos companies criminally liable for knowingly exposing citizens and consumers of asbestos products

Take note of Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare Ministry's statement in Rajya Sabha saying: "Studies by the National Institute of Occupational Health, Ahmedabad, have shown that long-term exposure to any type of asbestos can lead to the development of asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma'' on August 18, 2003

Take cognisance of the order of Hon’ble Supreme Court’s bench of Chief Justice of India dated January 21, 2011

Take note of The White Asbestos (Ban on Use and Import) Bill, 2009 introduced in Rajya Sabha and the order of the Kerala State Human Rights Commission dated 31st January 2009 banning the use of asbestos in schools and hospitals

Consider the deliberations of the International Conference on "Emerging Trends in Preventing Occupational Respiratory Diseases and Cancers in Workplace" at Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi in March 2011 following which New Delhi Declaration Seeking Elimination of all forms of Asbestos including Chrysotile from India on 24 March, 2011

Take note of the fact that every international health agency of repute including the World Health Organization, the International Labor Organization, International Agency for Research on Cancer, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and the American Cancer Society agree there is no safe level of asbestos exposure. Most recently, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) reconfirmed that all commercial asbestos fibers - including chrysotile, the most commercially used form of asbestos - cause lung cancer and mesothelioma. In addition, IARC newly confirmed that there is sufficient evidence that asbestos causes ovarian cancer and reconfirmed asbestos causes laryngeal cancer

Recall that the World Health Organisation's latest estimate notes that asbestos already claims 107,000 lives a year. Even that conservative estimate means every five minutes around the clock a person dies of asbestos related disease. The ongoing use of the asbestos fibre kills at least 300 people every day

Respect the scientific process of the Rotterdam Convention and approve the recommendations of the Chemical Review Committee to list chrysotile asbestos in the PIC list of hazardous substances

Recall the verdict even by the World Trade Organization (WTO) which validated the rights of Member States to prohibit the import and use of goods which contain carcinogenic substances such as chrysotile asbestos (white asbestos). On March 12, 2001 the WTO's Appellate Body (AB) issued its ruling in the case of Canada vs. the European Communities Measures Affecting Asbestos and Asbestos-Containing Products

Refer to World Bank's Asbestos Good Practice Guidelines. These Guidelines, as well as its earlier Environmental, Health & Safety General Guidelines, require that the use of asbestos must be avoided in new construction in projects funded by the World Bank around the world. The Guidelines also provide information on available safer alternatives to asbestos.

It brings discredit to the scientific temper of India as a nation that it has failed to factor in the fact that asbestos is banned in 55 countries, including the European Union and Japan in its policy making. India is the largest importer of asbestos, according to the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database. Most of it goes into making corrugated roofing sheets as building material.

In such a backdrop, it is germane to ask why is Ministry of Chemicals Government of India still a leading importer of chrysotile asbestos?

I submit that Canadian government which exports chrysotile asbestos to India has removed it from Canadian Parliament and its Prime Minister's Home.

As you are aware India has technically banned mining of asbestos (including chrysotile) but allows import, manufacture and use of asbestos based products which are proven to be deadly! May I ask: Is it rational?

The UN's Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade is an important tool to protect human health and the environment by controlling trade in hazardous chemicals and pesticides that meet the requirements of the Convention.

The Chemical Review Committee plays a critical role by ensuring that the review mechanism of the Convention is used objectively and that science is the cornerstone of the review process. If the recommendations of the Chemical Review Committee are obstructed (which India has done since 2004), the Convention will fail in achieving its mandate. Instead of being based on science, public health decisions will be based on political expediency.

It is indeed unbecoming of a small number of Parties to the UN agreement (like Government of India), who have been misguided by commercial interest of chrysotile asbestos companies to the Convention hostage by refusing to cooperate with the scientific process of the Convention and the will of the overwhelming majority or Parties.

It does not behove the stature of Government of India to wield a veto over the Convention against the listing of chrysotile asbestos as a hazardous substance and deny itself the sovereign right to utilize the prior informed consent procedure. When a hazardous substance is listed under Annex III of the Convention, Parties like Government of India has the sovereign right to utilize the procedure.

It is an act of immorality of Government of Canada to have prevailed upon Government of India to obstruct the recommendation of the Chemical Review Committee regarding chrysotile asbestos to protect the blind lust for commercial profit at the cost of the health of Indian citizens and workers.

It is quite sad that Government of Canada has misinformed and misguided Government of India to deny itself the right to control its own

borders from hazardous substances under the manifest influence of chrysotile asbestos companies.

