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While Quebec Premier Jean Charest was visiting India, the largest importer of Canadian asbestos, public health scientists from 28 counties called on the Quebec leader to support ending all exports of the cancer-causing mineral fiber.

The scientists, organized by the Environmental Health Trust, a U.S.-based environmental health advocacy group, and the Cancer Association of South Africa, urged Charest to listen to the recommendations of prominent health experts in Canada, the Canadian Medical Association, the Quebec Cancer Society and the World Health Organization. All the groups have called for an end to use of asbestos because of its hazards to human health.

Canada is the world’s fifth largest exporter of asbestos, and all of it is mined in Quebec. Much of Canada’s exported mineral fiber goes to developing countries where weak or non-existent workplace safety rules expose workers to breathing asbestos dust. Asbestos is no longer widely used in Canada.

“Your government is spending millions of dollars to remove chrysotile asbestos and other forms of asbestos from Quebec’s schools, hospitals and buildings, while at the same time, exporting it to developing countries and telling them it is safe,” the scientists said in the Jan. 28 letter to Charest. “This seems to represent a high level of hypocrisy.”

The scientists noted that in Quebec, exposure to asbestos through mining is the leading cause of death among workers. Statistics for 2009 from the Quebec Workers Compensation Board show that 60 percent of occupational death were caused by asbestos.

“We call on you not to export this same public health tragedy to developing countries, where surely there is more than enough suffering and injustice already,” the scientists said.

The scientists condemned the Charest government for embracing the position of the asbestos industry’s advocacy group, the Chrysotile Institute, that exposure to 1 fiber of chrysotile asbestos per cubic centimeter of air is safe. The scientists said that stance conflicted with the views of the Canadian Cancer Society, the U.S. Surgeon General and the World Health Organization that all held that there was no safe exposure level to chrysotile asbestos.

“We find it shocking that the exposure level you endorse for people overseas is ten times higher than the level permitted by all other provinces in Canada, by the U.S., by the European Union and by other Western industrialized nations,” they said.

The World Health Organization estimates that 90,000 people die every year of asbestos-related lung cancer, mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs and asbestosis, a chronic scarring of the lungs.

Read the letter

World Cancer Day

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