Use of Russian & Canadian asbestos rising in India

Asbestos is a proven human carcinogen (a substance that causes cancer). Lack of health surveillance of asbestos exposed workers and consumers is an invitation to disaster from wholesale public exposure, especially babies and infants in India. Some 45 countries have banned this killer fiber. Asbestos consumption is rising dramatically in India even as U.S. Senate passed Ban Asbestos in America Act on October 04, 2007 unanimously. Asbestos is banned in Europe since 1 January 2005. Indian politicians of all ilk seem to be hand in glove with both the Indian and global asbestos traders. The ruling Indian National Congress led United Progressive Alliance government and left supporters in their states too are guilty of subjecting Indian workers and consumers to asbestos hazards.




But countries like Russia, Canada, Kazakhstan and Brazil continue to produce, trade and promote this ticking time bomb in India. Instead of protecting the interest of their citizens,leaders like Sonia Gandhi and Kamal Nath(Congress leaders in the picture) remain callous towards asbestos victims. The Russian Federation has also been found to be exporting asbestos industry waste to India. Research is showing asbestos epidemics across the globe even in countries where it is currently banned, as the consequence of past exposure.











Stories of the toll asbestos takes on people are yet to hit the headlines in India as has been the case in US, Europe, Australia and Japan. The recent UN statistics indicates that India imported roughly 306,000 MT of asbestos in 2006. Out of which 152, 820 MT was imported from Russia, 63, 980 MT from Canada, 48, 807 MT from Kazakhstan and 34, 953 MT from Brazil.

It is noteworthy that International Conference on trade unions & chrysotile asbestos in Moscow (25-27 April, 2007) issued an appeal to World Health Organisation opposing the “WHO Policy on elimination of asbestos-related diseases” in favour of controlled use of chrysotile asbestos. The appeal concluded saying, “We are sure that chrysotile must not be banned for the sake of health and social welfare of hundreds of millions of people in the world (especially in developing countries), who suffer and prematurely die from having no shelter and clean water. A wide use of low-cost chrysotile-cement products is necessary to resolve this problem” ignoring the WHO finding that no safe level can be proposed for asbestos use because a threshold is not known to exist.

Asbestos production and marketing started in the Urals at the start of the 19th century. By the onset of World War I, Russia was the world’s second biggest asbestos producer, although well behind Canada. In 1975, Soviet Russia overtook Canada as the world’s leading asbestos producer. Russia remains the leading world asbestos producer. The country’s principal asbestos mine (Uralasbest) was privatized and was owned by new Russian capitalists. It was even declared bankrupt in 1997 but it resumed its activities afterwards.

There has virtually been no debate on asbestos either under the Soviet regime or since. Following the banning of asbestos in the European Union, the Vladimir Putin government did set up a panel of experts to give an opinion on a possible Russian asbestos ban.

The panel’s report is an impassioned defence of asbestos use. The pro-Russian asbestos lobby like their counterparts in Canada, Zimbabwe and Brazil too claim that it holds relatively little danger for health. The Russian authorities continue to deny the health havoc wrought by asbestos. Russian media, civil society and academia must sensitize the Russian citizens to desist from exporting asbestos to gullible Indians.

Currently mining of all kinds of asbestos (Blue, Brown and White [chrysotile] Asbestos) is banned in India. Trade in asbestos waste is also banned. Besides all other forms of asbestos other than chrysotile asbestos (White Asbestos) is prohibited in India. While white asbestos mining is currently banned in India, its import, export or use in manufacturing is permitted.

In September 2007, Independent Peoples Tribunal (IPT) on the World Bank Group (WBG) was presented with evidence of Bank officials suggesting how it finances huge infrastructure projects all over the world including India despite this there is no formal restrictions on the use of asbestos-cement (A-C) sheets and pipes in these projects. Over 90 percent of all asbestos used today is in A-C sheets and pipes, and this production is concentrated in poor countries. Ban Asbestos Network of India (BANI) called for urgent action in India and elsewhere to end the needless slaughter caused by this environmental and occupational health catastrophe. The 4-day IPT was held from 21 –24 September at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

It was demanded, “The World Bank should adopt a formal policy of forbidding asbestos in all of its projects and require the use of safer substitute construction materials. Such substitution is feasible as shown by the bans in more than 40 countries.. The World Bank should also adopt best practice guidelines for the minimization of asbestos exposures in projects where in-place asbestos materials are disturbed by renovation or demolition activities.” It has called upon the World Bank to support the asbestos action program just started by the WHO and use its influence and leverage to press for cessation of asbestos use all over world.

The report of World Bank environmental official Robert Goodland, "Sustainable Development Sourcebook for the World Bank Group's Extractive Industries Review: Examining the Social and Environmental Impacts of Oil, Gas, and Mining" (3 December, 2003). Policy options for asbestos (p. 141) included, "5. The WBG should work with the rest of the UN system to foster a global ban on asbestos."