The Rotterdam Convention is based on the principle of environmental justice. It has been witnessed that increasingly, hazardous chemicals and pesticides that are banned or severely restricted in industrialized countries are being shipped to developing countries or countries with economies in transition, where resources to safely monitor and manage these dangerous substances are often lacking or nonexistent.

The Rotterdam Convention addresses this inequality in exposure to environmental and human risk by empowering countries with the right to Prior Informed Consent. All Parties to the Convention have a legal and moral obligation to support the right to Prior Informed Consent in the Convention as an important tool for overcoming the widening gap.

In such a backdrop, it is submitted that in an order dated January 21, 201, Hon’ble Supreme Court’s bench of Chief Justice of India Justice S.H. Kapadia, Justice K.S. Panicker Radhakrishnan and Justice Swatanter Kumar has observed in para 15, "the Government has already presented the Bill in Rajya Sabha. The statement of objects and reasons of this Bill specifically notices that the white asbestos is highly carcinogenic and it has been so reported by the World Health Organisation. In India, it is imported without any restriction while even its domestic use is not preferred by the exporting countries."

The Bench of Chief Justice of India notes, "Canada and Russia are the biggest exporters of white asbestos. In 2007, Canada exported 95% of the white asbestos, it mined out of which 43% was shipped to India. In view of these facts, there is an urgent need for a total ban on the import and use of white asbestos and promote the use of alternative materials. The Bill is yet to be passed but it is clearly demonstrated that the Government is required to take effective steps to prevent hazardous impact of use of asbestos."

It is also noteworthy that the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) too has passed an order in Case No:693/30/97-98 recommending that the asbestos sheets roofing be replaced with roofing made up of some other material that would not be harmful. The Annual Report of NHRC 2003-2004 refers to a Report entitled "Asbestos – Health and Environment – an in-depth Study "submitted by the Institute of Public Health Engineers, India. The study underlines that safe and controlled use of asbestos is not possible.

You will agree that human biology is same everywhere if the asbestos is deemed hazardous in the developed countries, it must be deemed so in India too.

In view of the above, it is your solemn duty to protect Indian citizens from the the exposure of fibers of chrysotile asbestos. In pursuance of the same as a first step there is a compelling reason for Chemicals Ministry, Government of India to support listing of chrysotile asbestos in the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) procedure list of hazardous materials at the 5th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP5) to the UN's Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade in Geneva.

I will be happy to meet and share additional information.

Your Sincerely

Gopal Krishna

Ban Asbestos Network of India (BANI)

ToxicsWatch Alliance (TWA)

New Delhi

Mb: 9818089660

E-mail: krishna2777@gmail.com, toxicswatchalliance@gmail.com

Blog: banasbestosindia.blogspot.com

Web: www.toxicswatch.com

　

EU Call for Sanctions on Canada

2011-06-29T04:31:00.000-07:00

European Federation of Building and Woodworkers (EFBWW)

The International Ban Asbestos Secretariat (IBAS)
Press Release June 29, 2011

EU Call for Sanctions on Canada
Brussels, Belgium: Calls will be made on June 30, 2011 that the European Union (EU) take sanctions against Canada for derailing a United Nations protocol to protect vulnerable populations from the hazards of asbestos.

Last week, the Canadian delegation to the Rotterdam Convention meeting in Geneva single-handedly derailed a long-standing attempt to include chrysotile asbestos on the Convention’s prior informed consent list despite support for this listing from 142 out of 143 Parties to the Convention (listing can only be proceed if there is 100% unanimity).

The duplicitous and underhanded behaviour of the Canadian representatives attracted widespread condemnation from delegates in Geneva as well as international campaigners, eminent scientific and medical professionals and ordinary Canadians.
IBAS Coordinator Laurie Kazan-Allen, a member of the Rotterdam Convention Alliance, maintained a minute by minute watch on developments from her London base. In her presentation to the European Parliament’s seminar: “Asbestos – Still a Killer,”[1] she will detail the latest moves by global asbestos thugs to deny developing countries the right to know the hazards of the asbestos they are importing.

Commenting on recent developments, Ms. Kazan-Allen said:

“I have been studying the global asbestos industry for over 20 years. In that time, I have witnessed political dishonesty, industrial thuggery, corporate malfeasance, judicial manipulation, the misuse of science, the abuse of the legal process, physical and professional intimidation. What we saw last week in Geneva, transcended this – it was pure evil. Canada is now a rogue state and should be dealt with in the same way as other administrations which have breached the acceptable level of behaviour expected of civilized societies.

