ADAO 12th Annual International Asbestos Awareness and Prevention Conference
Where Knowledge and Action Unite
April 8 – 10, 2016
Location: Crystal Gateway Marriott in Washington D.C.
Register Here

 

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Posted on March 28, 2016

The Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) is proud to present a new weekly series” Meet the Speakers and Honorees,” highlighting one or several attendees at our highly-anticipated 12th Annual International Asbestos Awareness & Prevention Conference!  The ADAO Conference, which will take place on April 8-10, 2016 in Washington, DC, combines over 30 expert opinions, victims’ stories, and new technological advancements from more than 10 countries into one united voice raised for asbestos awareness.  ADAO is the only U.S. nonprofit that organizes annual conferences dedicated solely to preventing exposure and eliminating asbestos-caused diseases.  Register today!

Session IV Speakers: Marilyn Amento; Earl Dotter; Fernanda Giannasi; Agata Mazzeo; Carmine Tiano; Eric Jonckheere

Session IV Moderator: Barry Castleman, ScD

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Marilyn Amento has been involved with ADAO since before the first Asbestos Awareness Conference in Washington, DC in 2005. Marilyn is the widow of Joe Amento, Jr. who died of mesothelioma at the age of 53, only 6 months after his first symptom. Joe was exposed to asbestos approximately 40 years prior while visiting his father at one of the several asbestos plants, and playing on asbestos scrap piles in the small borough of Ambler, a Philadelphia suburb. Marilyn has a Master’s Degree in Human Services Management from The Heller School of Brandeis University, and is the proud Mom of two college students, Joe and Julie. She channels her grief and anger with the asbestos industry by working with ADAO and educating the public about asbestos through her strong Facebook presence.

 

Barry Castleman, ScD, (Moderator), is an Environmental Consultant trained in chemical and environmental engineering. He holds a Doctor of Science degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. He has been a consultant to numerous agencies of the US government and other governments, international bodies, and environmental groups dealing with a wide range of public health issues. He has testified as an expert in civil litigation in the US on the history of asbestos as a public health problem and the reasons for failure to properly control asbestos hazards. Dr. Castleman has spent the past 40 years working on asbestos as a public health problem.

 

IMG_6927Earl Dotter, began photographing coal miners in 1969, then the most dangerous job in America. After which, he focused on other hazardous occupations in the USA. After 30 years of documentation he created the exhibit and book, THE QUIET SICKNESS: A Photographic Chronicle of Hazardous Work in America. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard School of Public Health since his appointment in 1999. In the year 2000, Dotter received an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship to document commercial fishing. It had become our nation’s most dangerous trade. After 9/11, he photographed the rescue recovery effort at Ground Zero. For that exhibit work he received the APHA’s, Alice Hamilton Award. Currently Dotter is following hazardous jobs new immigrants perform in the USA.

 

giannasiFernanda Giannasi is a Civil and Safety Engineer and ex-Labor Inspector for the Ministry of Labor and Employment for 30 years, currently retired and acting as an expert advisor for the Labour Prosecutors (Federal Labour Public Ministry) as well the asbestos victims’ solicitors. She is the coordinator of the Virtual Citizen Ban Asbestos Network for Latin America, founder of the Brazilian Association of People Exposed to Asbestos (ABREA) and Fellow of the Collegium Ramazzini. She serves as an expert witness in judicial cases related to asbestos, nuclear and other toxic chemicals as Mercury, POP´s – Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). She also leaded thousands of workers who have filed lawsuits against the asbestos industry. In charge of a Federal Labor Inspector, she staunchly defended the public interest on workers’ safety and health and was pressured by the asbestos lobby and endured all kind the, pressures, harassments including death threats, offensive campaigns and criminal charges by her detractors. Despite of these threatens, she has been awarded in Brazil and internationally in Canada (Ray Sentes Award), USA by the APHA-American Public Health Association and ISEE-International Society for Environmental Epidemiology, Japan by the Tajiri Muneaki Memorial Fund. She is internationally well known and highly respected for her proficient and perseverant campaigning to save lives from asbestos. Fernanda Giannasi is the personification of the fight against asbestos in Brazil. Not for nothing is she called ‘The Brockovich of Brazil’. See e.g. http://www.publicintegrity.org/2010/07/21/3418/brockovich-brazil.

 

Mazzeo A. headshotAgata Mazzeo is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at the University of Bologna, Italy. During her doctoral career she spent a period of study (ten months) at the Faculty of Public Health of the University of São Paulo (Brazil). She studied at the University of Bari (Bachelor in Literature), University of Bologna (Master’s Degree in Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology), and University of Amsterdam (MSc in Medical Anthropology). Her PhD project is based on an in-depth ethnographic fieldwork concerning the anti-asbestos activism organised by subjects affected by the private and social suffering related to asbestos manufacturing in Osasco (São Paulo). Agata’s current research interests are rooted on previous anthropological investigations of two Italian urban contexts contaminated by asbestos pollution, Bari (her hometown) and Casale Monferrato.

 

carmineCarmine Tiano has a MA from York University, a Diploma in Regulatory Law and is a graduate of McMaster University’s Occupational Health program. He is currently employed with the Ontario Building Trades, which is an umbrella organization representing 13 international construction unions with 122 locals in Ontario covering 150,000 construction workers.

 

eric

Eric Jonckheere, is President of the Asbestos Belgium Victims Association (ABEVA), an asbestos victim group from Belgium. His father Pierre worked at the Belgian multinational Eternit. In the 60’s it was a honor to be employed at the factory. Jacques Jonckheere, his brother, was hired in 1948 to create Eternit Congo in the Belgian colony. Both were dedicated to their work. Pierre lost his life due to mesothelioma in 1987 not knowing his wife Francoise and his five boys had also been heavily contaminated with asbestos. Eric’s mother in 2000 and two of his brothers (Pierre-Paul and Stéphane) lost also their lives in 2003 and 2010 at the age of 43. Francoise refused the financial settlement Eternit tried to offer. 40 000 € would force her to remain quiet, but she had to speak out and denounce what a powerful lobby had done in Belgium and around the world. As an airline pilot, Eric tries to pursue Francoise’s quest for justice.

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Check back next week for the seventh and final “Meet the Speakers and Honorees” blog featuring to our amazing Sunday Unity and Remembrance Brunch speakers.

In Unity,

Linda

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The Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO),  a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, does not make legal referrals.