-----Original Message-----
From: John Hermann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: John Hermann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Monday, 6 September 1999 6:47 PM
Subject: Canada exports toxic asbestos to third world
>Economic Reform Australia
>ERA EMAIL NETWORK
>
>Subject: Canada exports toxic asbestos to third world
>
>Date: Sat, 4 Sep 1999 03:27:01 -0400
>From: H J Affleck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: WTO/Canadian Asbestos Exports
>To: Bob Olsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>Bob
>
>I have just been reading an alarming article by Jim Young, a labour writer
>based in New Jersey, extracted from "In These Times" (a Chicago-based
>"alternative news" magazine published fortnightly. It has won Project
>Censored awards) )of Sept 5.
>
>It concerns Canada's trade in deadly asbestos (Canada is the world's top
>exporter of this). Markets for asbestos in developing countries have
>declined, with growing awareness of health hazards, and tightening of
>reglations - the EU announced a ban in July - so producers are seeking
>increased markets in developing countries, and the Canadian govt is using
>the WTO to overrule the bans on this product instituted by countries such
>as France. Here's a few quotes from the article:
>
>"Since new use of asbestos has almost disappeared in industrialised
>countries because of government regulation and market pressures, the main
>target of Canada's drive has been developing countries. Seven of Canada's
>top 10 markets are in the third world. Canadian mine owners - backed by
>the federal government and an industry group - are peddling their deadly
>product largely to countries like Thailand, Korea and India, where its
>powerful heat-resistance and binding properties are valued in the
>production of low-cost building materials, car brake linings and textiles.
>Critics fear the epidemic of illness and death that has plagued the West
>will be repeated.
>
>"Asbestos causes cancer of the lung, lung lining and abdomen...according to
> a report in the British Journal of Cancer in January, asbestos will claim
>500,000 lives in Europe by 2035. In the US the death toll is expected to be
>200,000, report researchers at Mount Sinai School of medicine..
>
>"this autumn the WTO will rule on a Canadian appeal to overturn a French
>ban on asbestos products, which Canada says violates international trade
>rules....according to Claude Demers, a spokesman for the Dept of Foreign
>Affairs and International Trade in Ottawa, the Canadian Government is
>claiming before the WTO that France doesn't have the right to ban asbestos
>imports because 'when used properly' asbestos is safe. If Canada wins the
>WTO challenge, France would have to amend its law, accept trade sanctions
>or pay annual fines..
>
>"Meanwhile Canadian officials are debating whether to file a similar claim
>with the WTO after the EU announced a ban in July. If the EU ban holds up
>to Canada's challenge, all 15 member countries would have to amend their
>laws. Beginning in 2005, the EU decision would ban chrysotile or 'white'
>asbestos - the type mined in Canada - in cement products such as pipes and
>roofing, brakes and clutch linings for trucks, seals and gaskets and other
>specialised uses. The decision was based on evidence that chrysotile is
>carcinogenic, causing a variety of fatal respiratory ailments, including
>mesothelioma, a cancer of the lung lining..
>
>Have just discovered that the article is on the web on the magazine's
>website (www.inthesetimes.com) at www.inthesetimes.com/young2320.html and
>have attached it to this message.
>
>Best wishes
>
>Jane Affleck
>------------------------------------
>
>Canada's Asbestos Crusade
>
>by JIM YOUNG
>
>Thirty years since the lid was blown off industry's cover-up of asbestos
>hazards, most Americans are familiar with the slow death associated with
>what was once called the "magic mineral." Less well known is that
>Canada, our environmentally sensitive neighbor to the north, is the
>world's number one asbestos exporter--and is now spearheading a fierce
>campaign to fight international efforts to ban its product.
>
>Since new use of asbestos has almost disappeared in the United States
>and other industrialized countries because of government regulation and
>market pressures, the main target of Canada's drive has been developing
>countries. Indeed, seven of Canada's top 10 markets are in the Third
>World. Canadian mine owners--backed by the federal government and the
>Asbestos Institute, a nonprofit industry group--are peddling their
>deadly product largely to countries like Thailand, Korea and India,
>where the powerful heat-resistance and binding properties of asbestos
>are valued in the production of low-cost building materials, as well as
>automobile brake linings and textiles. Critics fear the epidemic of
>illness and death that has plagued the West will be repeated.
