Personal Injury Law

New Health Canada Report: Wall of Shame

By asbestoshub

Canada, in case you didn’t know, mines and exports chrysotile asbestos around the world, all the while insisting it is safe.

A new Health Canada report documents the “strong relationship” between lung cancer and exposure to chrysotile asbestos. So now what?

Canada has thus far protected its asbestos industry, which supports about 550 jobs in Quebec.

A number of experts behind the Health Canada report criticized the “safe-use” idea. Also suggesting that Canada’s practice of exporting asbestos to a poor country like India, hoping they will find a way to use it more safely than it has been used in the wealthy West, is irresponsible.

In 2006, Canada took a posse to the Rotterdam Convention and successfully blocked the naming of chrysotile asbestos as a hazardous chemical. Had it been named a hazardous chemical, Canada would have been required to provide information to importing countries about the dangers.

And then there is the Canadian Government’s own report on the safety of chrysotile asbestos which took forever (okay a year) to be released. And no wonder. It’s a wee bit unfavorable. The British chair of the panel that wrote the report had previously accused the Canadian government of “misusing science” and, in failing to make the report public, of practicing “needless government secrecy.”

Since the report was only just recently released, it remains to be seen what the future holds for the asbestos mine in Quebec.

Full post as published by Asbestos HUB on April 28, 2009 (boomark / email).