The Hindu : `Ban asbestos' movement gaining momentum

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Mar 04, 2003

National

National

`Ban asbestos' movement gaining momentum

By Aarti Dhar

NEW DELHI MARCH 3 . A slow but steady movement for banning the use of asbestos, known to cause cancer of the lungs and mesothelioma (cancer of the lung lining), is gaining momentum in India. Now acknowledged as the `silent killer', asbestos is believed to be responsible for the death of a lakh workers annually across the world, according to a survey conducted by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

The Indian Association of Occupational Health (IAOH) passed a resolution last year seeking a ban on the use of all forms of asbestos. Occupational health experts also called for banning the material at a meeting of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) called by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs last month. Several occupational health experts, who participated in the meeting, demanded a ban, as they believed that there was no such thing as `safe asbestos', while representatives from the industrial sector insisted that there were ways of enforcing and ensuring safety standards in its use.

``A succession of governments from 1947 to 2002 bear the greatest responsibility for failing to adopt and enforce measures that could have protected workers from the dangers of asbestos,'' says a spokesperson for the Ban Asbestos Network of India (BANI).

Asbestos is a generic term used for several naturally occurring fibrous, silicate materials and is used in a variety of everyday as well as industrial applications. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says that there is practically no safe level of exposure or use of asbestos. It has recognised that all varieties of asbestos are carcinogenic.

In India, 1,25,000 tonnes of chrysotile white asbestos are used annually to manufacture asbestos cement products. Most of the material is imported from Canada, Russia, Brazil and Zimbabwe. The Rs. 2,000-crores Indian asbestos industry is resisting the ban move. Mining of this hazardous mineral is already banned in the country, though illegal mining continues in Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Bihar.

According to a study conducted by the Institute of Public Health Engineering (IPHE), an estimated two million workers in the United States will die from workplace exposure to asbestos, though the standards for its manufacture there are 20 times more stringent than in developing countries such as India. ``The profound tragedy of the asbestos epidemic is that all illnesses and death related to asbestos were entirely preventable by not using asbestos. The threat to health was known and alternative viable substitutes were available,'' the IPHE reports notes.

India currently imports 100,000 tonnes of chrysotile asbestos, mostly from Canada, while 2,500 MT of chrysotile and 35,000 MT of tremolite asbestos are annually mined within the country. The annual world production that peaked at five million tonnes in the mid-1970s has currently declined to about three million tonnes following greater awareness of its hazards. In India, asbestos is used in the manufacture of pressure and non-pressure pipes for water supply, sewage, drainage, packing material, brake linings and jointings in automobiles, heavy equipment and thermal plants. The current demand for asbestos in India is to the tune of 100,000 metric tonnes, a fifth of which is mined domestically. In addition, raw asbestos worth Rs. 40 crores to Rs 50 crores is imported every year.

The European Union has already banned the use of the material for its `occupational and environmental hazard of a catastrophic proportion.'

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