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Asbestos International

Co-ordinated international activities

In 1991, at a meeting of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, delegates of campaigning groups established a European federation called Ban Asbestos. Another European-wide conference on asbestos was held in Milan in 1993. At the March 1994 international asbestos seminar in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Ban Asbestos was expanded into an international network for information sharing and mutual support. The conference passed the following declaration:

The signatories, comprising scientists, members of trade unions and associations, government representatives and private citizens from all over the world, attending the International Seminar on Asbestos held in Sao Paulo, are convinced that the production, processing and use of all types of asbestos represents a grave danger to the health of workers and the public. We welcome the new determination shown by the various groups of affiliated trade unions, political parties, environmental non-governmental organisations, scientists and the representatives of asbestos victims at the Sao Paulo Seminar to go beyond geographical, linguistic and political barriers and bring about an asbestos-free world in the near future. We denounce with indignation the asbestos multinationals and their use of intimidation and disinformation to promote the mystifying concept of the "controlled use of asbestos." We call on those governments that have not yet done so, to place an immediate ban on the use of asbestos in any form; to promote the use of substitute products which have been proven harmless, while maintaining and creating jobs; to dismantle safely all structures containing asbestos and to put in place appropriate systems of care, monitoring and compensation for asbestos victims.

The Ban Asbestos Network (BAN) (European Co-ordinator, Patrick Herman, Algues, 12230 Nant, France, tel. 65622302, fax. 65621448) intends to hold annual conferences and lobby international groups such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to call for a world-wide ban on all forms of asbestos.

International Labour Organisation

In 1986, the ILO ratified a convention called Safety in the Use of Asbestos. The ILO is the United Nations body responsible for employment issues and is composed of international representatives from government, employers and trade unions. The ILO's asbestos convention directs signatories to establish worker protection regulations in their countries (though does not recommend exposure limits), ban blue asbestos and the spraying of asbestos, require asbestos products to be labelled, and provide medical monitoring. However, only 19 of the ILO member countries have ratified the convention. The ILO has not called for a total asbestos ban.

International Federation Of Building And Wood Workers

The International Federation of Building and Wood Workers (IFBWW) has called for a total international ban on the mining, trade, processing and use of all types of asbestos. The IFBWW was organised as an international trade union body in 1934 and currently includes 5.6 million members in 79 countries. "[A ban] is the only way of protecting workers from these dangerous fibres. There is no safe use of asbestos," asserts a IFBWW manifesto produced at an international conference on asbestos in December 1991.

Until the mining and production of asbestos products has been phased out, the IFBWW calls for the immediate use of safe substitute products, the labelling as carcinogenic man-made mineral fibres with similar properties to asbestos, the banning of asbestos spraying, a halt to asbestos-based "technology transfer" to developing nations, training and protection for workers, compensation for all occupational diseases caused by asbestos, and exposure limits which reflect the currently available control technology. The IFBWW also outlines specific requirements that should be adopted for removal of asbestos and conditions for the demolition and alteration of buildings which may contain asbestos.

Other international organisations have taken steps to discourage the use of asbestos worldwide, including the World Bank and the African Development Foundation.

International Federation Of Chemical, Energy And General Workers' Unions

In 1994, the International Federation of Chemical, Energy and General Workers' Unions (ICEF) noted in their publication ICEF Focus, "It is imperative to ensure that industry does not unduly influence any international guidelines and standards developed by UN agencies. It is likely that, under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), trade groups will increasingly look to international standards to resolve what they see as 'unfair barriers to trade,' such as differences in national health and safety laws, in this case those concerning asbestos." As an example, the union pointed out that the International Programme on Chemical Safety (IPCS), a joint programme of WHO, ILO and the UN Environment Programme, had recently selected scientists with ties to the asbestos industry to draft a new report on chrysotile. This move was denounced by such influential voices as the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and Dr. Philip Landrigan of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

Asbestos around the world

Countries with Bans

The following countries have introduced comprehensive bans on asbestos mining, production, sale, use, import and export: Germany (1994), Italy (1992), Netherlands (1993), Sweden (1985), Norway (1987), Denmark (1988), Switzerland.