Canadian Government documents I am bringing to Brussels will prove to MEPs that Ottawa had received recommendations from its own advisors to list chrysotile under the Rotterdam Convention. That they chose not to do so with the full knowledge of the tragic consequences is a sin of unpardonable proportions.”
_________________________________________________________

Notes to editors
The International Ban Asbestos Secretariat has been campaigning since 1999 to achieve justice for all asbestos victims and a global ban on asbestos. Publications, articles and recommended links can be accessed on the IBAS website: www.ibasecretariat.org Coordinator Laurie Kazan-Allen can be reached by email at: lka@btinternet.com or by phone at: +44 (0) 776 66 45 880.

Rolf Gehring, Secretary for Health & Safety of the European Federation of Building and Woodworkers (EFBWW), co-organisers of this event, can be reached at: +32 478 84 0660. EFBWW is running the campaign: “Europe 2023 – Asbestos Free” – see also: http://www.efbww.org
The Rotterdam Convention is a multilateral United Nations protocol under which vulnerable populations are provided a modicum of protection from dangerous substances. When a consensus has been achieved regarding the hazardous nature of a designated chemical or pesticide, that substance is included on the prior informed consent list of the Convention. This listing is not a ban; it is however a requirement that exporting nations provide documentation on the nature of the substance so that importers can make informed decisions as to whether or not they are capable of using it safely.

Information on last week’s developments in Geneva can be accessed on the IBAS website: www.ibasecretariat.org or at the website of the Earth Negotiations Bulletin: http://www.iisd.ca/chemical/pic/cop5/
For additional information contact:EFBWW, Rolf Gehring, Ph: +32 (0)2 227 10 40/43 Email: rgehring@efbh.be
IBAS, Laurie Kazan-Allen, Ph: +44 (0)208 95 83 887, Email: lka@btinternet.com

[1] This seminar is being organized by the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats in the European Parliament in collaboration with trade unions and non-governmental organizations. It takes place on 30 June 2011 from 14.30 to 17.30, Room ASP A3G-2 European Parliament.

For more information on this event, please contact Sonia at: sonia.chapotel@europarl.europa.eu or Anne at acocquyt@efbh.be

UN Meet Proves Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers' Association Wrong

2011-06-24T20:31:00.000-07:00

Press Statement

UN Meet Proves Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers' Association Wrong

BANI Appeals to HIL to Shift to Non-Asbestos Green Building Materials

Work of Indian Govt Officials at UN Chemicals Meet Appreciated

25/6/2011New Delhi: Ban Asbestos Network of India (BANI) wishes to place on record its appreciation of the role of the Government of India representatives in the Indian delegation at the fifth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP5) to the UN's Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade held in Geneva, Switzerland concluded on 24th.

The meeting which commenced on 20th June dealt will be remembered for Government of India's support for the listing of Chrysotile Asbestos in Annex III to the Rotterdam Convention, the PIC list of industrial chemicals. Declaration on Chrysotile Asbestos given below.

The Government of India representatives in the delegation in Geneva, Switzerland are the following:

1. Ms. Mira Mehrishi
Additional Secretary
Ministry of Environment and Forests
Paryavaran Bhawan, CGO Complex
Lodhi Road
New Delhi 110003
Tel.: +91 (11) 2436 2285
Fax: +91 (11) 2436 3918
Email: mmehrishi@nic.in

2. Mr. Manoranjan Hota
Director
Hazardous Substances Management Division
Ministry of Environment and Forests
CGO Complex, Lodhi Road
New Delhi 110003
Tel.: +91 (11) 2436 7663
Fax: +91 (11) 2436 7663
Email: hota@nic.in

3. Mr. Sanjay Bansal
Director
Department of Chemicals and Petro-Chemicals
Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers
Room No. 230, A-Block
Shastri Bhawan
New Delhi 110001
Tel.: +91 (98) 1051 9226
Fax: +91 (11) 2338 8628
Email: sanjay.bansal@nic.in

4. Ms. Jyoti Singhal
Under Secretary
Department of Agriculture and Cooperation
Room n° 478-A
Krisho Bhavan
New Delhi 110114
Tel.: +91 (11) 2338 7962
Fax: +91 (11) 2338 7962
Email: j.singhal@nic.in

BANI salutes the work of these members in safeguarding national interest in Geneva. BANI also applauds the role of Rotterdam Convention Alliance in highlighting the public health concerns.

