AboutMesothelioma.Net

Despite international condemnation, Quebec’s controversial asbestos mining industry may expand mining of the mineral fiber linked to thousands of deaths annually from respiratory diseases. Asbestos is associated with respiratory diseases including lung cancer and mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lung or abdomen.

The proposed expansion of the Jeffrey Mine in the town of Asbestos, Quebec has been on hold since 2002 because of lack of funding.

According to The Montreal Gazette, Asbestos Mayor Hugues Grimard said that Quebec Economic Development minister had promised the town and Jeffrey Mine Inc. owner Bernard Coulombe that the government would make a $58-million loan guarantee if the mine workers approved a new employment contract and the workers agreed to pay 10 percent of their salaries into a fund to be held by the government in case the mine fails.

Canada is a leading exporter of asbestos, which is sent primarily to developing countries with weaker worker safety laws. And Quebec Premier Jean Charest has repeatedly emphasized his government’s policy to promote the “safe use of asbestos” despite broad opposition from public health officials and scientists in Canada and around the world.

A letter signed by 36 prominent doctors and public health researchers from 21 countries criticized condemned the expansion. “Chrysotile asbestos causes serious harm to health,” worte Philip Landrigan, dean of Global Health at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. “There is no safe exposure level. It goes on killing for generations.”

Landrigan is president of the New York-based Collegium Ramazzini, an independent international academy of 180 renowned experts in the fields of occupational and environmental health.