Posted on October 15, 2018

Once again, the Russian International Trade Union Alliance for Chrysotile and their Kazakhstani allies hosted an industry conference promoting the so-called safe use of chrysotile asbestos. Under the guise of the International Trade Union Conference on Chrysotile Asbestos and Safety, they desperately attempted to discuss workplace safety. As they boldly shared, “The conference was attended by representatives of the chrysotile industry in Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, and other countries.”

“We seek to convince our partners and colleagues that controlled use of this mineral is absolutely safe,” said Andrey Kholzakov, Chairman of the trade group that organized the conference. “By implementing the controlled use of chrysotile asbestos, new technologies and organisational solutions, we can dramatically improve the living standards of workers.”It requires no reminding that these brazen statements fly in the face of international scientific consensus. To be clear, there is no safe or controlled use of asbestos, and claims to the contrary endanger countless people around the world.

A separate reminder may indeed be in order here, however. As we respond to this industry-organized, industry-sponsored, and industry-attended conference, we can’t let ourselves forget that there is an extremely important motivator behind their science-denial. They admitted it flatly only a few months ago.“The International Alliance “Chrysotile” is convinced of the need to overcome

[asbestos regulation] in order to achieve economic growth.” Chasing the profitability of an “abundance” of “durable products” as well as “relevant tax deductions,” they have made it extremely clear where their priorities lie. Even if they appear to have cleaned up their rhetoric as of late, we can not forget their economic opportunism. In bold attempts to lobby for continued mining and use, in the same press release that quoted Kholzakov above, the industry promised that they were focusing on “protecting occupational health and creating more efficient safety systems.”

Indeed, there is a lot of money at stake here. According to ADAO’s U.S. International Trade Commission research, the U.S. spent $27,496,087 for 56,519 metric tons of asbestos between 2000 and 2017. The industry appears to be willing to go to extreme lengths to protect these investments, no matter the risks they pose to public health. Writing in 2017 for New Matilda, an Australian media outlet, investigative journalists Michael Gillard & Chris Graham detailed how a “shadowy private detective agency” named K2 Intelligence had been hired by the Kazakhstani asbestos industry to spy on a wide variety of people in the anti-asbestos movement. “Parliamentarians, public health officials, activists, academics, unionists, scientists and human rights lawyers from the UK to Australia were targeted between 2012 and 2016,” their shocking report revealed.

In recent months, the United States has set the standard for this brand of shameless behavior, and ADAO is fighting back. When President Trump’s feckless praise for asbestos prompted a Russian mining company to begin branding their products with his face, we redoubled our efforts to reach 150,000 signatures on our asbestos-ban petition. When the shocking preponderance of asbestos in American public schools was revealed last month, we took steps toward legal action against the EPA. And everytime a story has broken about asbestos exposure in this country – whether it was school children in Philadelphia, nurses in Augusta, or construction workers in Statesville – we have zeroed in our focus on passing ARBAN, the Alan Reinstein Ban Asbestos Now Act, currently pending in both the House and the Senate.

We are  committed to finding a ban on asbestos; and in doing so, calling out industry lies, even when they come dressed up as sympathy for workers at a fancy conference. It is time for the U.S. to ban asbestos without any loopholes or exemptions.

Enough.

Linda Reinstein

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