European union

In 1983 and 1991, the European Union (EU) issued directives on protecting workers exposed to asbestos (83/477, 91/382). Member countries must adopt specified eight-hour exposure action levels and limit values above which workers should not be exposed even with protective measures. The directives also banned the spraying of asbestos, prohibited the use of some insulating materials containing asbestos, set out instructions for drawing up work plans, specified that asbestos should be removed prior to building demolition, specified standards for air monitoring at work and medical surveillance, and required countries to establish asbestos disease registries. The EU was scheduled to review these directives by 31 December 1995, but was unable to meet that deadline due to a political stalemate on the issue.

Following on the worker protection laws, the EU also issued directives on the marketing and use of asbestos (83/478, 85/610, 91/659). These directives banned the import and use of the amphibole types of asbestos (including blue and brown asbestos), banned the use of chrysotile in certain products, and required labelling of legal asbestos products. These directives, while far short of a total ban, tightened the regulation of asbestos in Europe.

In 1992, the EU debated the issue of a total ban of asbestos, but the measure was defeated despite strong support from countries which have banned asbestos themselves: Germany, Italy, Denmark and the Netherlands. France, Belgium and Spain, all large producers and consumers of chrysotile products, opposed the ban. The UK representatives said that they would support a ban with a provision that anyone wanting to use chrysotile could submit a risk assessment to the EC for an exemption from the ban. The issue of the ban remains deadlocked and hasn't been taken up as an issue in committee since May 1993.

TABLE 1 UK versus EU exposure limits for asbestos

UK (4 hour TWA*) EU (8 hour TWA*)

Limit Value Limit Value Action Level

Chrysotile (white) 0.5 0.6 0.2

Amosite (brown) 0.2 0.3 0.1

Crocidolite (blue) 0.2 0.3 0.1

Mixtures/others 0.2 0.3 0.1

TWA = time weighted average

France

Since the beginning of 1994, there has been an upsurge in campaigning against the use of asbestos. In October 1994, the Jussieu Anti-Asbestos Committee (CAAJ) was set up to pressure the authorities to do something about the situation at Jussieu University, Paris, the biggest French building sprayed with asbestos. Thousands of staff, students and maintenance workers are exposed and 12 cases of asbestos-related disease have so far been discovered at Jussieu.

In May 1995, the National Federation of Injured and Disabled Workers (FNATH), the League Against Cancer (Val d'Oise), the Association for the Study of Work Hazards (ALERT) and CAAJ called for a total ban on the use of asbestos. They predict at least 100,000 deaths from asbestos-related diseases during the next 20 years. Deaths from mesothelioma are approximately 900 per year and the number is rising fast. Several cases of deaths caused by environmental exposure to asbestos have hit the headlines since the beginning of 1994.

The alliance of organisations called on the government to draw up a national plan to counter the threat of environmental exposure to asbestos. This should involve: a government organised national register of buildings which have been sprayed with asbestos; owners of asbestos-sprayed buildings must conduct a survey and risk assessment followed by a detailed plan of the measures to be taken to prevent exposure; building owners must provide the information to interested parties; the national programme should be subsidised by the government and big business.

Meanwhile, the powerful pro-asbestos lobby, represented by the Permanent Asbestos Committee (CPA), has suffered a significant setback. The trade union confederation CGT has withdrawn from CPA. Government representatives are expected to follow.

Italy

The Italian workers and community group, the Asbestos Exposure Association (AEA), was formed in the late 1980s to ban asbestos mining, use, export and import in Italy. In 1992, after years of tremendous struggle, the Association was successful. This was a particularly difficult battle given the considerable pressure to permit "safe" uses of chrysotile. The president of the AEA wrote in 1993, "Our struggle is far from over. It must now be extended to the whole of Europe with a view to the introduction of common legislation, which will only be possible as the result of a coherent, well-established movement...Special attention must be paid to what is happening in the Third World, towards which the major asbestos multinationals are now directing their export efforts."

