Daily Dose Of Asbestos 6 Feb 08
(http://tehelka.com/story_main37.asp?filename=cr160208dailydose.asp)
This May an international convention is set to limit the use of asbestos. Why is India dissenting and risking cancer? asks Nityanand Jayaraman
ONE OF my friends has lung cancer. I'm told I may also get mesothelioma. Asbestos has entered my lungs. I have difficulty in breathing, running, climbing." Ravi Mohite is one of 41 certified victims of asbestosis from a cohort of 181-odd workers from Hindustan Composites Ltd, a Mumbai-based asbestos product manufacturer. With Mesothelioma, what begins as pronounced shortness of breath and a rasping incessant cough, quickly degenerates. The victim suffers rapid weight loss, and coughs out sputum. Such symptoms, though, can take 20 years or more from the time of exposure to emerge. There is no help in sight for Mohite or for the more than one lakh Indian workers who are exposed to this deadly fibre every day at the workplace.
Asbestos is widely used in Asia as insulation material, and in asbestos-cement products such as pipes and roofing. At least 10 million lives will be lost globally before asbestos is banned worldwide, according to a 2004 report in the international journal Environmental Health Perspectives. In Roro, close to Chaibasa in Jharkhand, Hyderabad Asbestos Cement Products Ltd of the CK Birla group, abandoned the chrysotile asbestos mines 25 years ago, and left the waste piled on top of a hill. The wastes now wash down on Adivasi villages at the foothills of Roro Hills.
Meanwhile, a new report compiled by Corporate Accountability Desk, a program of New Delhi-based The Other Media, reveals that the Indian government is concerned more about the health of the asbestos cement industry than health of workers. Titled "A Fox in the Hen House", the report documents, in the words of the asbestos industry and the Ministry of Chemicals, a tale of government-industry nexus to manufacture science with the stated intent of defending chrysotile asbestos use. More than 40 countries have banned chrysotile asbestos, which finds use as insulation material, and in pipes and roofing. In May 2008, the Chemical Review Committee of the Rotterdam Convention on Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides will meet to consider listing chrysotile as a material requiring prior informed consent (PIC) for international trade. India is one of six countries opposing the inclusion of asbestos against the wishes of 95 percent of parties to the Convention.
LEST ITS opposition be termed unscientific, the Ministry of Chemicals in 2004 commissioned study for Rs 60 lakh — funded by the asbestos cement industry by Rs 16 lakhs — to assess the health and environmental hazards of chrysotile. "Using science to inform policy that will affect millions of people is laudable," says Madhumita Dutta, author of the report and an environmental justice advocate. "This is made-to-order science. It is unethical, ill-designed and will prove to be an international embarrassment for India and NIOH." Ahmedabad-based National Institute of Occupational Health is the agency chosen to conduct the study. All forms of asbestos, to varying degrees, increase the risk of lung cancer and cause mesothelioma.
The asbestos industry grudgingly acknowledged the hazards of most forms of asbestos after delaying regulatory action for nearly a century since the first evidence emerged in 1899 linking asbestos with a fatal disease. But the industry has dug its heels to keep markets open for chrysotile, an asbestos variety that it claims is less risky when used in controlled conditions. About 95 percent of all asbestos used worldwide is chrysotile. "It was chrysotile that we worked with, and chrysotile that caused my illness," Mohite says. The WHO estimates that 125 million people are being occupationally exposed to asbestos, and that such exposures lead to 90,000 preventable deaths annually. The squeeze on asbestos began in the 1980s in industrialised nations that were faced with mounting litigation costs and crippling compensation claims filed by injured workers. Simultaneously, asbestos-producing countries — Canada is the largest producer — began pushing the product to unsuspecting markets in the South that were ready for anything with a cheap price tag.
Today, 90 percent of the countries with the highest percent increases in asbestos consumption are in Asia, with India accounting for 10 percent of global consumption in 2005. Just 17 Indian companies producing asbestos cement products have chalked more than 30 percent growth, producing more than $200 million worth of products in 2005. According to Laurie Kazan-Allen, an asbestos industry watcher with the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat in London, "The industry's success buys it powerful allies." The Ministry of Chemicals set up a Review Committee to guide the NIOH study. The study is predisposed to justify continued asbestos use, the Other Media report alleges.
A letter of April 24, 2006 from the Ministry to NIOH is seemingly open about what the findings of the study should be: "The deliverables will include generation of data which would justify the safe standards of (chrysotile's) usage as also the reasons/ rationale justifying its non-inclusion/or otherwise in the PIC ambit." However, subsequent minutes of Review Committee meetings and the definition of stakeholders — only asbestos industry and chrysotile asbestos-producing and consuming countries — suggest a strong inclination to manipulate data. "The study will specifically indicate as to how technology has made working conditions better. The same will include relevant photographs showing protective measures being undertaken," says a note dated April 18, 2007. "After submitting the draft report, NIOH will organise a national workshop to discuss the findings with the relevant industry stakeholders and based on the feedback the final report will be prepared," reports another letter from the Ministry to NIOH.
AN INDUSTRY representative, however, was emphatic in his denial of the very existence of a "review" committee. "First, there is no review committee. It cannot be there. We are only assisting in providing facilities and logistics. We have no access to the report in progress," claims Brig AK Sethi of the Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers Association. "Peer review has been replaced by payer review... the results will have no credibility," says Dr Barry Castleman, a US-based environmental consultant who has spent a lifetime tracking the asbestos industry. The Indian government and asbestos industry's justification for continued asbestos use hinges on the theoretical possibility of "controlled use", a claim dismissed even by the World Trade Organisation, a body known to be averse to labour and environmental objections to free trade. In 2000, the WTO dismissed Canada's appeal against France's decision to impose a ban on chrysotile. WTO's 2001 report is revealing: "...scientific evidence of record for this finding of carcinogenicity of chrysotile asbestos fibres is so clear, voluminous, and is confirmed a number of times by a variety of international organisations, as to be practically overwhelming."
The Indian ship-breaking industry presents the starkest demonstration of "controlled use". The multi-billion dollar industry employs migrant labour to strip asbestos insulation from dead ships. If released and used in its evolving form as a scientific justification of continued asbestos use in the country, the NIOH study will, in Castleman's words, expose "the Indian government's role as a modern low point in corruption of governments by the asbestos industry."
Writer's email id:
nity68@gmail.com
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