A Lethal Industry Closing

It's good news, and it's about time.  The link between exposure to asbestos - any kind of asbestos - and lung cancer is clear enough.  The International Agency for Research on Cancer, with ties to the World Health Organization has reached the conclusion after a review of all available scientific research that asbestos, including chrysotile asbestos mined in Quebec "is carcinogenic in all its forms".

That's the bad news, actually.  The good news is that the Montreal-based Chrysotile Institute has issued notice in the Canada Gazette of its impending closure.  The Chrysotile Institute has worked hard to give asbestos a good name, insisting that, if used properly, it is perfectly safe.  Not entirely true.  But also moot, since the countries where asbestos is used are developing countries of the world which are not invested in worker safety.

The Chrysotile Institute has been instrumental in convincing these countries that their use of asbestos - particularly chrysotile asbestos, has no deleterious fall-out on worker health when it is handled in a safe and controlled manner.  Influencing the continued use within the international community of the very harmful substance.  It has long been known that asbestos construction material was linked to lung diseases.

Mined mostly in Quebec at Thetford Mines and Asbestos in the past, those mines are out of production.  For the first time in 130 years Quebec has not been mining asbestos.  But the province's industry department has made an offer to Balcorp Ltd. of Montreal of a loan guarantee to aid it in financing the reopening of the Jeffery Mine in Asbestos.

Now that the Chrysotile Institute is closing up its public relations shop, however, a signal has been sent to the international community that the industry in Canada is on the verge of collapse.  "It will be noticed all around the world because the Chrysotile Institute has been the key leader in pushing the interests in the asbestos industry around the world", according to Kathleen Ruff, senior human rights advisor to the Rideau Institute.

The World Health Organization estimates that over 100,000 people die from asbestos-related illnesses, inclusive of cancer every year.  That the institute is closing after almost thirty years of promoting the use of asbestos really is good news.  Its dissolution will help make the world a safer place for workers. 

In developed countries like Canada the dread effects of asbestos are well known, and its use is illegal.  Yet Canada has been complicit in endangering the health and the lives of people in countries where the emerging economies mean that their governments are unwilling to lose an inexpensive and useful construction fibre long used for its insulating and fire-retardant capabilities.

Finally, once the Province of Quebec gets the message and decides that there is little value in maintaining several hundred jobs in the industry in exchange for continuing to endanger the health of workers whose countries have no institutionalized worker safety guidelines, we can all breathe a little easier, with less on our conscience.