Many experts say asbestos is the poster child for everything that’s wrong with toxic chemical regulations in the United States. Despite the proven links between asbestos exposure and diseases like lung cancer, asbestosis and mesothelioma, the material is still used in the U.S. today. Even more shocking is the alarming rate that these diseases have afflicted U.S. citizens – reports estimate that, since 1980, more than 200,000 worker deaths resulted from asbestos-related diseases.
So why hasn’t the government stepped in and outlawed this known carcinogen?
While the health effects of asbestos have become more widely known and its reputation darkened, limitations in the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) – a 1976 regulatory law ensuring that chemicals are safe throughout their lifecycle – have left the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unable to act on materials with known health dangers, such as asbestos.
The laws and issues at hand can be tough to navigate. Fortunately, there are groups like Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families who are advocating for TSCA to be reformed with safer chemical policies. Along this road to chemical reform, the group is helping break down important information, including a fantastic fact sheet about asbestos that they posted earlier this week.
The fact sheet illustrates why asbestos is a perfect example of the type of dangerous material that the EPA needs authority to regulate. The sheet has comprehensive information about a range of issues, including past attempts to ban asbestos (100,000 pages of evidence wasn’t enough?!), current regulations, health risks, and how asbestos fits into the larger TSCA picture. We’d encourage you all to check out the fact sheet in its entirety here.
A ban on asbestos is just one piece of the puzzle to keep our loved ones safe from dangerous chemicals, but together we can have our voices heard and make a difference!
Last week, Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Senator Max Baucus, D-Mont., met with residents of asbestos-ravaged Libby, MT to discuss how the recently passed health care reform law has been helping the large number of victims of asbestos-related diseases who live in the community.
The ongoing, decade-long crisis in Libby is a result of a nearby asbestos mine contaminating the town and sickening thousands of residents. Since Libby is the only town is in the country currently designated as a public health emergency site by the EPA, a provision was added to the new health care law that allows Libby residents sick with asbestos diseases like mesothelioma to be extended Medicare coverage.
Reports indicate that there has been an increase in patients receiving care and mesothelioma treatments through the Center for Asbestos Related Diseases in Libby, as well as more than 400 residents who have signed up for new coverage. While this week’s meeting had flashes of political discourse and debate, the consensus seemed to be that overall the program is working. Senator Baucus commented that “it’s good to see justice after injustice for so many years.”
While it’s great to see so many victims get the resources and support they need, it might be time to give similar attention to banning the material that caused this public health disaster in the first place. Clearly, there’s no quick-fix for asbestos exposure or clean-up on a large scale, so we owe it to ourselves to make our stories heard and strive to ban asbestos altogether.
One of the most disturbing things about asbestos-related diseases like mesothelioma is that symptoms can appear anywhere from 10-40 years after someone has been exposed to asbestos. Given this long latency period, many people think mesothelioma is an “older” disease that only affects high-risk groups like shipmakers or veterans exposed to asbestos in the military. Sadly, this is not always the case.
Earlier this week, we learned of the sad news that Sophie Ellis, Britain’s youngest ever victim of an asbestos-related disease, passed away after a lengthy battle with mesothelioma. Diagnosed at the young age of 13, Sophie defied doctors’ predictions that she had only months to live by battling the disease for five years.
According to reports, mesothelioma kills one person every five hours in Great Britain – the highest rate in the world.
This heartbreaking story shows that there is no such thing as “being too young to be exposed to asbestos.” There is no safe level of exposure, and despite the proven health risks, the material is still manufactured and used in many asbestos products in the U.S. today.
While we all extend our thoughts and best wishes to the Ellis family, we hope that this story provides an opportunity to raise awareness about this devastating disease and the need to ban asbestos altogether. Only by making our voices heard can we hope to protect public health and keep our families safe.
You can read the full story about Sophie Ellis at The Mirror (UK).
Ban Asbestos Now! was created to take a stand against the continued use of asbestos in the United States. While our larger goal is to sign letters to Congress urging them to ban asbestos once and for all, we hope to accomplish many other goals along the way, like raising mesothelioma awareness, advocating for increased research and treatments for asbestos-related diseases, and educating people about the dangers of asbestos exposure.
Many people simply don’t know that asbestos causes mesothelioma, let alone that this material is still used in products today. To this end, we made a short video disproving many common asbestos myths to help keep people safe.
Contrary to popular belief, asbestos has not been banned in the United States and is still in homes and products all around us. With your help spreading the word, hopefully we can change that.