The voice of asbestos victims has been totally disregarded by Indian political parties of all hues both in the states and at national level unlike US and Europe. Indian homes are often built of asbestos cement roofs, and people cut their own windows and doorways. The occurrence of asbestos-related diseases, including mesothelioma, lung cancer and asbestosis, is growing out of control. Studies estimate that during the next decade, in India victims will die of an asbestos related disease at the rate of 30 deaths per day.













Sixty-seven-year old Mangabhai Patel, a retired workers of Ahmedabad based Torrent Power Ahmedabad Electric Company (AEC)Limited is battling asbestosis. Patel has been diagnosed with asbestosis by the National Institute of Occupational Health (NIOH).
He got exposed while working at Torrent Power AEC where he had to pound asbestos and paste it along pipes as an insulator. Workers were given no protective gear while working and the result is showing on their body now.

Narayanprasad Mehra, another retired AEC worker worked for 25 years at the AEC power plant and he was diagnosed with asbestosis long before he retired.

A petition with the Gujarat High Court and the Supreme Court is pending. Following the directions of the High Court, NIOH was to examine the workers suspected to be suffering from asbestos related disease but even before the NIOH could start its work
Motiram and Manaji Rathod () died on 5 January 1996 and 2 February 1996 respectively. NIOH submitted its report to the Court on 22 June 1996. The High Court passed an interim order but Kishan Gopalani, died soon after the order. There are numerous such people who are suffering from both the disease and apathy of the government and the companies.

Indian government should disassociate itself from the Russian and Canadian asbestos lobby and take lessons from the nations that have banned this fiber to safeguard its workers and citizens.

P.S: Pascal Lamy, Director-General, WTO in a speech at the Yale University on 24 October 2007, said that the WTO has surprised critics by showing itself to be “capable of delivering not only trade justice, but some measure of environmental justice too,” citing as examples the dispute cases about asbestos and sea turtles.

Given below are the Press Releases of Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Government of India prior to the WTO order on asbestos. These Releases make its position on asbestos quite clear. So far there has been no change in the Indian government's stance in the matter.
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INDIA PROTESTS AT WTO APPELLATE BODY MOVE INVITING AMICUS BRIEFS

Date : 23 Nov 2000
Location : New Delhi

At a special meeting of the General Council of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) held in Geneva, on 22nd November, India joined a vast majority of WTO members in protesting against the Appellate Body’s decision to invite amicus curiae (literally meaning "friends of the court") briefs* in the case relating to "European Communities -- Measures affecting Asbestos and Products Containing Asbestos ".

India's statement at the meeting by India's Ambassador to the WTO, Shri S Narayanan, made it clear that India did not regard this issue as a procedural one, as viewed by the Appellate Body, but a substantive matter in which the Appellate Body's approach was totally unjustified. In his statement Shri Narayanan dwelt at length on how the Appellate Body's approach to accept unsolicited briefs as well as to invite submissions from any source on the most sensitive of all issues in the WTO, namely dispute cases, amounts to changing the inter-governmental character of the WTO.

For one thing, the ultimate compliance is to be done by Governments, not by others. Furthermore, Governmental position in disputes are arrived after consultations with all domestic stake holders. If Governments know that their non-governmental agencies have a further chance to influence the dispute settlement mechanism, then, they would pay less attention to finalising their positions and even worse, there may be implications for compliance by the Governments themselves, he said.

Shri Narayanan also said that the Appellate Body's approach would also have the implication of putting the developing countries at an even greater disadvantage in view of the relative unpreparedness of their own non-governmental agencies who have much less resources and wherewithal either to send briefs without being asked for or to respond to invitations for sending such briefs. Looking at the record of the WTO Appellate Body, Shri Narayanan said that the Appellate Body was at its best when it confined itself to its mandate i.e. deal with issues of law and legal interpretation.

When it went beyond its mandate and started making rules or amending rules and thus encroached into what was admittedly Members' territory, it created a problem for itself and the entire membership. In conclusion, Shri Narayanan said that the Appellate Body should show deference to the conviction of almost the entire Membership that in accepting unsolicited amicus curiae briefs and seeking amicus curiae briefs, the Appellate Body was acting without mandate and to take appropriate measures to remedy the situation.
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Canada promotes Asbestos use in India

"The Government of Canada recognizes that all forms of asbestos fibres are carcinogenic." 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.

It is high time Stephen Harper, Prime Minister, Canada desisted from the practicing active promotion of the export of asbestos in India and banned asbestos. The deafening silence of Stephen Harper and Canadian House of Commons is killing the workers and consumers in India.

Government of Canada should introduce legislation to ban the use and export of asbestos, support the listing of chrysotile asbestos under the Rotterdam Convention and stop funding the Asbestos Institute (renamed the Chrysotile Institute).

The frozen passivity of Canadian Ministers like Gary Lunn, Minister of Natural Resources and legislators like Stéphane Dion, Leader of the Liberal Party, Jack Layton, Leader of the New Democratic Party, Gilles Duceppe, Leader of the Bloc Quebecois and
Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green Party is taking its toll. To refer to their acts of omission and commission as barbaric is an understatement.

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. Martin Mittelstaedt who writes for The Globe and Mail says, Canada must bear some responsibility for the coming epidemic.