BANI expresses its sadness and dismay at the presence of chrysotile asbestos industry representatives at the CoP 5 in Geneva, Switzerland who are resisting the ban on chrysotile asbestos trade although its mining is banned in India. These representatives include:

1. ASBESTOS CEMENT PRODUCTS MANUFACTURERS' ASSOCIATION
Mr. Manohar Lal
Director General
Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers'
Association
502, Mansrovar, 90 Nehru Place
New Delhi 110019
Tel.: +91 (11) 4105 5427
Fax: +91 (11) 4652 1496
Email: lalmanohar2007@hotmail.com /
acpma@sify.com

2. ASBESTOS INFORMATION CENTRE
Mr. Abhaya Shankar
Chairman
Asbestos Information Centre
502 Mansarovar, 90 Nehru Place
New Delhi 110019
Tel.: +91 (40) 2370 1872
Fax: +91 (11) 2370 0601
Email: abhaya@hil.in

The UN List of participants is attached.

BANI underlines that both ASBESTOS CEMENT PRODUCTS MANUFACTURERS' ASSOCIATION and
ASBESTOS INFORMATION CENTRE are one and the same organisation and they operate from the same premises. Their primary task is to propagate misinformation about safe and controlled use of chrysotile asbestos. COP5 has proven that their propaganda will not succeed. In a display of manifest unethical practice, while they operate as NGOs which are meant to be non-profit groups, these two groups act to protect the profit of chrysotile asbestos based companies at any cost.

BANI has disclosed that Abhaya Shankar who represented ASBESTOS INFORMATION CENTRE at COP5 is the Managing Director of Hyderabad Industries Limited (HIL), a CK Birla group company engaged in the production of asbestos cement products.

Instead of abandoning asbestos based projects despite indisputable evidence against the lung cancer causing chrysotile asbestos, HIL, one of the largest producers of asbestos cement sheets in the world has embarked on a Rs 100-crore expansion plan and it is in the process of adding another asbestos sheets production line at its Satharia plant, located 40 kms from Jaunpur in Uttar Pradesh involving an investment of Rs 50 crore with a capacity of 100,000 tonnes per annum taking its total installed capacity to 1 million tonnes per annum. The company has plans of a chrysotile asbestos based manufacturing facility at a cost of Rs 50 crore in Kumarbagh, West Champaran, Bihar in an agricultural field. BANI has visited its plant site which is facing opposition of the farmers.

HIL is currently a leader in asbestos sheets production in the country with a share of 21 per cent in the Rs 3,000-crore market. In 2009-10, its turnover and net profit stood at Rs 756 crore and Rs 89.7 crore respectively.

Its brand Charminar is in the market for over six decades. The company's target was to cross a turnover of Rs 1,000 crore three years down the line. At present, HIL has 12 manufacturing plants spread across the states of Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Kerala, UP, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Orissa and Tamil Nadu. The company has taken over of a fiber cement sheets manufacturing facility situated at Saidpura, Dora Bassi, Punjab, with a capacity of 45,000 MT/Annum.

BANI encourages HIL to go for non-asbestos based green building products now that it has learnt about hazardous effects of chrysotile asbestos at COP5 in Geneva. HIL should pay heed to the resolutions of International Labour Organisation and World Organisation referred to in the Supreme Court order, issued on January 21, 2011 seeking elimination of future use of asbestos based products. The Court too cognisance of the Ban White Asbestos Bill pending in the Parliament.

BANI demands that HIL should abandon its plans to set up new chrysotile asbestos plants in Bihar, UP, Punjab or anywhere in the country taking cognisance of the reiteration of the hazardous nature of chrysotile asbestos fibers. The decision of the Government of India with regard to chrysotile asbestos marks the beginning of the end of the asbestos industry in India.

BANI underlines that Sanjaya Kanoria, Chairman of the Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers' Association (ACPMA) is the Managing Director, A Infrastructure Ltd which has proposed to set up a asbestos based plant in Madhubani, Bihar. BANI wonders about the name "A INFRASTRUCTURE", does substituting the alphabet "A" in place of "Asbestos" make it less hazardous and a non-carcinogen?

BANI notes that ACPMA Director General who was at COP5 is a retired IAS officer of 1977 batch, Rajasthan cadre. He was Joint Secretary and Director General Labour Welfare in the Ministry of Labour, Government of India. BANI wonders as to what would be the outcome of the labour welfare done for asbestos workers during his tenure. He is also President of an NGO named Assist workers engaged in welfare of unorganized sector workers. Do both these NGOs ACPMA and Assist workers work to protect asbestos workers who suffer from incurable and fatal diseases like lung cancer, asbestosis and mesothelioma?

It is about time Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers' Association advised its members to shift to manufacturing of non-Asbestos Green Building materials because no amount of advertisements, advertorials and public relations exercise can stop an idea whose time has come.

