Celebrating Fernanda Giannasi, La Passionara

2013 ADAO Capitol Tour

On behalf of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO), we congratulate Fernanda Giannasi who retired this month as Labor Inspector for the Ministry of Labor in São Paulo, Brazil.  For three decades, Fernanda has defended workers’ health and safety in Brazil and was a founding member of Associação Brasileira dos Expostos ao Amianto (ABREA).

Recently called Brazil’s Brocovich, Fernanda has been a passionate and tireless leading voice in the global ban asbestos struggle, both in Brazil and around the world.

Some women might have walked away from the asbestos industry’s unrelenting pressures, lawsuits, propaganda, and slander – but not Fernanda.  Her wit, strength, and intelligence proved to be no match for the asbestos industry.

Jordan Zevon, Barbi McQueen, and Fernanda

When I met Fernanda in 2004 at the Global Asbestos Conference in in Japan, I saw the fire in her eyes but felt the tenderness in her heart.   During these past nine years, I have had the honor to stand in her shadow and learn about the global asbestos struggle in languages and experiences I’ve never known.

As a health and safety expert, her knowledge is vast and she has worked countless hours teaching others about the dangers of asbestos in Brazil. I can only imagine the tens of thousands of workers and families she has helped, fighting to protect them from deadly asbestos exposure, and continuing the fight when they became to ill to fight themselves.

Fernanda is a strong advocate for the use of social media technology to fight for an asbestos ban around the world and co-founded the Global Ban Asbestos Network (GBAN) in 2010. It was our great honor to recognize her with ADAO’s Tribute of Inspiration Award that same year. Our most recent message from Fernanda acknowledged that she was indeed retiring but ended with this: “Next week, I will start planning the future and we will go on together with you worldwide until the global ban asbestos.” Fernanda, we look forward to planning the future with you! Love, Linda

 Message from Dr. Barry Castleman, ScD, ADAO Science Advisory Board Member

Linda, Fernanda, and Barry

“A few words of appreciation for Fernanda Giannasi, her accomplishments and inspiration to people around the world, as she moves to another stage of life after having served 30 years in the Labor Ministry.  Fernanda led TV cameras through asbestos plants doing inspections, while commenting on working conditions.  She told the media the president’s child labor policy was a farce, just throwing the kids out in the street.  She called in police and the ILO (International Labour Organization) to help her get admitted into factories where workers had been killed by industrial injuries and management was refusing her entry.   She did things no other civil servant could have done, in any country.

Her 2-year-old daughter Elena would cry out “Clemente” when the telephone rang at Fernanda’s apartment in the very early morning.  Clemente was a unionist, and he called in Fernanda when there had been a terrible injury at some factory during the night.  I shuddered at the toll it took on Fernanda, walking into these bloody scenes to perform accident investigations and explain it to the union, while fighting with management over how soon they would be able to re-start production.

Fernanda organized a conference on asbestos in São Paulo in 1994 and invited a number of activists, including me.  At the time I thought it wildly unrealistic that we could get asbestos banned in a country like Brazil, which mined and used large quantities of asbestos.  On subsequent trips to Brazil, I came to appreciate that she was the extraordinary architect of a growing social movement.  She was beloved by the workers and unions, adored by the asbestos victims, trusted by the media, supported by some good politicians, and even respected by her adversaries.  And that remarkable social movement did (so far) get asbestos banned in the largest states of Brazil, while setting a Supreme Court precedent that states could go farther than the national government to protect health and the environment.

In the meanwhile, Fernanda endured many forms of pressure and viciousness.  This included a civil suit for defamation by a politician who then lost his bid for re-election after 28 years in the national legislature; repeated charges of criminal defamation by the asbestos industry and its representatives, all of which were eventually dismissed; administrative complaints including one by the government of Canada, leading to her restriction and reassignment by her bosses; menacing letters; and even death threats. Fernanda was honored with numerous awards, including the International Award of the American Public Health Association’s Occupational Health and Safety Section, and the Claudia Award given to women who have performed exceptional service to society in Brazil.  Even so, she was harassed by the bureaucrats right up until the end of her service at the Labor Ministry, instead of being encouraged to train her successors there.

I join everyone in wishing her, first of all, some peace in retirement, and after that I am sure she will continue to find fulfilling things to do as a citizen activist.”