Given below is the excerpts of the full story by him in The Globe and Mail:


Asbestos shame

Yesterday's miracle mineral, asbestos is now so well understood to be dangerous that Canadians run from it. Yet the federal and Quebec governments still promote it aggressively to the developing world. It was published on October 27, 2007

Before asbestos became feared as one of the most powerful cancer-causing agents ever used, it was heralded as the "magic mineral." In an age of impermanence, asbestos offered durability. While it had the texture of wool, it didn't burn and was incredibly resistant to decay. That is why it was once used in thousands of products, everything from car brake pads to insulation on some of the giant steel girders holding up the World Trade Center.

But asbestos has a big problem. When used, it promiscuously sheds tiny dust fibres. Once inhaled, the fibres become tangled in lung tissues, where they wreak havoc — typically lung cancer, asbestosis and mesothelioma, a rare, painful and almost always fatal cancer of the lining of the chest wall.

The unfortunate drawback of killing large numbers of people has led more than 40 countries, a who's who of advanced industrialized nations, to outlaw asbestos use. But Canada isn't among them.
While the federal government projects an image of being a helpful, international Boy Scout on issues ranging from peacekeeping to nuclear proliferation, Canada has a peculiar relationship to asbestos.
Since it's a carcinogen, Canadians don't use much of it any more. Even the asbestos in the Parliament Buildings is being removed. But the country remains one of the world's biggest purveyors of the deadly mineral, selling abroad 95 per cent of the output from the country's two remaining mines, both in Quebec, a business worth about $93-million a year.
Most asbestos used in developing countries is added to cement (at a rate of one part asbestos to about 10 parts of cement) to add durability to water pipes and the ubiquitous corrugated roofing that is a familiar sight in shantytowns around the Third World.
India alone has about 50 plants making asbestos cement destined for homes and other buildings. Asbestos cannot be mined legally in India, so it imports what it uses from countries such as Canada. Cement is the end use of practically all Canadian exports — more than 93 per cent, according to the federal government.
It's not just that Canada is home to companies that sell asbestos abroad. The federal and Quebec governments actively promote it, spending tens of millions since 1984 to encourage the remaining markets, mainly in developing countries. Ottawa has even mobilized Canadian diplomatic staff, from Jakarta to Washington, as recently as last summer, to stand on guard against asbestos bans in the roughly 70 countries that still buy it from Canada.

Natural Resources Canada is the lead federal department dealing with asbestos. It declined a request from The Globe and Mail to interview officials about Canada's asbestos policy, but agreed to answer written questions.

"Canada has long advocated, at home and abroad, a responsible, controlled use approach for chrysotile asbestos," the department said, although it added that "the implementation of domestic measures to ensure workplace health and safety is a sovereign responsibility of importing countries."
The response sidestepped questions about whether promoting asbestos abroad is a good use of taxpayers' money and whether it is done to protect federalism in Quebec.

The government insists that foreigners can and do use asbestos safely, because Canadian companies would sell it only to those that implement Canadian-style safeguards: "The Canadian chrysotile industry has agreed not to export to companies that do not use chrysotile in a manner that is consistent with Canada's controlled-use approach."

The biggest purchaser, taking about a quarter of Canada's output, is India, where it's easy to find workers using one of the most dangerous materials in the world clad only in T-shirts, shorts and flip-flops.

Animal experiments conducted in the mid-1970s, when the material was still widely used in Canada, found that as little as one day's exposure was enough to induce cancer in the laboratory.

Even though the federal government says today's Canadian asbestos doesn't pack the same killing punch of other varieties, the World Health Organization says all types — including chrysotile asbestos, the only type now mined in Canada and worldwide — cause cancer.
The WHO says thousands of other people die each year after unknowingly come into contact with asbestos dust. The dust is such an efficient inducer of cancer, no known safe exposure level exists: "Bearing in mind that there is no evidence for a threshold for the carcinogenic effects of asbestos … the most efficient way to eliminate asbestos-related diseases is to stop using all types of asbestos."
The United Nations agency cites as a particular concern the continued use of asbestos cement in the construction industry because "the work force is large, it is difficult to control exposure, and in-place materials have the potential to deteriorate and pose a risk to those carrying out alterations, maintenance and demolition."
It isn't often that Canada is totally at odds with a UN agency, but it is on asbestos.
"The Government of Canada is of the view that the health risks of chrysotile can be managed if regulations, programs and practices equivalent to Canada's are in place to limit exposures to airborne fibres and that the risks would be no greater than posed by other occupational activities," the government said earlier this year in a statement issued by Peter MacKay, then foreign affairs minister.
It was a response to a petition filed with the office of the federal Environment Commissioner by David Boyd, a University of British Columbia researcher, seeking an explanation for Canada's promotion of asbestos. (The government has a legal obligation to answer questions posed in petitions to the commissioner.)
In an interview, Mr. Boyd said he feels that Canada's continuing export of "a deadly substance with profound public health impacts" is "unethical and immoral," but based on a desire of governments to win votes in Quebec.
"It's the old conundrum where we've got an industry that's centred in Quebec and the federal government is always walking on pins and needles when it comes to dealing with issues that threaten the loss of votes or seats in Quebec," he said.
In the statement, Ottawa said it doesn't verify whether buyers follow Canadian-style rules when using asbestos, arguing that seeking such information would violate foreign sovereignty. About 75 per cent of Canadian asbestos is shipped to Asia, where, along with India, the biggest customers are Indonesia, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
Many health experts consider it laughable to say that workers in poor countries use asbestos with the same care that is taken in Canada. Ontario's asbestos regulations run seven pages, and their requirement for sophisticated dust-control equipment — and decades of medical monitoring including chest X-rays for those exposed — are unlikely to be followed in poor countries.
"Anyone who says there's controlled use of asbestos in the Third World is either a liar or a fool," says Barry Castleman, a consultant who helped to advise Europeans in 2000 on Canada's unsuccessful attempt to overturn a French ban on Canadian asbestos.
According to a published estimate in India, about 100,000 workers are exposed to asbestos. Fewer than 30 people have ever been formally compensated for asbestos-related diseases, a figure that is unlikely to reflect the true extent of the illness burden. A 2005 study of a group of exposed factory workers found that 22 per cent had asbestosis, although the industry has published figures claiming that none of its workers have developed the disease from the mineral.

