Canadian government continues to promote sale of asbestos, despite known risks

Jul 6, 2009

Canadians continue to suffer the effects of decades of asbestos use. For example, at one Ontario occupational health clinic, nurses are registering new patients almost daily with mesothelioma (a rare cancer of the lung lining) and other asbestos-related cancers, according to the clinic’s executive director. This high rate of asbestos cancers is occurring in a town of 73,000 with a large petrochemical industry—including companies such as Shell, Suncor and Imperial Oil—where miles of pipes running through the plants were once (and in some cases still are) insulated with asbestos. According to the World Health Organization, at least 90,000 people die annually from asbestos-related diseases, and about 125 million people are still exposed to the hazard chemical each year.

However, asbestos, once called the “magic mineral” and “Canadian gold,” continues to be mined in Canada despite the known risks of exposure. In fact, Canada is currently the second-largest exporter of asbestos (the first is Russia), which is shipped mainly to such countries as China and India.

While many developed countries have banned asbestos, Canada’s government continues to promote its use internationally, in spite of calls for an asbestos ban from groups like the Canadian Cancer Society. Canada continues to espouse the controlled use chrysotile asbestos—the type mined in Canada—by claiming it does not pose as much of a health risk as other types of asbestos fibers, even though the World Health Organization has labeled all types of asbestos as carcinogenic. See related story. The Canadian government also fought to not list asbestos as a dangerous substance in the United Nations-sponsored Rotterdam Convention. More recently, Health Canada enlisted a panel of experts to review the risks of chrysotile asbestos; but although they submitted their report to the government in March 2008, the government has delayed releasing it. See related story. One official intimated that the report suggests chrysotile is not a great risk, resulting in members of the panel writing letters of complaint to the health minister that their work was being misrepresented and that the government’s delay in releasing the report could tarnish their professional reputations.

Asbestos has been mined in Quebec, Canada since the 1870s and, at one point, the province was home to the largest open pit asbestos mine in the world. However, by the 1960s many miners were suffering shortness of breath and coughing up blood. In 1974, Dr. Irving Selikoff, arguably the world’s foremost expert on asbestos-related diseases at the time, stated that the working conditions at some of the Quebec mines were the worst internationally. Around that time and soon thereafter, demand for Canada’s asbestos began to wane as more companies phased out its use in their products.

For the full story, go to CBC Canada.

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