United States

In the US, asbestos use has declined dramatically, but schools, residential buildings, transport tunnels, public buildings, car repair shops and industrial facilities are filled to the gills with asbestos put in place over the last 60 years. This asbestos is becoming friable and presents a major health crisis.

In the late 1980s, Dr. Irving Selikoff of Mount Sinai School of Medicine conducted a landmark survey of 17,800 US and Canadian asbestos insulation workers. He found that workplace exposure to asbestos caused 40% of their deaths. Many members of their families had also died of asbestos diseases as a result of their exposure to dust-laden work clothes. Selikoff predicted that in the US over a period of 30 years, 300,000 would die of asbestos-related diseases.

Over 200,000 US asbestos victims and their families have sued the asbestos companies for compensation. The asbestos victims group, the White Lung Asbestos Information Centre, has been vocal in demanding justice for US victims.

In 1989, the US Environmental Protection Agency issued a rule to phase out the main uses of asbestos, but the asbestos industry succeeded in getting a federal court to put a stop to the ban. Despite all the bad press, the US asbestos industry has kept its morale and in 1994 launched an asbestos resuscitation campaign with an industry leader holding a press conference to proclaim that chrysotile asbestos is "as harmless as a Cheese Doodle" (a bright orange processed snack). The point of this public relations operation was to blame other types of asbestos, which in the US make up less than 5% of past use, for asbestos disease. In response, the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union and other groups set up a campaign to counter the industry's efforts with an Asbestos Awareness Day, a media campaign and a lobbying effort to warn government agencies off falling victim to industry pressure.

The US revised the asbestos standard in August 1994 to a permissible exposure level of 0.1 fibres/ml (8 hour time weighted average) for any form of asbestos, making it one of the best in the world.

Everywhere in the US, local groups are campaigning for the safe removal of asbestos from their schools and homes. In September 1993, the entire New York City school system (serving 1 million children) was delayed in opening in response to the disclosure by the Mayor that the company hired in 1988 to carry out asbestos surveys and removal efforts had badly botched the job. Although the City knew about this in 1989, it failed to remedy the situation at the time because it was afraid of the reaction when teachers and parents learned that schools they had been told were free of asbestos, in fact still contained it.

Finally, just two days before the schools were scheduled to open, the crisis erupted. Angry parents and teachers blocked the Brooklyn Bridge and tied up traffic for 4.5 hours to demand that asbestos be removed from the schools immediately. The protest shocked the Schools Chancellor into action. "It wasn't pleasant for me," he said of the protest. "But parents said they were hurting and I needed to see it. I couldn't have imagined how bad things were." In the end, the City spent $50 million to do a rush removal and inspection job on schools where asbestos had been found.

Canada

Asbestos is big business in Canada. Canada is the world's leading asbestos exporter and the second largest asbestos producer. For years, the federal and provincial governments have heavily subsidised the asbestos industry, propping up its financial failures and providing resources to persuade the world that asbestos is harmless. In 1982 (Canadian) $14 million came from the federal government to revive asbestos mining in Newfoundland. When the US Environmental Protection Agency tried to ban asbestos in the mid-1980s, the Canadian asbestos industry launched a successful multi-million dollar campaign to put a stop to it. They hired the US public relations firm Hill and Knowlton to help them promote the continued mining and use of asbestos. Hill and Knowlton had some experience of cancer; their previous clients included the Tobacco Institute. In 1986, the Montreal-based Asbestos Institute received $4 million from the federal and Quebec governments to promote asbestos use around the world.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees has been very active on asbestos issues. This has included gaining an agreement with the largest utility company to allow health and safety committees to shut down unsafe work, getting the Workers Compensation Board to accept work exposure to asbestos as a cause of death in utility workers, and campaigning for the total removal of asbestos from Ontario schools.

