Lobbyists push use of deadly asbestos in developing nations
WASHINGTON — A global network of lobby groups has spent nearly $100 million since the mid-1980s to preserve the international market for asbestos, a known carcinogen that's taken millions of lives and is banned or restricted in 52 countries, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has found in a nine-month investigation.
Backed by public and private money and aided by scientists and friendly governments, the groups helped facilitate the sale of 2.2 million tons of asbestos last year, mostly in developing nations. Anchored by the Montreal-based Chrysotile Institute, the network stretches from New Delhi to Mexico City to the city of Asbest in Russia's Ural Mountains. Its message is that asbestos can be used safely under "controlled" conditions.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/...
Asbestos is really nice and is YOUR FRIEND:
Current asbestos products are as different from the old ones as night and day. Today, only one type of asbestos is offered: chrysotile. In addition, the industry now only markets dense and non-friable materials in which the chrysotile fibre is encapsulated in a matrix of either cement or resin. These modern products include chrysotile-cement building materials, friction materials, gaskets and certain plastics. The old products, principally low-density insulation materials, were very dusty and crumbled under hand pressure. Unlike today's products, they often contained amphibole fibres (crocidolite and amosite).
Chrysotile: controlled use = safety
Chrysotile is a less dusty material and is more easily eliminated from the human body than amphiboles. The manufacture and use of modern products are safe as demonstrated by studies of workers exposed to much higher dust levels than in today's controlled factories which show no excess lung cancer or mesothelioma (cancer of the pleura).,,,
Chrysotile-cement: a safe, high-quality product
90% of the world production of chrysotile is used in the manufacture of chrysotile-cement, in the form of pipes, sheets and shingles. These products are used in some sixty industrialized and developing countries....
The real problem: old, poorly controlled products
Alarming reports of the rise in diseases linked to asbestos, combined with concern over the presence of asbestos insulation in buildings, have triggered intense controversy in Europe, especially in northern countries which were heavy users of friable asbestos insulation....
http://www.chrysotile.com/...
Please don't be mean to good old asbestos, which you should now call Chrysostile because that sounds nicer.
We need to make lots and lots of money selling our dear, sweet commodity to unsuspecting countries all over the world because we want to be very rich and powerful and YOU CAN'T STOP US!
STOP TELLING THE TRUTH!
The McClatchy article goes on to detail WHO concerns:
"It's totally unethical," Jukka Takala, the director of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work and a former International Labor Organization official, said of the pro-asbestos campaign. "It's almost criminal. Asbestos cannot be used safely. It is clearly a carcinogen. It kills people."
and academic sellouts:
"It's an extremely valuable material," argued Dr. J. Corbett McDonald, an emeritus professor of epidemiology at McGill University in Montreal who began studying chrysotile-exposed workers in the mid-1960s with the support of the Quebec Asbestos Mining Association. "It's very cheap. If they try to rebuild Haiti and use no asbestos it will cost them much more. Any health effects (from chrysotile) will be trivial, if any."
One must wonder where the pulseless hand of Richard Bruce Cheney figures in this latest assault on the health and safety of the people of the world, inasmuch as he, Cheney, loomed largely in Halliburton's purchase of DII Industries, along with the acquisition of 300,000 asbestos claims:
Halliburton subsidiaries DII Industries, LLC (formerly known as Dresser Industries) and Kellogg Brown & Root, Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2003 for the purpose of minimizing asbestos liability. Halliburton purchased DII Industries in 1998 under the direction of former CEO Dick Cheney. The acquisition meant that Halliburton inherited 300,000 asbestos claims filed against DII, who had for years manufactured construction products which contained the harmful substance. Halliburton's Kellogg Brown & Root also had manufactured products containing asbestos and has been fighting asbestos lawsuits since 1976. Asbestos causes scarring of the lung tissue (asbestosis), cancer of the pleural lining (mesothelioma) and lung cancer. Victims allege the companies knew of the health risks of asbestos long before they took it off the market.
http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/...
Unbelievable! The gall and greed, the endless need, corporate profit to bleed an unsuspecting world.