Personal Injury Law

India?s expanding use of asbestos brings dire warnings | McClatchy

By asbestoshub

Quoted from http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/07/21/97621/indias-expanding-use-of-asbestos.html

India’s expanding use of asbestos brings dire warnings

Asbestos use is growing quickly in developing countries like India. | Photo: Sonumadhavan

By Murali Krishnan and Shantanu Guha Ray | International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

NEW DELHI ? Every day, the swirling waters of the Arabian Sea bring misery to Alang, the world’s largest shipbreaking yard, in western India’s Gujarat state.

An estimated 55,000 workers, unmindful of the lethal effects of asbestos-laden material in the vessels, slave for long hours taking apart old ships and, in the process, are exposed to deadly fibers.

The Indian government is aware of the risks but loath to interfere: The men need jobs, and India’s economy, among the world’s fastest-growing, needs secondary steel from the beached vessels.

“Reclamation and recycling,” said Pravin Nagarsheth, the president of the Iron Steel Scrap and Shipbreakers Association of India, “is a highly lucrative business.”

One hundred-twenty miles north of Alang, workers at hundreds of dusty asbestos factories in the city of Ahmedabad face similar hazards in the name of economic development: lung cancer, asbestosis and a rapacious malignancy called mesothelioma, usually found in the chest cavity. In this case the end product is asbestos sheet, widely used in construction.

The two locales are centers of an emerging epidemic of asbestos-related disease in India.

Valued for its heat and fire resistance, asbestos was once widely used worldwide, but 52 countries ban or restrict it now. The use of the mineral is banned entirely in the European Union. In the United States ? where it’s blamed for some 200,000 deaths and has cost the industry $70 billion in damages and litigation expenses ? asbestos use is limited to a handful of products, such as automobile brakes and gaskets, and rarely used even in those.

In India, however, asbestos use is booming.

[Article continues at original source]

Full post as published by Asbestos HUB on July 21, 2010 (boomark / email).