Japan

Although Japan has largely stopped mining asbestos, it imports more than 200,000 tons a year. Japan's consumption of asbestos ranks second after the former Soviet Union and it imports more asbestos than any other country. Asbestos hit the headlines in the early 1980s when a newspaper covered a hospital study showing that of 848 recent deaths in the city of Yokosuka, one-third died from lung cancer due to asbestos. Yokosuka has long been the site of a US navel base and the shipbuilding industry. Following this and other incidents, such as the discovery that asbestos from a decommissioned US Navy ship had been dumped by a roadside, public awareness grew and made asbestos a issue of major concern across Japan.

In 1990, the major Japanese unions and citizens' asbestos groups formed an Organization called the Association for the Enactment of Asbestos Regulation Law. Although their efforts to ban all asbestos have not yet succeeded, they have forced the Japanese Parliament to ban amosite and crocidolite and to tighten regulations for demolition work. The Japan Occupational Safety and Health Resource Centre initiated an Asbestos Cancer Hotline in 1991 and received hundreds of calls. Another Organization, the Japan Citizens' Network for Wiping Out Asbestos put out an international plea in March 1995 for protective equipment following the Kansai Great Earthquake which destroyed 160,000 buildings and sent plumes of asbestos dust into the environment.

Brazil

Brazil is the third largest producer of asbestos, after the former Soviet Union and Canada. The marketing of asbestos mined in Brazil is controlled by two Europe-based multinational companies, Eternit and Saint Gobain. Every year Brazil earns £183 million exporting about 70,000 tonnes of asbestos to Japan, India, Indonesia and other South American countries. Use of asbestos in Brazil also outstrips northern countries' consumption. In the US, average use of asbestos is 100 grams per inhabitant, while in Brazil it is 1,400 grams. Approximately 30,000 workers are employed in mostly small and unregulated asbestos businesses in Brazil.

The principal Brazilian unions, CUT and Forca Sindical, are promoting a phased-in ban of asbestos in Brazil, although proposed national legislation to that effect was recently squashed in favour of a proposal supporting the "controlled use of asbestos." However, in 1994 the unions were successful in convincing the government and an industry federation to eliminate asbestos in the car parts industry within four years. Brazilian workers struggle against asbestos hazards in an incredible environment of harassment. Trade unionists have been subjected to kidnapping, assaults and repeated death threats for their participation in efforts to eliminate asbestos hazards.

South Africa

South African asbestos mines, often owned and operated by UK firms, have been in operation since 1893. South African mines produce all three main types of asbestos, including large amounts of crocidolite and amosite. Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children have been exposed to huge levels of asbestos dust in workplaces and in their communities. In 1949, A scientist investigating conditions in the British-owned Transvaal amphibole mines discovered that, "Exposures were crude and unchecked. I found young children, completely included within large shipping bags, trampling down fluffy amosite asbestos, which all day long came cascading down over their heads. They were kept stepping lively by a burly supervisor with a hefty whip...X-rays revealed several to have radiologic asbestosis...before the age of 12." Apartheid has until recently made the epidemics of asbestos disease invisible in South Africa.

In 1956, South Africa passed the first asbestos dust standards. Not only were these standards hundreds of times too high, they were only sporadically enforced. Current standards stand at 1 fibre/ml.

Researchers have found that gold miners in South Africa, both black and white, received vastly superior health and safety protection than did asbestos miners. They attributed this difference to the fact that a greater proportion of gold miners were white. The gold miners dominated the Mineworkers Union (a whites-only union) which was politically powerful and forced government agencies to enact controls. Because few white workers were affected by occupational exposure to asbestos, the union didn't push for government intervention.

In the 1980s, community groups campaigned successfully for the government to abate hazards caused by abandoned asbestos waste tailings which are found near all asbestos mines.

