Posted on July 31, 2019
Support for a federal ban of asbestos is growing in the United States. Though the majority of Americans believe that the fiber has already been banned, the truth is that it’s still a real and ever present threat. In July, Drs. Philip Landrigan and Richard Lemen published the following paper in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine entitled: A Most Reckless Proposal – A Plan to Continue Asbestos Use in the United States. The paper examines the reckless nature of the Trump Administration as it continues some uses of asbestos under new rules of the Environmental Protection Agency, which President Trump has stacked with chlor-alkali industry proponents. Their paper shows why the current EPA rules are senseless and harmful, and calls for the immediate passage of the Alan Reinstein Ban Asbestos Now Act of 2019, a bipartisan and bicameral bill with 50 cosponsors that is currently under consideration by both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives.