Another effort to ban asbestos has surfaced in the House.
For almost two decades, skirmishes, brawls and battles have been fought to prevent Americans from being exposed to the lethal effects of asbestos. Let’s hope the latest congressional attempt will finally breech the lobbyist-protected walls surrounding the asbestos industry.
Monuments attesting to the dangers of asbestos can be seen in graveyards near the taconite mines in Minnesota, Michigan’s auto plants, Boeing’s aircraft factories in Washington, talc mines in New York, the vermiculite mine at Libby, Montana, and near shipyards coast to coast. Millions more are being treated for asbestos-related diseases like mesothelioma, lung cancer and asbestosis.
More than 40 countries, including the European Union, have banned asbestos. Why has it been so hard to ban it in the U.S.?
In 1989, the EPA instituted a ban. Months later, the Canadian asbestos industry hauled it into court and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned it on technical reasons. Canada has its own issues with asbestos, with active chrysotile asbestos mines in Quebec, 95% of which is exported. Canada continues to block international efforts to place asbestos on the list of world’s worst substances and provide warnings for importing countries.
Last October, Sen. Patty Murray got the entire U.S. Senate to pass a ban on asbestos.
At first, the public health community cheered. But a careful reading of the final language made it clear that the ban really wasn’t all that was expected or needed.
But it didn’t go far enough. Somewhere between the final version that Murray fought for and the wording that the Senate finally voted upon, there were unexpected loopholes that torpedoed almost all of Murray’s enormous effort.
Responding to the outcry from both civilian and government public health advocates. the House Committee on Energy and Commerce said it would try to plug the holes and issue its own ban.
Many of the same experts that worked so hard for Murray responded to the call from the House. Those opposing the ban also quickly mobilized.
The White House Office of Management and Budget tried and failed to keep the EPA from supporting a ban of “any products in which asbestos is intentionally added, used or knowingly present as a contaminant.”
The bill – H.R. 6903 – is sponsored by Texas Democrat Gene Green, the chairman of the subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous Materials, who says the ban is needed “to protect the health of all Americans from this d3eadly toxic material” because every year nearly 10,000 people in the United States die from asbestos-related diseases.
Other House committees will have to weigh in to add money for research on asbestos-related disease. There are many significant improvements in Green’s legislation, including a limit on how much asbestos can exist in any product that is mined, imported, processed, used or sold. Industry had argued that any products or material with below 1 percent asbestos content was “safe,” while the public health community argued that there is no known safe level of exposure.
The House bill sets a limit of zero percent asbestos, none, in products and much safer limit of 0.001 percent for five minerals often contaminated with asbestos fibers. They would be calcium carbonate, olivine, talc, vermiculite, and wollastonite.
Also, the law would ban the asbestos-contaminated waste from taconite iron mining which companies sell for road and runway surfacing.
And now, years after government health investigators showed that asbestos-tainted talc was killing many of the workers who mined it and the consumers who used it, it too will be illegal.
It is not known what the ban would do to the millions of home and business owners who have Zonolite vermiculite insulation in their attics and walls. Based on tests by both the government and its manufacturer, W.R. Grace, Zonolite can have and release large amounts of asbestos fibers if even slightly disturbed.
The ban still has a way to go before becoming law. Congress is about to recess again so members can go home to campaign.
Lots of people who treat victims of asbestos disease and others who have lost loved ones, want this asbestos ban to become law.
Linda Reinstein, herself an asbestos widow and co-founder and executive director of the victim’s advocacy group Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, said “The public relies on congress to protect it from known dangerous substances. This ban must be passed into law so we can finally eradicate the deadly diseases caused from asbestos exposure that plagues so many families.”
