Unregulated Asbestos Being Shipped to China and India

"Asbestos Kills" protest sign on inflatable coffin. Photo courtesy: gruntzooki

To hell in an asbestos hand basket Asia goes, led by unfettered global trade, greed, and a general inability to manage public health risks effectively. Growing asbestos exposures in India and China - the most heavily populated nations - are such a cluster fracking it makes me glad my children live in Canada.

Logic will soon rule again in the US, though I am not so sure about Brazil & Kazakhstan. Canada has run out of asbestos to export so it gets a free pass.

As reported on Mesothelioma.com in the story Experts Forecast Global "Catastrophe of Death and Disease" From Asbestos Use.

Asia is heading for a huge jump in asbestos-related diseases in the coming decades, according to numerous scientific studies and two of the world’s most prominent experts on public health and asbestos exposure. Not surprisingly, the consequences are expected to be felt most severely in India and China, two emerging economies and most populous countries in the world.

“What we can expect is very predictable – an absolute catastrophe of death and disease,” Dr. Arthur Frank, chairman of environmental and occupational health at Drexel University, said in a recent interview with this reporter. He added that the coming catastrophe is “all preventable.”

Canadian pipes and governance in this matter, though heavily insulated with hypocrisy, seem to have run out of steam since, as Lloyd reported, their asbestos mines are nearly depleted.

Canada, for example, has banned the use of asbestos domestically and is scheduled to begin a $1 billion renovation project to clean its parliamentary buildings of asbestos this summer.

Asian Scientist has the latest blame forensics, in which poor Canada has slipped to 5th place:

In 2010, almost half of asbestos production was in Russia (49 percent). Other big producers were China (20 percent), Brazil (13 percent), Kazakhstan (10 percent), and Canada (5 percent). Most of it was used in China (29 percent), India (17 percent), Russia (14 percent), Kazakhstan (7 percent), Brazil (7 percent), Indonesia (5 percent), Uzbekistan (5 percent), Thailand (4 percent), Vietnam (4 percent), Ukraine (3 percent), Sri Lanka (2 percent), and Iran (1 percent)...

Of the 12 top consumers worldwide of white asbestos, only Thailand and Vietnam have taken action to reduce or ban its use.