July 15, 2010
If asbestos is so dangerous, why do we support it?
Read the full article at The Province
By Dr. Cordell Neudorf, Special to The Province
Why does Canada apply strict measures domestically to protect the health of Canadians handling asbestos and yet exports asbestos to developing countries such as India, where the capacity to implement and monitor the application of similar precautionary measures is inadequate?
This was the question posed by Dr. T.K. Joshi, director of the Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health in Delhi and India’s leading anti-asbestos advocate, when he visited Canada earlier this year.
The Canadian Public Health Association, the Canadian Medical Association and the National Specialty Society for Community Medicine have reviewed the evidence and jointly support a ban on the mining and export of asbestos. The Canadian Cancer Society, the Association des medecins specialistes en sante communautaire du Quebec and the Quebec Medical Association have independently come to the same conclusion.
[. . .]
As health professionals, we believe that the health implications of public policy must be taken into consideration. We share the concerns of residents of the asbestos mining region in Quebec about the impact on individuals, families and communities of closing the mines. We urge governments at all levels to take the substantial funding they are investing in extraction, exportation and promotion of asbestos and use it, instead, to support the transition of asbestos mining regions. What is needed is investment in environmentally healthy and sustainable enterprises and the retraining of those currently employed by the unsustainable asbestos industry. Our government must also cease its opposition to the listing of chrysotile asbestos in the Rotterdam Convention’s list of hazardous substances.
Dr. Neudorf is chairman of the Canadian Public Health Association