Study after study has linked the killer fibers of chrysotile asbestos to lung disease but Canadian government which got rid of asbestos fibers from its Parliament Buildings and its Prime Minister's residence, is acting at the behest of the asbestos companies to resist putting warning labels on asbestos products and is suppressing findings of research. Although UN Conference ended without chrysotile asbestos being listed. The recommendation to list chrysotile asbestos will be put forward at the next Conference of the Parties in 2013, Indian government has taken a public interest position and has disassociated itself from Canadian government which blocked its listing.

For Details: Gopal Krishna, Ban Asbestos Network of India (BANI), Mb: 09818089660, 07739308480 E-mail: krishna2777@gmail.com, Blog: banasbestosindia.blogspot.com,
Web: www.toxicswatch.com

Declaration on Chrysotile Asbestos

Recognizing the achievement in adding the hazardous chemicals aldicarb, alachlor and endosulfan to the Rotterdam Convention;

Recalling that decision RC-3/3 of the third Conference of the Parties, adopted by consensus, found that the criteria for listing chrysotile asbestos in Annex III were met;

Deeply concerned that the listing of chrysotile asbestos nonetheless has been prevented by a small number of Parties for three consecutive Conferences of the Parties;

Noting that the reasons put forward for preventing listing by consensus were not relevant to the criteria of the convention;

Encouraged by the willingness of some Parties to reconsider their position and support the listing;

We undersigned:

Call upon all Parties to hold paramount the protection of human health and the environment;

Resolve to move forward to list chrysotile asbestos in Annex III and improve the effectiveness of the Convention in listing chemicals in the future;

Declare our intent to pursue further action under the Convention to ensure that the export of hazardous chemicals occurs only with the prior informed consent of the importing Party and that the Party is provided with accurate information on the characteristics, potential dangers, safe handling and use of those chemicals.

Signatories

• The African Group (Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Congo, Cote
d´Ivoire, Djibuti, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya,
Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa,
Sudan, Togo and Zambia)

• Argentina

• Australia

• Chile

• Colombia

• The European Union and its member states (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom)

• Jamaica

• Japan

• Jordan

• New Zealand

• Norway

• Panama

• Peru

• Switzerland

• Uruguay

• Venezuela

THE CANCER CULPRIT AWARDS

2011-06-24T20:27:00.000-07:00

Two awards given out for June 23rd, 2011 (second for Canada) by ROCA

Canada, now a 2x winner, for attempting to answer questions in the most evasive manner possible. The delegation stated the reason for opposing the listing is that they can manage it safely. They could not say that it is a purely political reason. At the same time, Canada stated that the recommendation of the scientific Chemical Review Committee was adequate and all criteria are met. “We think that the CRC DGD document was appropriate and the criteria was met. Canada is not in a position to support the listing.” Supporting the CRC document (scientific review) while not being able to support the listing, suggests some political reason, not scientific.

Brazil, for not having any position on the listing of chrysotile asbestos, although they are the third biggest producer and exporter of the world. Brazil could have taken the lead on producing countries to go for listing, but for many years the Brazilian ministries have continued to discuss their position, with little progress. It is important for Brazilian citizens to know where their country stands, and the responsibility that comes with being a major exporter.

A Conference Champion Award is also given today, to the African Region:

African Region, for making outstanding statements. They were pushing the Canadian delegates to reveal the reason for opposing the listing, not letting them get away with repeating meaningless answers. And also for their constant demand that the convention should not be undermined for economic or political reasons, for the sake of the protection of the health of people in their countries.

Asbestos's last, lonely champion

2011-06-24T20:24:00.000-07:00

I still remember the shock and dismay I felt walking through the ByWard Market in 2005, when I noticed newspaper headlines announcing that Chuck Strahl had been diagnosed with a deadly form of asbestos-related cancer.

Not only was Strahl fit and strong (fortunately, he still is), he was a well-liked Reform, then Conservative, MP and, subsequently, a successful cabinet minister in a number of posts. He decided not to run in the last election - his son Mark took over his B.C. seat on May 2 - and has returned to Chilliwack, his cancer apparently in remission.

This memory makes Prime Minister Stephen Harper's adamant support for Quebec's asbestos industry in recent weeks seem even more confounding and cold. After all, within his own cabinet he had sobering evidence of the cost of unprotected exposure to asbestos.

Strahl was exposed to the carcinogen as a young man operating huge logging vehicles with asbestos-clad brakes in the B.C. interior. In those days, he recounts, wearing protective gear was considered insufficiently macho and the dangers of breathing in asbestos fibre not as well known.

Decades later he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer that usually kills its victims within a few years - a shocking prognosis for a regular jogger and non-smoker. With the help of his family and strong Christian faith, however, Strahl beat the odds and played an active role in cabinet until his retirement.

