India ranks as the world’s largest importer of asbestos, most of which goes into making corrugated roofing sheets for slum dwellings, like these in Mumbai.
Photograph by: Adeel Halim, Bloomberg News
montrealgazette.com.....asbestos has become Canada’s new sin, tarred as an evil at home and abroad.
In just three years, asbestos went from being one of the country’s great exports, supported by all political parties at the House of Commons, to being vilified by politicians of all stripes, including some Conservatives.
“We’ve reached a tipping point in our attitude toward asbestos and so has the world. Canada’s boy-scout image is being tarnished,” said New Democrat MP Pat Martin, who has been fighting to ban asbestos mining since he was first elected in 1997.
“In many circles, we’ve become an international pariah. Clubbing baby seals, dumping asbestos in the Third World and tarsands are probably the three biggest embarrassments for Canada on the international stage,” Martin said.
...In a news release, the members of parliament expressed concerns about the “serious harm to the health of workers mining asbestos, the processing and use of which is already banned in the EU.”
In November, Australia’s Upper House passed a motion urging the government to press Canada to stop producing and exporting asbestos – an insulating mineral used in construction that is linked to deadly lung diseases, including cancer.
Activists in Asian countries, notably in India, are increasingly holding demonstrations to protest against asbestos exports, which they say are causing harm to workers.
Mohit Gupta, coordinator of the Occupational and Environmental Health Network of India, called Canada’s plan to eliminate tariffs on asbestos exports to India “an appalling travesty of all ethical codes of human behaviour.”
“All of this is giving Canada an enormous black eye around the world. People can’t believe that Canada is acting as a rogue country and that Canada is the biggest public-health obstacle internationally to making any progress on the asbestos issue,” said Kathleen Ruff, a prominent anti-asbestos campaigner.