Recently, we came across an updated fact sheet from the World Health Organization with information about what the group is doing to eliminate asbestos-related diseases worldwide. The sheet does a great job providing background about why asbestos is still a major health hazard, as well as explaining the steps being taken to prevent asbestos exposure and the development of diseases like mesothelioma in countries that are still currently using asbestos products.
We wanted to share some of the report’s key pieces with you. First, the bad stuff:
Currently, about 125 million people in the world are exposed to asbestos at the workplace.
“Several thousand deaths” annually can be attributed to exposure to asbestos in the home.
While these numbers are shocking, fortunately the WHO has taken a number of steps recently to prevent this global epidemic, including:
Passing a resolution (World Health Assembly Resolution 58.22) urging that increased, special attention be paid to cancers resulting from avoidable chemical exposures.
Collaborated with labor groups like the International Labor Organization to encourage countries still using asbestos to replace it with safer, substitute materials.
Improving early diagnosis and treatment of asbestos-related diseases, including creating registries of people with past and/or current exposures to asbestos.
The WHO is doing their part to squash asbestos-related diseases like mesothelioma – now do yours! Please take a moment to sign our letter to Congress and make your voice heard today!
Last week, a steam pipe ruptured in Boston’s South End, sending asphalt and asbestos-containing debris into the air and showering city blocks with a layer of toxic dust. While air quality tests indicated that there was no immediate danger to local residents, workers in hazardous materials suits were dispatched to the scene to hose down cars and trees coated with the dust and properly dispose of the material.
It’s not every day that you have mass asbestos exposure in your backyard (Ban Asbestos Now! is based in Sokolove Law’s offices in nearby Wellesley, MA) so we decided to go down to the area and check it out. Unsurprisingly, haz-mat teams were still on the scene, which resembled the site of a nuclear explosion more than a neighborhood.
Shockingly, this is the third time since 2007 that a steam pipe has ruptured in Boston and put people at risk of being exposed to asbestos. What’s worse, this Boston Globe article reports that 90% of Boston’s underground steam pipes are covered in asbestos insulation, and that many of the nearby residents and storeowners affected were “surprised there’s still asbestos in those pipes.”
At the end of the day, no one was immediately harmed by the incident, but the accident nonetheless serves as a troubling reminder of the widespread use of asbestos in this country and the dangers it presents. Clearly, many people aren’t aware of some of the hazards around them, and until Congress hears our calls for a BAN!, our country’s asbestos problem will only grow.
The controversy surrounding California’s state rock is continuing to gain steam. But whether this is a good or bad thing might depend on who you ask.
Roughly half the states in the U.S. have official state rocks, the first of which was California, which gave the title to serpentine in 1965. Some serpentine rocks contain chrysotile, a type of asbestos, and can pose severe health risks when the dust is inhaled, like the development of lung cancer or mesothelioma. Given these hazards, a bill was recently introduced in California’s state legislature to strip the rock of its title.
But as the old adage goes, there are two sides to any debate. And as this New York Times article explains, this geological argument is no exception.
Last week, groups of geologists took to Twitter on behalf of the rock, arguing that the rock is harmless when undisturbed in its natural state and that this is an overreaction being spurred by advocates and lawyers who have pursued mesothelioma lawsuits on behalf of victims of asbestos-related diseases.
So who’s right here? Clearly, everyone has their own opinions. On one hand, proponents of the bill to “swap the rock” insist they had no idea their movement would gain so much traction, and feel that they have already succeeded in their larger mission to raise awareness about asbestos and mesothelioma in California. On the other hand, geologists and opponents of the initiative argue that there simply aren’t the same health hazards associated with natural serpentine as there is with occupational asbestos exposure, and all this publicity is accomplishing is “demonizing” the mineral. In short, opponents argue that since stripping serpentine of its title wouldn’t help eliminate any of the “true” causes of mesothelioma, it shouldn’t be done – especially when California is facing other political problems like budget shortfalls.
It’s easy to agree with aspects of both sides and to think there are other, more pressing issues that need handled…but in the end, the fact that this is sparking conversation and earning such widespread publicity is great for the Ban Asbestos Now! cause. After all, the fight to BAN! and squash mesothelioma weren’t previously a well-known issue. What harm does a little debate do if in the long run we keep our loved ones safe from this cancer-causing substance?
