Group Renews Push for Asbestos Ban; Estimated 1.3 Million Workers Exposed
Monday, September 7th, 2009On a holiday that honors workers, the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, an advocacy group, renewed its call for a national ban on asbestos to protect workers from exposure to asbestos in workplaces.
“This Labor Day, we cannot help but be reminded that countless workers continue to be unknowingly exposed to the deadly asbestos mineral in their daily jobs,” said Linda Reinstein, ADAO Executive Director said in a statement reported by Reuters. “It is time to end the tragedy of asbestos for workers and others who are unknowingly exposed.”
Once widely used in many household products such as insulation, pipe and roof tile, asbestos is now recognized as a highly toxic human carcinogen. Asbestos fibers inhaled into the lungs over time may cause lung diseases including asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer that can occur in the lining of the lungs, abdomen or heart. The symptoms of the disease often do not appear until 20 to 40 years after exposure
Although asbestos is no longer mined in the United State, it is still imported and a significant amount of asbestos in buildings eventually must be removed. Today, approximately 1.3 million American construction workers and general industry workers are exposed to asbestos, researchers with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health estimated in a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, underscoring the need for effort to minimize exposure.
Reinstein said the group remained optimistic that Congress would pass a ban on asbestos that incorporated the strongest elements of Senate legislation (S. 742), passed in 2007, that banned the importation and use of asbestos in the United States and House Resolution 6903, introduced in 2008, that sought to limit the asbestos content in consumer products.
Joining the group is pressing for a ban on asbestos was Jordan Zevon, son of the late rock musician Warren Zevon, who died of mesothelioma in 2003. “Six years later and it feels like my father’s killer, asbestos, which happens to be a mass murderer, is still walking the streets,” said Jordan Zevon, who serves as a spokesman for the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization. “We pride ourselves on justice for all, but there’s no justice until the asbestos ban becomes a reality.”
