The Global Risk: Where Is the Asbestos Risk Greatest Today?
While many industrialized nations turn away from asbestos, asbestos production globally remains high. Where is this asbestos being used? What population is now most at risk to the death and disease that come with the use of asbestos products?
Asia, it seems.
The International Ban Asbestos Secretariat (IBAS) has issued a report called Killing the Future: Asbestos Use in Asia. Only in the last few years has information become available on asbestos use in Asia, and the IBAS report lays out the available data on asbestos use, as well as the consequences of asbestos use, in several Asian countries.
As asbestos use declines or is banned in western nations, rapid economic growth and the absence of enforceable regulations to protect workers have caused asbestos use to skyrocket in the developing countries of Asia. The experience in Vietnam illustrates the tension between economic growth and public health that is driving the current situation in Asia: although the Vietnamese government has expressed a commitment to banning asbestos, asbestos use actually increased 32 percent between 2000 and 2004 and the transition to phase out asbestos has been difficult and delayed. According to the IBAS report, 90 percent of the countries with the sharpest increases in asbestos use are in Asia, and the majority of people now being exposed to asbestos live and work in Asia. Asian countries account for 70 percent of the world’s asbestos production and nearly 50 percent of the world’s consumption of asbestos products.
Although China is among the top five asbestos producers in the world, it is importing more and more asbestos, primarily from Russia, to meet domestic demands. Approximately 100,000 Chinese workers are being occupationally exposed to asbestos, and the majority of those workers do not have health insurance provided by their employer. Only 8.7 percent of facilities studied had any form of occupational health department or organization, and not one of twelve monitored worksites complied with Chinese safety standards concerning use of asbestos.
Asbestos use in India has risen 30 percent in recent years, putting it second only to China in Asia’s consumption of asbestos. The 49 asbestos-cement factories operating there produced 2.4 million tons of asbestos cement in 2005 alone worth $200 million U.S. Between 2003 and 2006, the production of asbestos cement has risen more than 15 percent each year. Studies have found up to 23 percent of workers in some facilities show signs of asbestosis, and records are not even kept of the number of people diagnosed with mesothelioma.
The asbestos industry understands and has exploited Asia’s economic pressures, placing its own finger on the scale that measures economic issues against public health through a concentrated campaign to downplay the risk of asbestos exposure. In part because of industry propaganda that asbestos use is safe if “controlled” or, incredibly, that exposure to some types of asbestos is safe altogether, Asian workers are not being protected from deadly exposures. The Chairman of India’s Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers’ Association has said that “asbestos cement used in India is safe from all heath hazards.” The propaganda campaign in Asia has been frighteningly successful, leading to pro-asbestos policies in government and high levels of asbestos exposure. And an observer from the AsiaMonitor Resource Center witnessed workers in a Vietnamese factory working without any protection, cutting open bags of asbestos with knives, and beating lumps from the dry asbestos with wooden hammers before putting it in grinding machines. The workers were covered in asbestos dust, and the factory had no ventilation to remove asbestos dust from the air; instead, fans blew the dust around and kept it in the air and in workers’ breathing zones.
Some Asian countries have banned asbestos or are trying to phase out its use. Japan has recently banned asbestos, but deaths from its history of asbestos use will continue far into the future. The public outcry that led to the ban followed disclosure of scores of asbestos-related deaths at the Kanzaki asbestos cement pipe plant. The first asbestos-related death at the plant was in 1979, and by March 2006 fully 10 percent of Kanzaki’s former employees who worked at the plant for more than one year had died of mesothelioma. There will likely be many more casualties to the use of asbestos in Asia.
Asia has also become the preferred site for dumping asbestos-contaminated ships. Called “ship-breaking,” breaking down and scrapping ships contaminated with asbestos, mercury, lead and PCBs is a complicated and expensive process if done correctly. But it can be done much more cheaply in Asia where unprotected workers tear down the ships in primitive conditions, pulling asbestos off with their bare hands and with their faces covered by nothing more than a scarf—worthless to filter out the microscopic asbestos fibers that fill the air.
Certainly, asbestos is not an isolated example of industry exporting to developing nations the products and substances that become illegal or difficult to distribute in their own countries. It’s the perfect way to avoid the legal liabilities they might face in their own countries while continuing to profit from asbestos—or pesticides or other chemicals. The workers of Asia, or Central America or Africa, will almost certainly never be able to hold these companies accountable for the harm they cause, unless the laws there change.
We are fortunate our legal system still allows us to hold those accountable who injure us or kill a member of our family. Hopefully, we will soon have the protection of a ban on the importation and use of asbestos products in the United States. Western laws however should not only protect workers in Europe and the United States, but also govern acceptable conduct by American and European companies wherever they operate.
Asbestos use in Asia is rising as Asian nations follow the same path western countries traveled before them. Rather than export our mistakes, we should share the benefits of our experience, the safer alternatives we have found, so that generations of Asian workers will not suffer the same fate as the thousands of American workers who die each year of asbestos-related diseases like mesothelioma.