The Canadian government is expected to continue blocking international efforts to place the chrysotile variety of asbestos, the type mined in Quebec, on the UN’s list of the world’s worst substances, at a high-level international meeting next month.
A group of public health and environmental activists tried to have the Harper government announce whether it would change its position to supporting action against chrysotile, but was rebuffed.
The group says the Liberals, who have been trying to burnish their environmental credentials through their Green Shift program, also declined to support the listing. That suggests that regardless of which of the two major parties wins the election, Canada’s controversial position at the United Nations body, known as the Rotterdam Convention, is unlikely to change.
Yesterday, the group released letters signed by dozens of prominent Canadian and foreign public-health experts appealing to both Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion and Conservative Leader Stephen Harper to reconsider Canada’s efforts to promote chrysotile.
At the last meeting of the convention in 2006, Canada led a group of countries including Iran, Zimbabwe and Kyrgyzstan in blocking the listing.
Had it been listed, chrysotile would have been placed on the roster of substances considered so dangerous that any importing country would be required to give prior informed consent showing that it knows it’s buying an extremely dangerous material before any shipments would be allowed.
About 95% of Canadian asbestos is exported. The federal government opposed listing, arguing that with appropriate safeguards, the Third World countries that buy nearly all of the country’s output can minimize health risks.
The Rotterdam Convention lists 39 hazardous materials that are banned or severely restricted for either health or environmental reasons, including the insecticide DDT, compounds containing the nerve toxin mercury, and PCBs – industrial chemicals linked to intelligence impairments in children.
The convention was established in part to prevent Third World countries from becoming dumping grounds for dangerous substances no longer acceptable for use in advanced Western countries.
The decision by Canada and its allies to block action on chrysotile has caused the UN to circulate proposals for revising the way the convention operates.
One proposal up for discussion at the meeting would be for the UN body to create a second list of substances on which the countries can’t agree.
Disgusting. This must be stopped by appealing to the public to protest to the government en masse.
Yes asbestos should be BANNED from ever being shipped any where in the world .I know from first hand what it does to people . I watched a man die from exposure to it ,its great at killing them ,one invisible fiber breathed in can kill 10 .20 .30 .years down the road and it horrible to see these people after they get the cancer from this asbestos .its a terrible way to die . if these people that go around this asbestos, go home with their coveralls on and remove them in the same room that their wife and children are in they become exposed from the fibers coming off of the coveralls , these companies have been sued by thousands of people in Canada and the USA but they still want to keep selling and shipping this death causing substance around the world to people that dont know about the dangers of it ..Close down these mines and places that have anything to do with asbestos to stop this stuff from killing people.Band it ,dont ship it anywhere.If Harper allows this then he dont deserve to get one VOTE . votes are not worth peoples lives..Mesothelioma is a deadly cancer caused from asbestos exposure.