In July, the Canadian embassy in Washington sent a letter to the U.S. Senate, which was considering an asbestos ban. The letter conceded that "all forms of asbestos fibres, including chrysotile, are carcinogenic," but it maintained that its use can be safe if proper precautions are followed. The Senate ignored the advice and voted unanimously this month to ban asbestos.

Last year, Canada was more successful, scuttling an effort by the UN's Rotterdam Convention to have chrysotile added to the list of materials that are so dangerous that countries need to approve imports in advance, as a sign that they know what they are getting into. Canada allied itself with pariahs such as Iran and Zimbabwe to defeat the listing.
Despite these occasional successes, the federal government's aid probably will not avert the eventual death of the Canadian asbestos-mining industry. With the fall of communism, Russia and Kazakhstan have emerged as low-cost producers, taking away business from Canada. And because of health worries, the Canadian industry's output is about one-third of what it was in the 1980s. This summer, one of Quebec's producers, LAB Chrysotile Inc., filed a notice advising that it would seek bankruptcy protection.

Asbestos laden ship MV Al Arabia in Alang

MV Al Arabia (Aqaba Express, Beni Ansar) violates apex court’s order






An urgent letter from UN’s Basel Secretariat has been sent to Ministry of Environment & Forests concerning asbestos, PCB and radioactive laden the vessel named Aqaba Express (formerly Beni Ansar) that has changed its name MV Al Arabia. The ship anchored in Alang on 27 October, 2007 in violation of the September 6, 2007 order of the Supreme Court. The ship is beached in plot no. 114. Its port of registry is Moroni.

The UN official, Ms Katharina Kummer Piery's letter to R K Vaish, Joint Secretary, Hazardous Substances Management Division has reference to the arrest of the ship in Spain and the fact that the ship has asbestos and PCBs. The
letter suggests that the vessel left Spanish territorial waters by informing the Spanish authorities it is going to Romania for refurbishment and instead it came to Alang. As per Basel Convention, such misrepresentation is part of illegal traffic. The ship has not complied with the Court's orders of September 6, 2007 order and 14th October, 2003 that endorsed the Basel Convention and deemed it as part of right to life. Ship breaking activity must operate under the clear mandate for the decontamination (pre-cleaning) of ships of their hazardous substances including asbestos, radioactive material, waste oils, gases and both solid and liquid PCB contaminated material and any other substances covered by the Basel Convention prior to imports for breaking.

As per the exiting rules, if the ship breaking facility is not deemed by the country of import, or the country of export as possessing the capability for “Environmentally Sound Management” then import/export must be prohibited. Exporting country can be the country where a ship owner is located, a port state, or the flag state. Parties to the Convention such as India is duty bound to prohibit trade in hazardous wastes between themselves and non-Parties without a special bi/multilateral Agreement.

A Basel Party wishing to export a ship containing hazardous materials for scrapping must first notify and then receive consent from recipient country prior to export. Prior Informed Consent (PIC) paperwork is required including a notification indicating that the ship does not contain any hazardous or radioactive substances onboard. Such a notification will require full sampling and testing of various onboard materials.

The ship should be properly decontaminated by the ship owner prior to export for its breaking. In the case of MV Al Arabia (Aqaba Expres, Beni Ansar). As per the Court order, “Gas-free for hot work certificate” is mandatory for the seller of tankers before such ships are handed over to the recycling yard. Such certificates have to be obtained from the last port of call based on certificate issued by the classification society. No ship should be given a beaching permission unless Gas Free for Hot Work certificate is shown, but MV Al Arabia has not done the same.

