Brussels, 26/09/2005 (Agence Europe) - The goal of the European Conference on Asbestos: Politics, Health and Human Rights, organised on 22-23 September in Brussels by the European United Left/ Nordic Green Left group at the EP was to ensure that future generations are protected from the dangers of asbestosis. They also discussed how such protection could be guaranteed, with the EU examining the failures and successes of its asbestos policy. At the end of the conference, the participants (workers' representatives, medical association and specialist international agencies) adopted a declaration, which will be transmitted to the competent authorities and in which it launches an appeal for 2005-06 to be designated “the Year of Action on Asbestos”. They also called for the EU, particularly the European Parliament, to work towards establishing a European action plan against asbestos.
The Brussels Declaration recommends: 1) preventive action to rigorously reinforce EU and national legislation by labelling asbestos products with the skull and cross bones and introducing mandatory audits of public buildings by 2007 and private residences by 2008; guidelines for measuring contamination and asbestos in soil and researching new methods for asbestos waste treatment; 2) action on human rights by setting up national registers of asbestos-related disease; developing medical guidelines for the “best treatment” of these diseases; the setting of minimum financial assistance for all asbestos victims; 3) ensuring EU legislation bans use of asbestos by European companies everywhere in the world to safeguard the rights of workers employed by these multinationals and/or their clients in developing countries.
Opening the conference, chaired by GUE/NGL president Francis Wurtz (France), Kartika Liotard MEP (Netherlands) criticised the lack of funds for research in this area and regretted that Commissioners Spidla (social affairs) and Dimas (environment) had chosen not to come to the conference. Liotard made a vigorous appeal for problems linked to asbestos to by put on the EU political agenda and European legislation to be put in place and correctly applied. The president of the Belgian Association of Asbestos Victims (ABEVA), Xavier Jonckheere, said that the asbestos problem involved the whole planet, “What is today banned in our countries is being carried out elsewhere where workers' protection measures are non existent and where the asbestos lobby is very powerful!” He also gave the example of the Eternit Belgique company which he described as one of the biggest consumers in the world. He called for the initiative by Belgian Liberal, Doctor Alain Destexhe to ban asbestos, to be supported. Spanish unionist and member of the CC.OO Angel Carcoba said that in Spain, more than 3 million tonnes of asbestos were consumed between 1975 and 1985. He highlighted the role played by unions, experts and asbestos victims associations but also referred to the “socially programmed deaths”. He pointed out that asbestos was both a public health and environmental problem”. He therefore called on the Commission to take initiatives for 2006-08 as part of the presentation of guidelines to revise the more negative aspects of current legislation. He concluded that the fight against asbestos had to be continued and they had to give answers to the victims calling for justice, “We need a more reliable diagnosis of the asbestos situation in Europe”. Bulgarian Svetla Karova said that health and social problems in Bulgaria were compounded by a lack of clear provisions on collating and analysing data on diseases. He pointed out that since January 2005, any significant production or import of asbestos had been banned in his country. Riccardo Ferretti from Italy noted that if they did not assemble their forces in the EU they would be unable to convince third countries of the problems linked to asbestos. He averred that when they spoke about asbestos they were speaking about a very large latency period, which explained the importance of developing the foundations for a system that would help workers get information on the disease. Armando Farias said that they needed to “develop a prevention policy and guarantee the rights of victims”. Remi Poppe from the Netherlands said that he had fought against asbestos in the workplace for 40 years and launched an appeal for them to not forget problems of corruption and pressure on this issue. He protested that the sick were the “victims of company interests!” Poppe called on the UN to adopt a resolution calling on all companies using asbestos to be banned throughout the world.