>
>Asbestos causes cancer of the lung, lung lining and abdomen and can take
>20 years or more to manifest. According to a report in the British
>Journal of Cancer in January, asbestos will claim 500,000 lives in
>Europe by 2035. In the United States, the death toll is expected to be
>200,000, report researchers at New York's Mount Sinai School of
>Medicine, which first linked asbestos to cancer in the '60s. Many public
>health experts say these are extremely conservative estimates.
>Incredibly, there are no comparable estimates for Canada, where asbestos
>has been mined since the 1870s, according to Jim Brophy, executive
>director of the Occupational Health Clinic for Ontario Workers. "The
>Canadian public is being kept in the dark," he says.
>
>What's more, Brophy says, few Canadians know that this fall the World
>Trade Organization (WTO) will rule on a Canadian appeal to overturn a
>1997 French ban on asbestos products, which Canada says violates
>international trade rules. Canadian officials fear the French ban will
>create a "domino effect," inspiring similar actions in former French
>colonies such as Morocco and Algeria--both clients of Canada's asbestos
>industry. Britain also is poised to ban asbestos, joining nine European
>countries that already have bans.
>
>According to Claude Demers, a spokesman for the Department of Foreign
>Affairs and International Trade in Ottawa, the Canadian government is
>claiming before the WTO that France doesn't have the right to ban
>asbestos imports because "when used properly" asbestos is safe. If
>Canada wins the WTO challenge, France would have to amend its law,
>accept trade sanctions or pay annual fines. "We believe the bans on
>asbestos are based on erroneous scientific evidence and therefore are
>not justified," Demers says. "We have a right to regain access to those
>markets."
>
>Meanwhile, Canadian officials are debating whether to file a similar
>claim with the WTO after the European Union announced a ban in late
>July. If the EU ban holds up to Canada's challenge, all 15 member
>countries would have to amend their laws to comply with the directive.
>Beginning in 2005, the EU decision would ban chrysotile or "white"
>asbestos--the type produced in Canada and that constitutes 95 percent of
>use worldwide--in cement products such as pipes and roofing, brake and
>clutch linings for trucks, seals and gaskets, and a number of other
>specialized uses. The decision was based on evidence that chrysotile is
>carcinogenic, causing a variety of often fatal respiratory ailments,
>including mesothelioma, a cancer of the lung lining.
>
>Why wage such a battle over a sagging industry that itself is dying a
>slow death? Although asbestos industry revenues last year were $160
>million, there are just 1,100 miners still at work--800 at the Thetford
>mine and another 300 in the town of Asbestos, both in Quebec. Total
>Canadian production--second largest in the world after Russia--has
>fallen sharply from 1.5 million metric tons in 1975 to just 370,000
>metric tons last year.
>
>But as asbestos demand has disappeared in the industrialized world, it
>has grown in developing countries. The amount of asbestos used by Asian
>countries almost doubled between 1970 and 1995, increasing to 1.1
>million metric tons, the U.S. Geological Survey reported last year.
>During the same period, use in the United States and Canada dropped 96
>percent, from 763,000 metric tons to 30,000 metric tons. While Natural
>Resources Canada reports the value of asbestos in worldwide markets fell
>22 percent from 1997 to 1998, the industry is still optimistic about
>future sales based upon overall growth in the Third World.
>
>As in any business, the asbestos industry sees its reputation as
>critical. Today, the mine owners and the Canadian government are growing
>concerned as more countries and international trade groups enact tougher
>regulations or outright bans on asbestos. "Pushing a product that
>industrialized countries have banned doesn't look good in those areas,"
>Brophy says.
>
>Canada's decision to continue peddling asbestos, of course, is not
>simply economic. The strategy is also political, flowing from separatist
>tensions constantly rippling through French-speaking Quebec, where there
>is great pride in the industry and where, in the mining towns, there are
>few employment alternatives. Government support of the asbestos industry
>is intended to protect mining jobs--but more importantly votes--in the
>politically powerful province. Canada's complex political landscape has
>contributed for years to the country being out of step with revelations
>about asbestos hazards, explains Brophy. "They missed the boat," he
>says. "In the late '70s, the government was nationalizing three mines
>while the rest of the world was learning about the dangers of asbestos."