Throughout his ordeal, he never wanted to be a poster boy for asbestos-related cancer or mount, as he wrote this week, "a personal crusade." Nor does he favour an outright ban, even today.

However, he issued a cautious advisory to his old government this week, calling it "logical and right" to add chrysotile asbestos to a UN list of substances that need to be handled with care.

But at an international meeting of the so-called Rotterdam Convention in Switzerland, Canada publicly - even defiantly - refused to add asbestos to the list. Because the convention relies on consensus, there will be no warning to the mostly developing countries who still import our asbestos (primarily to make concrete.)

The Canadian delegation was undoubtedly acting on instructions from the prime minister - and over growing objections both inside and outside government. With India (which imports a lot of Quebec asbestos) and Ukraine withdrawing objections, Canada is left in the embarrassing company of Vietnam, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in defending a product so dangerous it is being carefully removed from 24 Sussex and the Parliament buildings.

And all to defend fewer than 400 jobs in Quebec.

Harper made it clear on a campaign stop in Asbestos, site of Canada's last active mine, that he wasn't going to interfere in the sale of a legal product. As he put it: "This government will not put Canadian industry in a position where it is discriminated against in a market where sale is permitted."

This is both libertarian gospel and political calculation. Industry Minister Christian Paradis, who comes from Thetford Mines, has long insisted chrysotile asbestos can be safely used "in controlled circumstances."

This claim has been roundly rejected by medical and scientific experts, including Peter Goodhand of the Canadian Cancer Society, who insists "all forms of asbestos, including the chrysotile asbestos mined in Quebec, cause cancer."

As for "controlled" environments, there is ample evidence developing countries, like India, pay no heed to safety, and that Indian workers, like the young Chuck Strahl, are being directly compromised. But Harper seems to imply it isn't our concern.

His indifference is strangely at odds with his moral, even moralistic, approach to foreign policy generally. He famously refused to remain silent on China's human rights abuses despite potential trade repercussions, yet is prepared to isolate Canada internationally to prop up a dying industry.

This may have something to do with Premier Jean Charest's promise of a $58 million loan guarantee to the industry to restart the Jeffrey Mine in Asbestos - an offer dependent on the mine's backers rounding up $25 million by July 1. Further international restrictions on exports - even in the form of safety warnings - could make raising the money more challenging.

For 30 years, provincial and federal governments of all stripes have supported asbestos mining for fear of losing seats in Quebec. But the recent NDP sweep in that province suggests the tide is turning, given that party's forthright opposition to the industry.

Two Conservative MPs - Mark Warawa and Patricia Davidson - have also been discreetly questioning asbestos exports, which suggests the Harper decision isn't resting easily on every Conservative conscience. Even federal Liberals are belatedly opposed.

Unlike the seal hunt, which harms no one but the seals, or the tarsands, which are environmentally damaging but economically important, there is no justification - moral, political or economic - for continued federal support for the asbestos industry.

But we should never discount one man's stubbornness.

By Susan Riley,
Ottawa Citizen
June 24, 2011

Susan Riley writes on national politics. E-mail: sriley.work@gmail.com.

Canada's asbestos habit: Defending death

2011-06-24T20:22:00.001-07:00

PUTTING money ahead of lives, the federal government has again blackened this country’s name around the world by leading efforts aimed at suppressing warnings about the documented health risks of asbestos, a known carcinogen. At a United Nations summit in Switzerland this week, Canada and three other countries — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Vietnam — voted against listing chrysotile, or white, asbestos in Annex III of the Rotterdam Convention on hazardous materials.

That listing would have compelled asbestos producers in countries such as Canada to warn importing nations of the health risks associated with the cancer-causing substance, permitting those states to block those imports. Because changes to the global agreement must be by consensus, Canada’s opposition, as it has many times in the past, killed the hopes of asbestos opponents to at least bring informed consent into the global asbestos trade.

The Conservative government’s argument that asbestos, safely handled, poses no danger to those using the deadly material reflects unconscionable hypocrisy.

Many health organizations and medical experts reject the notion that asbestos can be safely handled. Even if you accept that concept, however, Conservative politicians surely know that foreign workers in many large asbestos-importing countries, such as India where it’s used to make cement, often handle the material without adequate, if any, safety precautions.

Many Quebec provincial politicians, who also support the asbestos trade, as well as the industry itself, are equally guilty of putting economic interests ahead of any concern for human lives.

Canada’s staking of its banner on the side of ignorance and death this week is all the more shameful considering that two other long-time opponents of listing asbestos in Annex III, India and Ukraine, changed positions this year and supported its inclusion.