Australia

New South Wales has been a major asbestos mining area since the 1920s. Following the discovery of asbestos in Baryulgil, the Bundjalung Aborigine people who had been forcibly displaced from their land found themselves forced to work the mines under conditions where the dust was so thick that it ran like mud down their faces. About 350 worked at the mine from the 1940s until 1979 when it was closed. About 100 of them have died as a result of their exposure to asbestos. In 1988, the surviving asbestos miners and their families formed the NSW Asbestos Ex-Miners Aboriginal Corporation to fight for compensation and reconstruction of their community which was completely polluted with asbestos.

In 1993, public housing tenants in Braybrook, Western Australia took legal action against the Ministry of Housing following the death of a tenant from mesothelioma. The tenant worked in her home where she lived for 40 years and was unlikely to have had any outside exposure to asbestos. However, an audit of her home revealed substantial amounts of amosite and chrysotile. Over 1,300 flats and houses in Braybrook are constructed from asbestos.

Australian asbestos victims with a variety of exposure experiences have recently received considerable compensation awards from asbestos companies. In late 1994, a 35-year old mesothelioma victim was awarded (Australian) $823,600 in a suit against the asbestos mining company CSR Ltd. As an infant she had been exposed to asbestos fibres brought home on her father's work clothes.

In 1995, the court awarded a former health inspector (Australian) $226,000 as compensation for his mesothelioma. The health inspector sued his employer, the municipality of Nunawading, for failure to protect him from crumbling asbestos dust in the ceilings of the Civic Centre.

The Third World

In response to restrictions on asbestos processing and use in Europe and North America, some companies have sent their dirty work south where there are few enforced health and safety or environmental laws governing asbestos. For example, products such as Johns-Manville's Thermobestos, banned for use in the US, was made instead in Brazil. The Canadian asbestos industry is now promoting chrysotile use in Thailand and Zimbabwe and is building its export clientele in the Third World to make up for lost US business. South African-mined blue asbestos, largely banned in the first world, maintains a strong market in North Africa and the Middle East.⁸ The European Greens publication The Dark Side of the Asbestos Story noted that in response to asbestos regulations, the German firm Rex Industrie Produkte set up a joint venture with a South Korean firm to produce asbestos textiles there.

Several sources, including the IFBWW, predict that the use of asbestos will continue to increase in developing countries, especially in Asia and Latin America. Thus, in 20-30 years time, these countries will experience the health crisis gripping North America, Europe, South Africa and Australia.

The line promoted by the asbestos industry is that asbestos is necessary for third world development and that European and North American occupational health experts are peddling "cultural imperialism" with their warnings of asbestos epidemics in the Third World.⁷ One Tanzanian government representative told a 1986 ILO conference that he believed that, "many countries have a growing need for asbestos products and that these products will play a part in improving the living conditions of many communities around the world." But Third World activists aware of the asbestos toll have a different view and are working for bans on asbestos in their countries and worldwide. One international expert on asbestos observed that, "The double standard of corporations profiting by exposing Brazilian people to hazards that had come under greater control in these firms' home countries in Europe and North America would qualify as environmental racism."

Furthermore, many Third World countries are now producing and using safe asbestos substitutes. In Malaysia, wood pulp, sisal and other vegetable fibres have replaced asbestos in fibre cement manufactured there. More than 100 countries are using asbestos-free roofing tiles developed by a West Midlands firm. The proprietor of this firm has helped establish viable businesses in many countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America to produce the tiles which contain coconut coir, hemp and jute instead of asbestos. Costa Rican economic policies required companies to develop products using native materials have kept asbestos out of Costa Rican cement products.

Conclusion

Trade union and citizens' groups around the world are gaining momentum and racking up successes in their fight against asbestos. International solidarity is key to completely eliminating asbestos hazards and is essential if we are to prevent the transfer of asbestos to the Third World. This issue will become more and more important in the face of economic globalisation, policy integration and as sites are sought for the disposal of asbestos removed from European and North American homes, communities and workplaces.

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