What do you think? Let us know in the comments section! Take a moment to leave your thoughts or sign our form to make your voice heard and urge Congress to Ban Asbestos Now!
It seems like there has been a recent uptick of coverage regarding how asbestos can affect do-it-yourself (DIY) buffs, including this BBC article saying homeowners are “ignorant on asbestos.” In light of this news, we wanted to take a moment to discuss how BAN ties in with the DIY crowd who might be unknowingly at risk for asbestos exposure.
But what is just as concerning about asbestos in buildings, is the fact that many homeowners are completely unaware of its presence, let alone how to handle it. The process to safely remove asbestos is a long and expensive one, which often requires hiring a professional service to perform the asbestos abatement. Despite these extra safety steps, a survey by the British Lung Foundation found that 45% of homeowners did not even know that asbestos was once widely used as a building material. And this comes from a country that has banned asbestos entirely!
The study also found that 65% of British homeowners were not confident they’d be able to identify asbestos and 77% said they had never received any information on how to manage the substance.
There are so many considerations here that extend beyond the question of “asbestos removal – can you do it yourself?” Above all else, this is a perfect example of the extent of the world’s asbestos problem. People don’t know about the health risks of asbestos (the most notorious asbestos exposure symptom being the development of mesothelioma) let alone the hazards they face in their own homes when embarking on DIY projects like fixing a wall, replacing tiles or rummaging around an attic with asbestos insulation.
Asbestos is all around us. It’s becoming more and more clear that we need to raise awareness about its dangers and urge Congress to ban this cancer-causing material altogether to keep it out of our homes.
While we’ve yet to discuss it in depth, Canada, like the United States, is one of the few developed countries that has not banned asbestos. However, Canada has a curious approach; asbestos can’t be used in Canada, but the country continues to manufacture and export the product. While Ban Asbestos Now! is focused on outlawing the material in the U.S., recent developments have made Canada’s asbestos debate relevant to our own.
At the center of the debate is chrysotile, one of the many types of asbestos. Canada is the fifth largest exporter of chrysotile in the world, with almost all of these products containing asbestos being sent to developing countries where appropriate safety measures and policies are not in place. Given the health risks associated with asbestos exposure, some advocates have said Canada essentially is “exporting death.”
Even more troubling are the actions taken to support this industry. The “Chrysotile Institute” is a non-profit organization set up by the Canadian government to promote the use of asbestos around the world, and the Quebec government is close to guaranteeing a $58 million loan to re-open an asbestos mine.
These are seemingly all steps in the wrong direction. But while these actions are propping up Canada’s asbestos industry, many powerful – and more importantly, international – groups are stepping in to urge Canada to stop mining and exporting asbestos altogether. Citing the link between asbestos and diseases like lung cancer and mesothelioma, these scientists and health organizations are adding further credibility to the BAN! movement – as well as boosting it on a global scale.
The groups demanding a ban on asbestos mining include the Canadian Medical Association, Canadian Public Health Association, National Specialty Society for Community Medicine, and the Collegium Ramazzini, an independent group of academic experts in environmental and occupational health.
According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 90,000 people die from asbestos-related diseases every year. Clearly, the asbestos problem extends beyond borders and needs addressed as such. Hopefully the call for a ban in Canada continues to gain steam and prompts our US government to look at itself as well and join the global community in banning this cancer-causing material.
Earlier this week, a bill began moving through California’s state legislature that would strip serpentine, the official state rock, of its title. While more often than not a state rock and its designation are completely harmless, serpentine is anything but. Serpentine contains asbestos and was once mined in industrial quantities to be used in building materials and other products containing asbestos. Given serpentine’s cancer-causing properties, people have begun promoting a bill to “Drop the Rock.”
California was one of the first states to designate an official state rock in the 1960’s, long before the health risks of asbestos were revealed to the public. Now that it has been brought to the government’s attention, many politicians agree that it’d be better to simply not have a state rock than endorse a material directly linked to asbestos-related diseases like lung cancer, asbestosis and mesothelioma.
Not only does the bill have momentum through state legislature, but it is being welcomed by groups like Ban Asbestos Now! and the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO), since it will help raise awareness and education about the material and the dangers of asbestos exposure on a large – perhaps even a national – scale.
While the final bill has not been passed, this is indeed a great start raising visibility about the history of asbestos as well as current issues, such as funding for mesothelioma research and a BAN! Here’s to California’s “Drop the Rock” bill driving momentum for the battle against asbestos nationwide!
