Asbestos: a Problem of Politeness?

Oh, it’s funny to be from a country that’s internationally renowned for being polite. Around here, if I accidentally bump into someone, we both apologize. So I don’t quite get why Canada, despite serious and angry international pressure, continues to defend asbestos. Sure, it’s handy stuff; it makes a great insulator and a marvelous fire retardant.  But most western governments banned it in the 1980s after scientists discovered that inhalation of the tiny fibers can lead to fatal respiratory diseases and cancer.

International health bigwigs are certainly convinced of its evils. The International Agency for Cancer Research in France has deemed it a carcinogen and the UK Health and Safety Executive says that asbestos is responsible for the greatest number of work-related deaths in the country. According to the American Bar Association, 600,000 people in the US have filed lawsuits over asbestos exposure and related health problems. The World Heath Organization also estimates that 90,000 people die worldwide from asbestos exposure every year. As a major asbestos mining country, Canada has more than its fair share of asbestos illnesses. A 1984 Royal Ontario Commission described the Johns-Manville asbestos plant in Scarborough, east of Toronto, as a “world-class industrial disaster.” Today, thousands of former asbestos workers are sick and dying.

It’s no surprise then, that I figured Canada wouldn’t touch the stuff with a barge pole. But just this past October, Canadian officials in Geneva stepped in for the third time (along with the unlikely allies Iran and Kyrgyzstan) to block the addition of asbestos to the UN’s Rotterdam Convention on toxic substances. The International Labour Organization, the WHO, the European Union, and other major health and occupational agencies are still fuming.

Canada, the world’s fourth largest producer of asbestos, with over 200,000 metric tonnes mined annually, claims that its kind of asbestos is safe, or at least as safe as the alternatives. The crux of the government’s defense hinges on the difference between amphibole and chrysotile asbestos, says Raymond Gaetan, a minerals specialist at Natural Resources Canada in Ottawa. Both are fibrous silicates naturally occurring in mineral deposits around the world. But amphibole splits into tiny needle-shaped fibers that can penetrate deep into the lung and stay there indefinitely while chrysotile asbestos (the only kind that’s currently mined in Canada) is composed of softer fibers that dissolve in lung fluid on a relatively short timescale. “The amphiboles are orders of magnitude more potent at causing illnesses than chrysotile,” says Gaetan. He claims that Canada’s position - that chrysotile can be used without undue risk provided it is manufactured and handled with care - is founded in good science.

Gordon Bragg, a retired University of Waterloo professor, has no doubt that chrysotile is carcinogenic, but says protection is possible and chrysotile can be used as safely as any alternative. He agrees that chrysotile is less potent than amphibole, pointing to research published by collaborators from McGill University in Montreal and Imperial College London. This focused on health problems suffered by miners in Thetford, Quebec, which has two distinct mineralogical areas – one chrysotile and one amphibole. After checking out 283 lung cancer cases and mesothelioma deaths between 1971 and 1992, the researchers found that those working in the chrysotile mines, who were not contaminated with amphibole, were about as likely to get lung cancer as any other member of the blue-collar population, while those contaminated with amphibole had twice the risk of getting the disease.

In addition, Gaetan and Bragg both stress that the health and safety research on products being used in place of asbestos is almost non-existent. Cellulose, polyvinyl chloride, and polyvinyl alcohol are common replacements and all have a similar fiber structure to asbestos. And yet, in 2005, the WHO reviewed 12 different asbestos substitutes and concluded that the health hazards of the top three were “indeterminate.”

None of this has stopped over 30 countries from establishing an outright ban on all types of asbestos, or the WHO from endorsing their stance. Supporters of the ban point to two separate studies of the chrysotile textile industry in South Carolina. Two research groups independently followed workers at the same factory from 1938-1970 and both reached the same startling conclusions: the risk of dying from lung cancer was double what had been previously measured for chrysotile workers. Findings at textile facilities in Pennsylvania and Rochdale, UK, corroborated the results, although the same level of risk has never been measured for miners or other workers exposed to this type of asbestos. It’s not really clear why: theories about fiber length and co-exposure of textile workers to mineral oils and cigarette smoke have been proposed but not confirmed.

A more relevant question might be: does it matter? In a 2001 editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Michael Camus of Health Canada, criticized the South Carolina research as unrepresentative of the wider chrysotile asbestos industry, saying that today’s standards for exposure are 1000 times lower than they were during the study period, and that these mysteriously awful textile jobs don’t even really exist anymore.

I’m willing to buy the argument that we have the technology to protect Canadian miners – as well as anyone else who encounters carcinogens in their job, anyway. I’m less sure that workers in other countries are going to be OK. Canada exports 95% of its chrysotile to developing countries like India and Thailand and critics say that workers abroad might not know that exposure to asbestos can kill them, or have access to proper safety equipment. Gaetan argues that Canada only exports to those nations who keep up with tough safety standards, but the reality, according to Bragg, is that many workers in developing countries probably don’t know they are at risk. He has traveled the world over to inspect asbestos facilities. The safest plant he ever saw was in Madras, India, and the worst – the only time he ever requested a respirator – was in Syria.

As a Canadian, I worry that we could end up exporting the type of occupational disaster we made for ourselves here thirty years ago. I find it hard to understand why my government is being so pushy about asbestos. The industry only supports about 800 jobs directly and a further 1000 indirectly. In 2004, exports were valued at just over $166 million – which is not a huge component of our economy – and federal documents indicate that our global market share is declining each year due to a combination of reduced demand and competition from emerging exporters like Kyrgyzstan.

However, tellingly, asbestos may be the only thing keeping a couple of small Quebec towns alive – at least economically. The asbestos mines these towns rely on may also be a powerful reminder of Quebec’s nationalist identity: a bitter strike by asbestos workers in 1949 pitted the French-speaking public against the government and English-speaking mine owners. It was viewed by many as presaging the “quiet revolution” in Quebec, a time of massive cultural, political and social change – including the rise of a powerful separatist movement that wanted a free, French Quebec, separate from Canada.

For the last few years, Canadians have been diplomatically tiptoeing around the Quebec separatist issue in the interests of getting a few other things done. After all, internal discord does not usually lead to progress and prosperity. So I wonder: are we in an international row just to avoid a homegrown political asbestos minefield? After all, we’re usually so polite.