For ship like MV Al Arabia (Aqaba Expres, Beni Ansar), the September 2007 order reiterates, “…a clear mandate for the decontamination of ships of their hazardous substances such as asbestos, waste oil, gas and PCBs, prior to export to India for breaking.” The same has not been complied with. Indian Platform on Ship-breaking has written to Basel Secretariat, Environment Ministry, Spanish and Romanian authorities seeking their response with regard to the illegal traffic.

According to a European Commission official, "Spain as the presumptive country of export is in the best position to take further measures, i.e. giving full information about the hazardous nature of the waste, requesting a return of the ship and/or offering cooperation on environmentally sound management elsewhere, and initiating criminal proceedings against the persons who have given false declarations towards Spanish authorities (in so far as this is criminal under Spanish law). We have pointed the Spanish MoE to these possibilities and assured them our support. The EU or Commission can play only a limited role in this context."

He added, EU is observing the effect of the recent ruling of the Indian Supreme Court on the ground. A proper application of the Court's requirements would mean that the Aqaba Express / MV Al Arabia should not be accepted for dismantling in Alang. If import countries do not even implement their own law, European intervention or UN law has limited value.

Asbestos laden MV Al Arabia ship in Alang

MV Al Arabia (Aqaba Express, Beni Ansar) violates apex court’s order




An urgent letter from UN’s Basel Secretariat has been sent to Ministry of Environment & Forests concerning asbestos, PCB and radioactive laden the vessel named Aqaba Express (formerly Beni Ansar) that has changed its name MV Al Arabia. The ship anchored in Alang on 27 October, 2007 in violation of the September 6, 2007 order of the Supreme Court. The ship is beached in plot no. 114. Its port of registry is Moroni.

The UN official, Ms Katharina Kummer Piery's letter to R K Vaish, Joint Secretary, Hazardous Substances Management Division has reference to the arrest of the ship in Spain and the fact that the ship has asbestos and PCBs. The letter suggests that the vessel left Spanish territorial waters by informing the Spanish authorities it is going to Romania for refurbishment and instead it came to Alang. As per Basel Convention, such misrepresentation is part of illegal traffic. The ship has not complied with the Court's orders of September 6, 2007 order and 14th October, 2003 that endorsed the Basel Convention and deemed it as part of right to life. Ship breaking activity must operate under the clear mandate for the decontamination (pre-cleaning) of ships of their hazardous substances including asbestos, radioactive material, waste oils, gases and both solid and liquid PCB contaminated material and any other substances covered by the Basel Convention prior to imports for breaking.

As per the exiting rules, if the ship breaking facility is not deemed by the country of import, or the country of export as possessing the capability for “Environmentally Sound Management” then import/export must be prohibited. Exporting country can be the country where a ship owner is located, a port state, or the flag state. Parties to the Convention such as India is duty bound to prohibit trade in hazardous wastes between themselves and non-Parties without a special bi/multilateral Agreement.

A Basel Party wishing to export a ship containing hazardous materials for scrapping must first notify and then receive consent from recipient country prior to export. Prior Informed Consent (PIC) paperwork is required including a notification indicating that the ship does not contain any hazardous or radioactive substances onboard. Such a notification will require full sampling and testing of various onboard materials.

The ship should be properly decontaminated by the ship owner prior to export for its breaking. In the case of MV Al Arabia (Aqaba Expres, Beni Ansar). As per the Court order, “Gas-free for hot work certificate” is mandatory for the seller of tankers before such ships are handed over to the recycling yard. Such certificates have to be obtained from the last port of call based on certificate issued by the classification society. No ship should be given a beaching permission unless Gas Free for Hot Work certificate is shown, but MV Al Arabia has not done the same.

For ship like MV Al Arabia (Aqaba Expres, Beni Ansar), the September 2007 order reiterates, “…a clear mandate for the decontamination of ships of their hazardous substances such as asbestos, waste oil, gas and PCBs, prior to export to India for breaking.” The same has not been complied with. Indian Platform on Ship-breaking has written to Basel Secretariat, Environment Ministry, Spanish and Romanian authorities seeking their response with regard to the illegal traffic.

US Ban on asbestos Bill diluted, say its backers

Lobbyists, industry won changes, they charge

Just a month after the Senate with great fanfare passed the first legislation to ban disease-causing asbestos, public health officials, government regulators and advocates for asbestos victims are increasingly speaking out in opposition to the bill they once supported.

The bill originally imposed a total ban on asbestos, and that's the version that the public health experts testified in support of.

But between the hearing in June and the Senate vote last month, ban supporters say the legislation was watered down to appease powerful lobbyists and industry. Many asbestos-containing products now aren't covered by the ban at all.

Nonetheless, says Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the ban is "a major step forward, and I passionately wish it covered all asbestos products." "If I was just Patty Murray and I didn't have to worry about getting other votes or a Republican president or that I have a one-vote majority in the United States Senate, I'd have a 100 percent ban," Murray said last week.

Staffers for Murray and Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, who co-sponsored the legislation, insist that the Environmental Protection Agency "fully supports the bill as passed" and the agency's personnel were closely involved throughout the process.

Not so, say agency scientists and the EPA's legislative office. While the EPA said it had "no public position on the legislation," documents obtained by the Seattle P-I show the agency has "significant concern" that the ban doesn't go far enough.