Heightening the hypocrisy of this country’s position is that asbestos is largely banned from use in Canada. Imagine, here in one of the most developed nations on Earth, where, one would think, the "safe handling" of white asbestos that Conservatives blithely champion must surely be possible, workers are mostly forbidden to touch the stuff.

For shame.

(edits@herald.ca)

Chronicle Herald, Editorial, Fri, Jun 24
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Editorials/1250025.html

Canada’s Asbestos Stance At UN Denounced

2011-06-24T20:22:00.000-07:00

PICS Denounces Canada’s Asbestos Stance At UN

The Progressive Intercultural Community Services Society also condemned the comments of Surrey Conservative MP Nina Grewal, who last week had issued a statement accusing Canadians opposed to exporting asbestos to “third world countries” of having a “colonialist attitude”, because India can speak up for its own citizens. But when India spoke up this week it was Grewal’s own government that was still opposing it as a hazardous substance. (Pic: Nina Grewal)

VANCOUVER – Last week Conservative MP Nina Grewal accused Canadians opposed to exporting asbestos to “third world countries” of having a “colonialist attitude”.

The accusation was made in an email reply to a citizen who had written MP Grewal, urging her to support the inclusion of Chrysotile asbestos on a United Nations list of hazardous substances.

“I find it offensive when people in Canada imply that the Indian government is incapable of protecting its own citizens. This colonialist attitude is unbecoming of Canadians.” said Grewal in the email.

However, on Wednesday at the United Nations meeting in Geneva, India supported the listing of Chrysotile asbestos as a hazardous substance. In response Canada quickly opposed the listing, effectively ruining a near international consensus. Canada is the only G7 country still producing and exporting asbestos.

Canada blocked an attempt by India (and other developing countries)on a world stage to protect their citizens from the dangers of asbestos.

The Progressive Intercultural Community Services Society condemned Grewa]l’s comments in light of India speaking up for its own citizens by declaring that asbestos should be declared a hazardous substance. But when India spoke up this week it was Grewal’s own government that was still opposing it as a hazardous substance.

Based on MP Grewal’s own words, it would now seem that it is in fact the Harper government that has the colonialist attitude. This government’s behaviour in Geneva has been deeply shameful.

Conservative MP calls asbestos Regulation "COLONIALIST"
-Aneil Jaswal
VANCOUVER - June 20, 2011 – Last week, Conservative MP Nina Grewal, accused Canadians opposed to exporting asbestos of a having a “colonialist attitude...unbecoming of Canadians”. The accusation was made in an email reply to a citizen who had written MP Grewal, urging her to support the inclusion of Chrysotile asbestos on a United Nations list of hazardous substances. Her reply was quickly forwarded to Aneil Jaswal, a BC based policy consultant on health issues and a passionate asbestos activist.

“MP Grewal’s accusation is a ridiculous attempt to defend a policy which has very serious impacts in countries like India. If this is the Harper government’s reasoning for blocking UN attempts to regulate asbestos, this is worrisome indeed. What is truly unbecoming of Canadians, is that this government continues to pretend that Canada is not responsible for the health impacts of our asbestos” said Jaswal.

The Indian Association of Occupational Health and all the major trade unions in India have directly called on Canada to stop exporting asbestos. This past year in Bihar, India, villagers and youth organized protests to keep an asbestos factory out of their community and faced fire from police as a consequence.

Gopal Krishna, a community leader in India with Ban Asbestos Network of India (BANI)
& Occupational Health India (OHI) had the following to say about MP Grewal’s comments.
“We are disappointed with Nina Grewal's misrepresentation of facts about India. It is an established fact that her fundamental assumptions about the working of the Indian legal and health system is seriously flawed.”

Aneil Jaswal added, “The voice of workers in India is clear: they do not want Canada’s asbestos. It is not handled safely. Asbestos causes cancer in Indians just like it does in Canadians - which is why it is essentially banned in Canada and has been removed from the Prime Minister’s home. Either MP Grewal is ignorant of these Indian voices or she is ignoring them. Both are unacceptable.”

Starting tomorrow, June 20th, the United Nations will be meeting in Geneva to decide whether to include Chrysotile asbestos on a list of hazardous substances. If included, this would not ban the trade of asbestos, but simply ensure “prior informed consent” has been obtained for all export. In 2006, the Canadian government spearheaded efforts to prevent the listing and the Harper government is unlikely to speak out in support of listing asbestos at this conference. Mr. Jaswal is the Director of The Cancer Culprit Awards, a daily award that will be handed out at the UN conference to the countries which most impede negotiations.