>
>Like unions in the United States, organized labor in Canada has battled
>asbestos exposure in work settings from offices to textile mills,
>according to Colin Lambert, health and safety director for the
>450,000-member Canadian Union of Public Employees. He says CUPE is
>currently leading a campaign in Quebec to safeguard workers in public
>buildings from crumbling asbestos, after a cluster of mesothelioma cases
>recently emerged. But Brophy says there has been no public outcry for a
>ban on asbestos production from labor or Canada's environmental
>movement. "The mining industry in Quebec is seen within the context of
>the vision of an independent Quebec--and the unions for one are very
>supportive of that," he says. "An attack on the asbestos industry is an
>attack on Quebec."
>
>When the question of a ban on chrysotile asbestos was raised at a
>Canadian Labour Congress convention in the mid-'80s, Brophy notes, "The
>whole Quebec delegation--every major union in the province--walked out.
>That broke the back of any kind of serious discussion within labor about
>an asbestos ban."
>
>At the same time, there is a growing sense that miners themselves are at
>very low risk of asbestos-related disease. "They have had some real
>success in reducing dust exposure and miners are certainly bearing less
>risk than asbestos users in developing countries," Brophy says.
>"Unfortunately, miners may now think that everybody can use asbestos
>under the controlled conditions they work in. They don't blame the
>product."
>
>Brophy says what's really at stake in this fight is the right of
>independent countries to regulate toxic substances within their own
>borders regardless of industry claims that their products can be used
>safely. But Denis Hamel, director of the Asbestos Institute, says
>chrysotile asbestos is no more hazardous than many other substances in
>industrial use, and that white asbestos has been unfairly targeted.
>"Asbestos is a general term, but we can't get confused that chrysotile
>and others are the same," he says, noting that the other asbestos
>fibers--crocidolite, amosite and anthophyllite--are more potent
>carcinogens. He points to evidence published in "peer-reviewed
>journals," without mentioning that many of these studies are
>industry-funded.
>
>It is not hard to find scientific experts who strongly disagree with the
>benign attitude of Hamel and Demers. In an editorial published last year
>in the New England Journal of Medicine, Mount Sinai's Dr. Philip
>Landrigan wrote: "All forms of asbestos are carcinogenic. All have been
>shown in clinical, epidemiological and laboratory studies to be fully
>capable of causing lung cancer, mesothelioma and the full range of
>asbestos-related diseases."
>
>Hamel is undeterred by such assertions. Of course, part of his job is to
>advance the reasonable-sounding notion that chrysotile is not only safer
>than many substitute materials, but also less expensive. Thus, it can be
>more easily used by poor countries attempting to construct affordable
>shelters and infrastructures. Founded in 1984, the Montreal-based
>Asbestos Institute that he heads has a budget of approximately $520,000,
>60 percent of which is provided by the federal and Quebec governments,
>with the remainder coming from membership dues paid by the asbestos
>industry. The organization has a full-time staff of four and uses many
>consultants, including a labor liaison who is a former member of the
>United Steelworkers of America and the Quebec Labour Federation.
>Hamel travels all over the globe to promote the "safe use" principle and
>combat what he calls the zealotry of "green evangelists" calling for
>asbestos bans. He has logged more than 100 such "missions" to date,
>promoting the Institute's Responsible Use Program, a voluntary agreement
>signed by buyers of Canadian asbestos and their governments. Buyers
>agreeing to the program promise to uphold the safe use of Canadian
>asbestos, including implementation of worker-training programs and the
>use of appropriate protective equipment and clothing.
>
>They also agree to submit to random air monitoring conducted by
>"independent" laboratories. These labs, hired by the buyers, are charged
>with ensuring that airborne asbestos is less than one fiber per cubic
>centimeter. Who would blow the whistle if asbestos levels exceeded the
>voluntary policy's limit? Hamel says the consulting laboratory--the lab
>on the payroll of the buyer--would notify the appropriate government
>officials.