Hundreds of thousands of victims, those responsible continuing to turn a blind eye, production
delocalised to poor countries… The scandal of asbestos
It is hard to put figures to the damage caused by asbestos. The damage of the past, a century of production and consumption in Europe and in the developed countries, and the damage of the future, with its continuing use in poor countries and Canada. Although the medical data available is very incomplete- only the United Kingdom, Denmark, France and Finland have been able to provide reasonably complete statistics on mesothelioma (a specific form of cancer of the pleura caused by asbestos)- the contributions of several doctors and experts have allowed the scandal of asbestos to be pinned down. How many people have died, it is difficult to say for the 20th century, but it is estimated that the number of deaths due to asbestos could reach 250,000 in Europe for the period 1999 to 2034. The use of asbestos reach its peak in Europe in the 1970s and as the illness lies dormant for 40 to 50 years, a peak of mortality is expected around 2020. If, in the first half of the 20th century, a more common cause of death was asbestosis (a pulmonary fibrosis due to the inhalation of Earth best off the dust), "de-dusting" gradually allowed workers to survive until the point of diagnosis of mesothelioma or another form of cancer. In Scotland alone, there have been between 119 and 190 deaths recently (the figures varying between one study in the next), explained Dr Andrew Watterson, who added that 130 people are currently being treated further to the discovery of mesothelioma, and that over 5000 cases are likely to be recorded, still for Scotland alone. In Germany, where recognition as a professional disease creates serious problems, the statistics show only 1100 cases of mesothelioma due to work-related asbestos exposure, according to Dr Olaf Hagemeyer, who makes the interesting observation that the number of cases is falling among women, although it is on the constant increase in the male population. It is worth noting that the study seems to show that asbestos exposure and smoking combined are five times more likely to lead to cancer than just smoking or just asbestos exposure.
In France, the compensation fund (FIVA), which was set up to help those who had become ill as a result of asbestos, registered 14,652 dossiers between July 2002 and May 2004. The average compensation is of 140,000 EUR. In Belgium, which was one of the two countries at the heart of the asbestos galaxy along with Switzerland, the health insurance funds have recognised 2308 cases of permanent incapacity due to asbestos-related diseases, including 1472 cases of asbestosis, 95 cases of asbestosis related to another pathology, 578 cases of mesothelioma and 126 cases of lung cancer. Based on a model which is often used by Swiss companies, which consists of offering compensation before the victim seeks legal redress, the company Eternit, a subsidiary of Etex, recently made the gesture of offering 42,500 EUR to its former employees who have fallen victim to asbestos. Its former boss, Baron Louis de Cartier de Marchienne, is still the object of legal action, but from Italy. The public prosecutor of Turin, Raffaele Guariniello, has received no fewer than 1300 dossiers from Italian employees of Eternit, who have died from cancer after having been in contact with asbestos. The public prosecutor has brought a case of homicide by negligence, but the Baron, and the Emsens family in Belgium and the Schmidheiny family in Switzerland, are hiding behind a claim of a lack of information about the harmful nature of the product in order to escape their responsibilities. The dangers were, however, well known. The first document which refers to the dangers of asbestos from 1898. It is written in English. A few years later, in 1905, a French doctor described the pulmonary consequences of asbestos and the first piece of legislation to reduce workers' exposure to asbestos dust is British. It dates from 1930.
Asbestos-based cement, which was developed by the Czech Hatscheck, was to revolutionise the construction sector and inundated the European market in the 1940s. In 1957, 100,000 workers produced no fewer than 110 million tonnes of asbestos-based cement, according to Rob Ruers of the Netherlands, who has written a book on the asbestos saga. 1960s, this production would reach two billion tonnes in the developed countries, culminating at five billion tonnes in 1975. This production was in the hands of a cartel, SAIAC, which was created in 1929, with headquarters in Switzerland and whose two main players were Eternit Belgium and Eternit Switzerland. "By 1933, Eternit knew" the dangers of asbestos, said MrRuers, quoting an ILO report. But nothing was done about it, and when it was no longer possible to use asbestos in Europe, the cartel delocalised production and its markets to poor countries. The production, use and even the recycling of group asbestos continues today in Africa, India, China, other countries in Asia, but also in Russia and Canada. In some of these countries, part of this use is of "white" or chrysotile asbestos which, its producers claim- having discreetly left a press dossier in a room where a colloquium of the group GUE/NGL was taking place- is in no way carcinogenic. Without waiting for new layers of asbestos to be added to those already in existence, Rob Ruers has called for a complete inventory of all asbestos present on European soil, followed by a complete clean-up operation, to be paid for by the polluters.