Download MP Nina Grewal's Full Email HERE

Read more about the UN vote:
Rotterdam Convention by the Conference of the Parties' Fifth Meeting (COP5)

For more information, please contact:http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Aneil Jaswal
British Columbia, Canada
Director, Cancer Culprit Awards
+1-250-307-9076
director@cancerculprits.org
www.cancerculprits.org
Gopal Krishna
New Delhi, India
Mb: 09818089660, 07739308480
E-mail:krishna2777@gmail.com, krishna1764@rediffmail.com
Blog:banasbestosindia.blogspot.com

Source:
http://www.pej.org/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=8822&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Ban-Asbestos-India

asbestos victims appeal to Roshi Chadha has exported asbestos to India

Critics brand asbestos as Canada's latest global sin

most insulation workers to develop asbestosis

Canadian Red Cross May Remove Board Member Roshi Chadha Because Of Asbestos Ties

(Banjit and Roshi Chada both have jobs that link them to the asbestos industry. The Canadian Red Cross is likley to ask for Roshi Chada's resignation from its board of directors.)

About this Author:An award winning reporter and writer, Tim Povtak is a senior content writer for the Mesothelioma Center. He previously worked at the Orlando Sentinel and then at AOL. You can contact him directly tpovtak@asbestos.com with any story ideas or comments.

Google moves Supreme Court against Andhra Pradesh Asbestos firm

Last stand for asbestos?

James Hardie Loses Bid to Overturn Asbestos Award

CANADA'S CHRISTMAS GIFT TO POOR INDIANS: MORE CRUEL DEATHS BY ASBESTOS EXPORTS

Asbestos contractor faces jail

National law organization joins call to ban asbestos

Promotion of Asbestos Trade with Canada by Commerce Ministry & CCEA Condemnable

Asbestos Trader, Roshi Chadha, sits on Board of Governors of the Canadian Red Cross

Marine Atlantic and the ship breaking yards of India

Canada's chronic asbestos problem

Canada’s asbestos export must end

Union Carbide's Asbestos Legacy & Double Standard

Asia Pacific Fdn Pressured to Disavow Former Fellow's Pro-Asbestos Stance

Harper's Asbestos Support 'Crassest Form of Politics': CLC Head

Scientists condemn Canada's stand on asbestos exports

Clock ticking for private investment in Quebec asbestos mine

India deal won't study asbestos: Analysts

Asbestos-cement company held guilty by Brussels Court

एसबेस्टोस का कैन्सरपोशी प्रभाव और मौत के मुह में समाते मजदूर

The first-ever trial against an asbestos manufacturer

A 37-year observation of mortality in Chinese chrysotile asbestos workers

NHRC seeks report from Rajasthan Govt on asbestos related disease

Toxic Trade & India's Killer Asbestos Industry

Asbestos Exports: Opposition Parties Call On Government To Ban The Sale Of Dangerous Substance Abroad

Jail time sought for businessman who exposed workers to asbestos

The asbestos disease epidemic: here today, here tomorrow

Indians vulnerable to lung diseases like asbestosis

Canada hypocritical on a dangerous mineral

Hyderabad Industries to sharpen focus on non-asbestos building products

Proposal for killer asbestos plant in Rajasthan

Aren't Canadian & Indian Governments Subservient to Asbestos Companies?

Appeal to stop Mr Baljit S. Chadha from opening killer asbestos mines in Québec, Canada

We feel abandoned and betrayed by our government, say asbestos victims

PR agency used by tobacco firm hired by asbestos group

Baljit Chadha exporting death

Baljit Chadha Callous Towards Death Toll from Quebec’s Asbestos Industry

Dubai company sets up roofing plant in Chennai

Mortality in Chinese Chrysotile Asbestos Workers

Asbestos critics refuse to be converted after meeting with industry powerhouse

Bangladesh Doesn't Want Asbestos Laden Ship

New Asbestos Free Brake Plant in Chennai

Gujarat Composites Cement Limited's asbestos plant closed?

Personal Film about Asbestos, Mesothelioma turns into ‘Breathtaking' Experience

Barry Castleman on why asbestos should be banned in India

Sahyadri Asbestos Company Makes Unturthful Claims About Asbestos

Stop use and trade of white asbestos

Protest Against Killer Asbestos Plants in Bhojpur Continues

NHRC issues notices on banning use of White Asbestos

Roofs can turn carcinogenic

Phase out plan for asbestos industry

Azhagiri's decision about Asbestos appreciated

BANI & TWA Appreciate role of Union Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers at UN Meet

EU Call for Sanctions on Canada

UN Meet Proves Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers' Association Wrong

THE CANCER CULPRIT AWARDS

Asbestos's last, lonely champion

Canada's asbestos habit: Defending death

Canada’s Asbestos Stance At UN Denounced