In a draft of a letter prepared for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which will hold the hearings on the Senate-passed bill, the EPA quickly went to the issue that is concerning much of the public health community: "To protect public health and the environment from asbestos hazards, the ban should target any products in which asbestos is intentionally added or knowingly present as a contaminant," read the evaluation, which was to be signed by EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson.

But last month, the White House Office of Management and Budget rejected the entire document and told the EPA it could not submit it. Government scientists charged that the OMB action was another example of the White House putting politics over science.

But the EPA did not buckle.

In comments prepared this week for Congress, the EPA scientists repeated that the ban should apply to "any product to which asbestos is deliberately added or used, or in which asbestos is otherwise present in any concentration."

This definition is precisely what businesses, road builders, the owners of mines and pits where asbestos-contaminated sand, stone and ore is still dug, managed to get deleted.

The lobbyists also wanted to control how the research the legislation demanded would be done.

The bill says that a study would be done to collect scientific evidence to determine the cancer-causing hazard to health from products not covered by the ban.

"I've got to tell you, (industry lobbyists) tried to back me off the study more times then you can know," Murray said.

"The Stone, Sand and Gravel Association demanded their own scientists do the study, be at the table. No way," Murray said. "If you put that in here, I'm walking away from it."

What the bill won't do

Here are some of the effects of the last-minute changes in the Senate bill:

# An epidemiologist with the Connecticut health department told the Consumer Product Safety Commission earlier this year that asbestos was found in modeling clay that children were using in art classes. The art clay, the health official wrote, contained asbestos-contaminated talc from the R.T. Vanderbilt talc mines in upstate New York. Though federal health investigators documented the presence of asbestos in that mine decades earlier and scores of workers have been sickened or killed from exposure to asbestos in the talc, the Senate ban would not prevent the tainted powder from being sold.

# Along the Iron Range in northern Michigan and Minnesota, waste from the taconite iron mines is contaminated with asbestos. Miners with asbestosis and the fast-killing mesothelioma are never far from tanks of oxygen. Elaborate marketing plans obtained by the P-I show how the taconite industry plans to sell the mining waste across the Midwest for construction of roads, airports, bridges and other public products and to claim that the product is free of asbestos. The current legislation will do nothing to prevent that.

# Millions of homes and businesses have insulation in their walls and attics made from asbestos-contaminated vermiculite ore. Hundreds of miners and their family members have died and thousands more are ill from this Libby, Mont., vermiculite ore. Nothing in the law would keep the mine from being reopened and the tainted ore again sold in scores of products. Nor will the Senate effort restrict or even demand monitoring of other mines that are today producing vermiculite.

Murray says the education provision of the bill will tell people of these risks, but some of the witnesses who testified for the ban say that isn't enough.

"The government knows that asbestos products not covered by the legislation can cause harm and would allow, and probably encourage, companies to continue selling contaminated products because they are exempt from the ban," said Dr. Aubrey Miller, senior medical officer and toxicologist for the EPA.

Dr. Michael Harbut, who has diagnosed and treated thousands of asbestos victims, also testified for the bill and is now worried about the language.

"We need to be truthful with the public. This should be called the limited asbestos ban act," said Harbut, who is co-director of the National Center for Vermiculite and Asbestos-Related Cancers at the Karmanos Cancer Institute.

Linda Reinstein, a mesothelioma widow and executive director of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, said: "After all the years of effort by the physicians, scientists, victims and Senators Murray and Boxer, we cannot wind up with a ban that doesn't include all asbestos. ... We all knew that compromises had to be made to get this legislation passed but I didn't anticipate that industry would successfully intervene at the last minute."

Sausage making

The axiom that crafting legislation is like making sausage does little to convey the meticulous, high-pressure choreography between what lawmakers want their legislation to do and what industry lobbyists will permit. Murray and Boxer had to live with that reality.

For six years, Murray fought to get her colleagues in the Senate to ban asbestos. It made sense. People were dying by the thousands and the deaths of a new generation might be prevented. But industry and the Bush White House didn't want the U.S. to follow 40 other countries and ban the importation, use and sale of the cancer-causing fibers. Lobbyists for America's largest industries swarmed over Capitol Hill, called in IOUs and dumped millions of dollars to fight the ban.

But on Oct. 4, every U.S. senator voted to ban asbestos. That day, widows and friends toasted loved ones killed by asbestos.

Scientists and physicians who had helped educate the senator and her staff members called one another, many not believing that the ban finally was just House passage away from becoming law. But when the euphoria of winning waned and people actually read the bill, many of them realized that the legislation no longer contained the same protection they had testified about, and they started speaking out.

Bill Kamela, who is Murray's senior staff person in the fight for the ban, left a voice mail message last week on the home phone of the EPA's Miller.

Kamela questioned the accuracy of Miller's views and ended the message with: "This disinformation campaign is not helpful to anybody and certainly not folks who want to stick around this administration and try to do the right thing at the end of the day."