>
>Critics insist that safe use of asbestos is impossible to manage. "I
>seriously doubt asbestos can be used safely in those countries," says Ed
>Olmsted, an industrial hygienist who has consulted with a number of
>construction industry unions in the United States. He adds that to use
>asbestos safely requires such costly and complex precautions that the
>risks and the expense are too great for most contractors in the United
>States, let alone the Third World.
>
>Making matters worse, in developing countries there may be little or no
>enforcement at all. Cathy Walker, director of health and safety for the
>Canadian Auto Workers, says that conditions for the 15,000 asbestos
>workers in India, where she visited last year, are "appalling." Walker
>recounts reports of workers slicing open bags of Canadian asbestos with
>knives, then shaking the bags into troughs and mixing it with cement to
>make piping. The unprotected workers, according to the reports, were
>covered in asbestos dust. "Precautions are absolutely not in place," she
>says.
>
>Asbestos already is causing problems worldwide. A recent study of
>asbestos in a South Korean textile mill found that dust levels well
>above U.S. standards were "commonplace." Other studies in China point to
>an elevated risk of lung cancer and respiratory illness among factory
>workers exposed to asbestos. In Brazil, some 200,000 workers use
>asbestos at work, and many are exposed, says Fernanda Giannasi, an
>inspector with the country's labor ministry. According to a 1997 study
>conducted by the Finnish Institute of Occupational Safety and World
>Health, there will be at least 30,000 asbestos-related cancer deaths
>annually for the foreseeable future.
>
>Canada's efforts to thwart opposition to unbridled asbestos
>export--whether to developing or industrialized countries--are not new.
>In 1989, Canada challenged a comprehensive asbestos ban proposed by the
>U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and succeeded in exempting many
>products from the rule, including asbestos cement pipe, disc brake pads,
>roof coatings and automatic transmission components. Five years earlier,
>when Thailand wanted to label bags of imported asbestos with a
>skull-and-crossbones symbol, Canada intervened and persuaded the Thais
>to drop the idea.
>
>Yet neither mine owners nor Canadian government officials deny that
>chrysotile asbestos is dangerous. "We're saying we have the product and
>the safety technology and [asbestos] should only be used safely," says
>Jim Leveque of Natural Resources Canada. "Once we sell the stuff to a
>sovereign nation--if, for instance, we sell to a U.S. company and it
>chooses not to follow safety procedures--what the hell are we going to
>do about it?"
>
>Observing proper safety precautions undoubtedly reduces heath risks, but
>those who support widespread asbestos bans contend it is preposterous to
>expect such vigilance. The reality, they say, is that bans will continue
>to be implemented and the market will shrink. As a result, the
>relatively high-paying mining jobs in Quebec, as well as the jobs of
>many other workers who support the industry, will vanish. "In some areas
>of Quebec, these are the only jobs," Walker cautions. "So you simply
>can't throw the workers out on the scrap heap."
>
>She suggests a "just transition" strategy for asbestos workers. This
>would accept that the industry is dying and that jobs eventually will be
>lost. But, like the GI Bill in the United States following World War II,
>it would provide generous assistance to those workers whose jobs are
>eliminated. "You have to guarantee retraining for those workers being
>displaced who are in a position to go elsewhere," Walker says. "For
>people who can't go elsewhere, they should be retiring with a decent
>income. Given the amount of money the federal government and industry
>have spent to prop up the asbestos industry, probably people could have
>been given full income pensions decades ago and closed the industry."
>But Brophy says that within Canada the risks of asbestos don't get much
>public attention compared to the country's defense of the asbestos
>trade, so implementing such a program would be a long and difficult
>process. "The European ban presents us with the opportunity to take a
>global stand against the most documented workplace killer in existence,"
>he says. "But right now we don't have any of that. Just this silence."
>
>Jim Young is a labor writer based in New Jersey.
>
>For the second year in a row, Project Censored, the Sonoma (Calif.)
>State University media watchdog program, has awarded Chicago- based In
>These Times top honors in its annual ranking of the year's most under-
>reported stories.
>
>In These Times editor Joel Bleifuss,who has won more Project Censored
>awards than any other individual journalist, was awarded first place
>this year for his investigation into the Multilateral Agreement on
>Investment (MAI). ("Building the Global Economy," Jan. 11, 1998).
>
>----ooOoo----
>
>
>
>
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