Protests have erupted around the world against Canada’s plan to revive asbestos production, which is blamed for the deaths of thousands of workers in Asia.
The negative publicity for Canada also follows a proposed $58 million government loan guarantee to Jeffrey Asbestos Mines, based in Quebec, for the renewal of asbestos mining and export. This subsidy, should it be approved, would allow the industry to open a new underground mine and export 5 million tonnes of asbestos mainly to Asia over the next twenty-five years.
Canada uses little asbestos domestically but it sent 168,000 tons abroad last year; more than half of that went to India. India is the world’s second-largest consumer of asbestos, after China.
In Canada, asbestos production is centered entirely in Quebec. The province shipped a total of $97 million of raw fibre overseas in 2008, and is currently the world’s fifth-largest producer of asbestos and its fourth-largest exporter.
Protests against Canada’s involvement in the asbestos trade have broken out recently in Hong Kong, Seoul, Mumbai, New York, Washington DC and Brussels.
“Canada’s own tragedy of disease arising from asbestos use is now being repeated in parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America, where workplace safety practices are lax or non-existent,” said Peter Goodhand, President and CEO of the Canadian Cancer Society.
Goodhand adds that worldwide about 90,000 people die annually from disease related to occupational exposure to asbestos, and the asbestos imported from Quebec mines is a major contributor to this death toll.
In Hong Kong, twenty people from nine organizations petitioned the Canadian consulate to protest against subsidy for Quebec-based Jeffery Mine which sends asbestos to Gujarat and elsewhere in Asia.
According to the Asian Ban Asbestos Network, the ratio of asbestos exported to Asia has increased from 70 percent to 86 percent of the global output over the past 10 years.
More than 130,000 tonnes were exported to Asia last year.
An investigation conducted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and aired by  BBC found that the asbestos industry has ignored waves of asbestos-related disease that have led to bans or restrictions in 52 countries, and continues to ply the mineral in developing nations.
Most of the asbestos sold in those countries is used in cement for corrugated roofing, in water pipes and for home construction.
In 2009, Canada sent nearly 153,000 metric tons of chrysotile abroad. More than half went to India; the rest went to Indonesia, Thailand, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates. At home it was a different story: Canada used only 6,000 tons domestically in 2006, the last year for which data are available.
Amir Attaran, an associate professor of law and medicine at the University of Ottawa, says he is ashamed of the nation’s stance. “It’s absolutely clear that [Prime Minister] Stephen Harper and his government have accepted the reality that the present course of action kills people, and they find that tolerable,” Attaran says. “Canada’s certainly aware that countries which purchase chrysotile do so in the absence of correct regulation.”
The asbestos industry has continued to grow, thanks to a “marketing campaign involving a global network of industry groups led by the Canadian government-backed Chrysotile Institute,” said David Kaplan, director of the ICIJ.
Chrysotile is another name for the most common type of asbestos, white asbestos.
Canada, which has asbestos mines but uses almost no asbestos within its borders, became a leader in the global pro-asbestos movement in the 1960s when studies that tied the mineral to cancer threatened to shutter mines in Quebec.
The Montreal-based Chrysotile Institute promotes the “controlled” use of asbestos in construction and manufacturing, a concept the report said is “elusive in developing countries,” where worker safety regulations are lax and more and more people are being exposed to asbestos.
The industry campaign is likely to result in epidemics of asbestos-related diseases within the next decade, with the biggest users, China and India, the hardest hit by the mineral’s devastating health effects, said Kaplan.
Researchers in India have estimated that deaths from asbestos-related cancers could reach one million in developing nations by 2020, while an Australian researcher has predicted five to 10 million deaths from cancers caused by asbestos exposure by 2030.
Finnish researchers estimated that 10,000 to 15,000 people will die in China each year by 2035 of asbestos-related ailments.
Currently, the death toll from asbestos-related diseases is estimated by the International Labor Organization to be 100,000 worldwide.
Perhaps nowhere is the industry as strong as in Gujarat, India
At one company alone in Ahmedabad — Gujarat Composite Ltd. — a at least 75 workers have been diagnosed with lung cancer in the past 10 years, out of a work force of about 1,000, according to nongovernmental activists in Ahmedabad who are working on asbestos-related diseases. At least 20 of those have died, they said.
“The asbestos market — despite being a health hazard — has grown because it serves the market for the poor,” said Gopal Krishna of the Ban Asbestos Network of India. “And that market is growing at a tremendous pace. So nobody has the time for complaints.”
In India, asbestos products carry no health warning labels and trade unions have no mandate to prevent asbestos-related disease at workplaces. Although researchers around the world have linked lung cancer and other diseases with exposure to the widely used white, or chrysotile, asbestos, the powerful Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers Association — funded by 12 asbestos companies, as well as by the Canada-based Chrysotile Institute — concedes nothing.
The Chrysotile Institute contends that lung cancer deaths have been caused by inhaling asbestos fiber has not been conclusively proved in India.
It states chrysotile asbestos is less toxic than blue or brown forms of the mineral, which no longer are used.