Murray blamed her aide's action on "the frustration of having the bill mischaracterized ... "

As the staff continues to defend the quality of the bill, they say the "real threat" will come from Rep. John Dingle, who heads the House committee that will hold hearings on the bill early next month. They say the Michigan Democrat will bow to the auto industry to exclude asbestos-containing brake material from the ban. Dingle did meet with auto industry representatives last month, "but will do nothing to damage the bill," a member of the committee staff said.

Almost all of the witnesses who had worked earlier to get the bill passed or to testify on its need were contacted repeatedly last week by Kamela, Bettina Poirier, staff director and chief counsel for Boxer's committee on Environment and Public Works and other staff members.

"These people, especially Poirier, kept calling. She ordered me not to talk to anyone about my views on the bill. She told me that I was spreading disinformation, that the bill was not flawed," Miller said.

Richard Lemen, a retired U.S. assistant surgeon general and former acting director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, has long fought for the ban and what Murray was trying to do.

Lemen and several of Murray's other witnesses joined in a two-hour conference call with the Senate staff one evening last week. Three of the participants said Poirier screamed at Lemen for much of that time, trying to get him to change his mind.

"It was not pleasant," Lemen said. "They were trying to get me to change my opinion, which I'm not going to do. This is a bad bill."

Poirier said she wasn't screaming at him.

"Maybe that's how they interpreted it. I have a cold so my voice doesn't sound exactly normal," the senior aide explained.

"We were trying to help him ... because they misunderstood what happened and we were trying to clear the air and support them."

Lemen saw it differently.

"These staff people are the same ones who asked us to testify and now they're the same people who are trying to shut us up. I'm not going to be quiet," he said.

"The public will be given a false sense of hope and that, to me, is an outrage, As a result there are going to be thousands of people at risk of developing asbestos-related diseases. No one knows how many will die."


Andrew Schneider: andrewschneider@seattlepi.com.

IMO's Ship Recycling Convention undermines International environmental laws

Alang ship breaking yard is part of the global shipbreaking crisis. The Basel Convention, International Maritime Organization, European Union, US, Ban Asbestos Networking of India (BANI), Basel Action Network and Platform on ship-breaking besides Supreme Court of India are seized with the problem.

Asbestos decontamination is one of the key concerns in the ship-breaking industry. Asbestos waste export and import is banned in India but it is being argued by the Indian Ministry of Environment & Forests that asbestos waste when it is part of the structure it need not be deemed asbestos waste-implying the impossible condition where asbestos waste will exist in a virgin manner and would not be embedded in some structure.

In such a context the Green Paper on Better Ship Dismantling (Green Paper of EU) is a welcome step even as it is clear that it does not, as yet go far enough in assuming a global leadership role and pressing for the needed proactive reform on what has been a glaring lapse in sustainability and justice in international ship recycling, fostered too long by governments that have been cowed by a powerful shipping industry.

Shipbreaking as it is practiced today by the shipping industry and for the last twenty years, is a classic policy failure in all aspects of the “triple bottom line” -- of social, environmental and economic yardsticks. Its current “profitability” is maintained solely due to a sanctioned and institutionalized gross cost externalization, where the polluter has all-too conveniently not had to pay and the very real human and environmental price is rather paid, by virtue of unfettered free markets, by those too politically or financially weak to be able to ever present the bill. Thus, the trade in toxic ships to developing countries for hazardous waste “management” must be seen not only as an affront to morality, human rights and the environment, but also as an affront to sound and efficient economics, as ship owners are given carte blanche to ride the waves of economic distortion provided by ease of externalization via globalization. In this game of avoidance, the true environmental and social costs fail to be recorded on the ledgers but are rather recorded in the scandal sheet snapshots of the contaminated beaches and dead and dying workers in India.

The Basel Convention was created in large part to prevent this form of cost externalization, this exploitation of weaker economies and workforces, this disproportionate burdening of desperate workers with harm. It called for producer responsibility and national self-sufficiency in hazardous waste management universally and in 1995 the Convention passed a global export ban (Basel Ban Amendment) for the OECD/EU/Liechtenstein group on the export of hazardous waste of all kinds for any reason to insure that national self sufficiency is first practiced by the rich developed countries. The European Union to their great credit not only took leadership in passing the Basel Ban but moreover was quick to implement it through the Waste Shipment Regulation.

Due to the constant mobility of ships and the disassociation of flag states (i.e. flags of convenience) with ownership or economic beneficiaries, it is well understood that neither the Basel Convention nor the Waste Shipment Regulation (WSR) is well suited to regulate ships that might seek to circumvent the Basel or WSR controls and bans. Nevertheless it is absolutely vital that the EU, in its shipbreaking policy does not retreat from the principles of the Basel Convention and the Waste Shipment Regulation simply because ships are more difficult to regulate as hazardous waste than is their cargo. Rather they must move aggressively to plug the loopholes rather than institutionalize them.

Just as the EU has been the backbone upholding the Basel Convention and the Basel Ban Amendment to date globally, the EU must assume a global leadership role in upholding established principle and develop policy that not only is consistent with the Waste Shipment Regulation for ships, but works to create that level playing field of responsibility worldwide.

