Once again, Christopher Booker’s uses the old “ABC Defense” (anything but chrysotile) in “Farmers to fight a £6bn #asbestos scam: A legal challenge is being mounted to the new asbestos regulations.”  Don’t be fooled, all six types of asbestos, chrysotile, amosite, crocidolite, remolite, anthophyllite and actinolite, are known human carcinogens.

[1]

History is a great teacher to those who listen. More than 30 years ago, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) declared asbestos to be a human carcinogen. The World Health Organization  estimates, “more than 107,000 people die each year from asbestos-related lung cancer, mesothelioma and asbestosis resulting from occupational exposures.” [2]

Yet Booker writes, “the framing of national asbestos policy has been taken over by a group of lobbyists centres on the deliberate confusion of two very different minerals, both given the unscientific name “asbestos”. It is 50 years since the world first learnt of the dangers of exposure to the amphibole (or “blue” and “brown”) forms of asbestos fibre, iron silicates which remain in the lungs for years and can cause horrifying diseases such as mesothelioma. But in the years that followed, a systematic attempt was made to blur this type together with the very much commoner “white” asbestos, a magnesium silicate which quickly dissolves in the human lung, and which, particularly when it is used as a bonding agent in cement, poses no measurable risk to health at all. The fibres in cement (90 per cent of all asbestos products in the UK) undergo a chemical change which makes them no longer respirable.”

I am just one of the hundreds of thousands of asbestos victims in the world. In 2003, after enduring nine months of symptoms and multiple visits to doctors, my husband, Alan, was diagnosed with mesothelioma.  I had ever heard of mesothelioma and thought asbestos had been banned in the United States. Alan underwent a surgical procedure that removed a rib, left lung, and pericardium and replaced his diaphragm — in hopes of having more time with our family. But, because of his asbestos exposure, our then-10-year-old daughter had to watch her father slowly die from a preventable disease. Sadly, our experience was a common one.

Fueling misinformation, Booker repeatedly claims that white asbestos is “chemically identical to talcum powder” and poses a “non-existent” risk to human health. [3]

Only 55 countries have banned asbestos and the United States and Canada are not on this list. Deadly asbestos will continue violate human and environmental rights until we have an enforceable global asbestos ban.

One life lost to an asbestos-caused disease is tragic; hundreds of thousands of lives lost is unconscionable. With your help, we can end the deadly legacy of asbestos.   I urge you to support your national and the growing international efforts to prevent environmental and occupational asbestos-caused diseases.  Please start today – share this blog, the facts, and Brooker’s article with your network.

Together, change is possible.

Linda

Linda Reinstein’s Social Networks

ADAO Social Networks