Journalist Martin Mittelstaedt critiques Canada’s failure to ban asbestos and the continuing promotion of its mined asbestos to the developing world–particularly India, Canada’s largest market, where asbestos cannot be legally mined but is used extensively in the production of cement. Inhaling asbestos fibers, which easily become airborne when a product is worn or disturbed, can cause mesothelioma–a painful cancer that attacks the lining of the lungs, abdomen or heart–as well as asbestosis, lung cancer and various other cancers. According to World Health Organization estimates, asbestos is responsible for approximately half of all occupationally-related deaths from cancer, or at least 90,000 deaths every year. While 40 countries have banned the use of asbestos in response to this health crisis, Canada has not. Canada, through its two active asbestos mines in Quebec, remains one of the world’s biggest providers of raw asbestos, a $93 million per year business. And the Canadian government spends large sums of money to promote the use of asbestos in its remaining markets, even calling on diplomatic staff to guard against asbestos bans in the approximately 70 countries that still buy asbestos from Canada. The Canadian government says that the asbestos industry has agreed to sell only to countries that use the same safety measures that Canada uses to protect workers, but in India, which takes about one fourth of Canada’s asbestos, workers can be found handling asbestos with no protection at all, wearing only shorts, T-shirts and flip-flops. One published study in India estimated that about 100,000 workers there are exposed to asbestos, and a study of asbestos-exposed factory workers found that 22 percent has asbestosis–which signals significant exposure over an extended period. India started using asbestos extensively in the 1980s, as usage in the United States and other Western countries began to decline. Because of the latency period between exposure and the appearance of disease, India has an asbestos-related cancer epidemic in its future, one that it is certainly not prepared for. Mittelstaedt says Canada must bear some responsibility for the coming epidemic.
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