Unfortunately the EU is already stepping away from established principles embodied in the Basel Convention and Waste Shipment Regulation in their negotiations at the International Maritime Organization as that body deliberates on a new Convention on Ship Recycling (IMO Convention). While the Basel Convention Parties, the European Council, and the Environment Commissioner Dimas have repeatedly called for an “equivalent level of control” to be established in the IMO Convention, so far the EU has failed to aggressively take action to ensure such equivalency and the shipping industry dominated IMO has forged ahead with a regime which by design, places responsibility away from ship-owners or states with jurisdiction over ship-owners and instead has placed the few responsibilities currently obligated under the new regime on flag states (e.g. flags of convenience) and on recycling states. Both of these groups of states have little incentive to provide diligent regulation as both are current economic beneficiaries of the unaccountable status quo.

It is clear that if the EU does not step forward to uphold international principles, we will witness a dramatic turning back of the clock in an age where environmental issues need far more rigor and not less.

India and EU must assert the agreed principles of Basel Convention at the International Maritime Organization that is now being negotiated but it utterly fails in the first instance to minimize the transboundary movements of hazardous wastes on board ships, and to prevent their disproportionate burdening of such harm on weaker economies, communities and laborers. It is devoid of the basic principles now well established in international law and policy including the precautionary principle, the substitution principle, the polluter pays principle, the principle of environmental justice, the principle of producer responsibility, the principle of common but differentiated responsibility, the principle of corporate social responsibility etc.

Ban Asbestos America Act passed unanimously

Press Release

New Delhi: Ban Asbestos Network of India (BANI) appreciates the U.S. Senate for passing Ban Asbestos in America Act. The bill was passed on October 04, 2007. US Senate unanimously passed Senator Patty Murray's bill to ban all forms of asbestos, bringing the legislation closer to enactment than at any point since Murray launched her effort to protect families and workers six years ago to reach this historic milestone.

Stories of the toll asbestos takes on people are yet to hit the headlines in India as has been the case in US, Europe, Australia and Japan. The recent UN statistics indicates that India imported roughly 306,000 MT of asbestos in 2006. Out of which 152, 820 MT was imported from Russia, 63, 980 MT from Canada, 48, 807 MT from Kazakhstan and 34, 953 MT from Brazil. Asbestos is a proven human carcinogen (a substance which can cause cancer). No safe level can be proposed for asbestos cement pipes because a threshold is not known to exist. Currently mining of all kinds of asbestos is banned in India. Trade in asbestos waste is also banned. Besides all other forms of asbestos other than Chrysotile asbestos (White Asbestos) is prohibited in India.

BANI is dedicated to serving as the voice of asbestos victims, who are totally disregarded by Indian political parties of all colours both in the states and at national level unlike US and Europe. The countries that have banned asbestos include Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Chile, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Gabon, Germany, Greece, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Seychelles, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom (including England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), Uruguay and others.

Indian homes are often built of asbestos cement roofs, and people cut their own windows and doorways. Research is showing asbestos epidemics across the globe even in countries where it is currently banned, as the consequence of past exposure. While white asbestos mining is currently banned in India, its import, export or use in manufacturing is permitted. But recently, the Ministry of Mines has indicated that it may lift the mining ban.

The Ban Asbestos in America Act, 2007 is an effort to ban all production and use of asbestos in America, launch public education campaigns to raise awareness about its dangers and expand research and treatment of diseases caused by asbestos. "This is a historic day in the fight to protect Americans. Workers and their families deserve a future free of deadly asbestos exposure, and I'm not stopping until this bill is signed into law," Murray said. "I’m very pleased that Senators from both sides of the aisle came together to unanimously support my bill. I especially want to thank Senator Johnny Isakson for his bipartisan leadership in moving this bill forward. I also want to commend Senator Barbara Boxer who championed this bill from the start and led its quick passage through her Environment and Public Works Committee."

“This bill is the culmination of months of bipartisan work to find common ground on this important issue, and I extremely pleased the Senate acted so quickly to approve it,” Isakson said. “For the few areas where asbestos is still used in the United States, this bill provides a reasonable transition so that Americans can rid themselves of asbestos once and for all.”

BANI appeals to the United Progressive Alliance government to take cognizance of all asbestos victims and their families, and act as a future protector of generations to come, helping to ensure a safer environment for us all. "We look forward to the day when asbestos disease will no longer needlessly claim lives in India and the concerned industry will be held accountable for not preventing incurable but preventable cancers."

The occurrence of asbestos-related diseases, including mesothelioma, lung cancer and asbestosis, is growing out of control. Studies estimate that during the next decade, in India victims will die of an asbestos related disease at the rate of 30 deaths per day.
Because of this bill, US is poised to join the more than 40 nations that have banned asbestos because it is deadly. This bill was long overdue. With this US would ban asbestos, invest in research and treatment, and launch a public education campaign. Indian government is yet to take lessons from these nations to safeguard its citizens.

For details: BANI, Web: banasbestosindia.blogspot.com, Mb: 9818089660, E-mail-toxicswatch@gmail.com