Away from the fickle glare of the media, an international conference has got underway in Geneva that could well determine the health of millions of Indian construction workers.
The Seventh Conference of Parties of UN’s Rotterdam Convention that started on May 4 will decide, among other things, whether to add white chrysotile asbestos to the global list of hazardous substances. Chrysotile asbestos is a proven carcinogen that kills 30 people every day in India, and yet it is unknown which way the government will go when the proposal comes up in Geneva.
At the 2013 edition of the convention, India had opposed listing chrysotile asbestos as a hazardous substance. This was an inexplicable departure from its stand two years before, when the leader of the delegation, Meera Maharishi from the Ministry of Environment, had wanted it declared a hazardous chemical.
Officials in the Environment Ministry say the government is ambivalent about the proposal this time round because of pressure from the asbestos cement industry. The industry uses great quantities of chrysotile fibres and is afraid that a permanent stamp of disapproval from the Geneva conference may lead to a ban on its import.
Nevertheless, activists are praying the Indian government won’t squander this opportunity.
Worldwide pandemic
Activists have long demanded that chrysotile asbestos be defined as a hazardous substance, as have the World Health Organisation, International Labour Organization and 31 scientist-members of the United Nations Chemical Review Committee. The WHO, which found the substance carcinogenic, warned that 100,000 people die from it every year. There are even suggestions that an asbestos pandemic will kill over 10 million worldwide.
A study by two researcher-doctors at Delhi’s Maulana Azad Medical College says that deaths from asbestos-related cancers could touch one million in developing nations by 2020. “Even if a single fibre is inhaled, it is capable of causing mesothelioma and that has been proved by epidemiological, clinical and experimental studies,” says Dr Sanjay Chaturvedi, one of the co-authors of the study.
Dr TK Joshi, director of the Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health in Delhi’s Lok Nayak Hospital, warns that “given the latency period for asbestos cancers, in another decade, we will witness a major cancer epidemic caused by asbestos, at a point when this disease is on the decline in industrialised countries”. He explains that widespread use of asbestos started in India in the 1980s, but 21 million people in the construction industry have already been exposed to it.
The Indian medical fraternity cites as a warning the example of United Kingdom, where consumption of 1.6 million tonnes of asbestos had produced the country’s worst epidemic of occupation disease and death, leading it and other industrialised nations to put an end to its use.
But India, like other rapidly industrialising countries, is not collecting enough data on the morbidity and mortality coming from workplace diseases. Its asbestos cement industry uses great quantities of chrysotile fibres, 85% of which is imported, primarily from Russia and Kazakhstan.
“The number of workers exposed could easily run into millions,” Dr Joshi said.
Polluting air and water
Sanjay Parikh, counsel for the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology notes that India is “importing 1 lakh metric tonnes of toxic waste in India. This is a dangerous trend since asbestos waste is being left in open landfills, where it can pollute both the atmosphere and ground water”.
Realising the gravity of the situation, the previous United Progressive Alliance government had introduced The White Asbestos (Ban on Use and Import) Bill, 2009 in the Rajya Sabha, but in the end little was done to convert the bill into a law.
Before the Geneva conference commenced a few days ago, Gopal Krishna, who heads the environmental group Toxics Watch Alliance, had dashed off a letter to Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, warning that India should remain consistent in its stand, especially since his ministry had declared white asbestos a hazardous substance.
Javadekar forwarded the letter to Shashi Shekhar, a special secretary in the ministry and chairman of the Central Pollution Control Board, under which the hazardous substance management division of the ministry falls. Shekhar is also responsible for all international negotiations in the ministry.
Krishna said, “Nepal had agreed to put a complete ban on asbestos use from June 20, 2015. China is close to imposing a ban as they look for alternative substances. Russia remains the biggest supplier of asbestos to India. But we need to disassociate ourselves from Russia in these international negotiations and curtail domestic use.”
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The Seventh Conference of Parties of UN’s Rotterdam Convention that started on May 4 will decide, among other things, whether to add white chrysotile asbestos to the global list of hazardous substances. Chrysotile asbestos is a proven carcinogen that kills 30 people every day in India, and yet it is unknown which way the government will go when the proposal comes up in Geneva.
At the 2013 edition of the convention, India had opposed listing chrysotile asbestos as a hazardous substance. This was an inexplicable departure from its stand two years before, when the leader of the delegation, Meera Maharishi from the Ministry of Environment, had wanted it declared a hazardous chemical.
Officials in the Environment Ministry say the government is ambivalent about the proposal this time round because of pressure from the asbestos cement industry. The industry uses great quantities of chrysotile fibres and is afraid that a permanent stamp of disapproval from the Geneva conference may lead to a ban on its import.
Nevertheless, activists are praying the Indian government won’t squander this opportunity.
Worldwide pandemic
Activists have long demanded that chrysotile asbestos be defined as a hazardous substance, as have the World Health Organisation, International Labour Organization and 31 scientist-members of the United Nations Chemical Review Committee. The WHO, which found the substance carcinogenic, warned that 100,000 people die from it every year. There are even suggestions that an asbestos pandemic will kill over 10 million worldwide.
A study by two researcher-doctors at Delhi’s Maulana Azad Medical College says that deaths from asbestos-related cancers could touch one million in developing nations by 2020. “Even if a single fibre is inhaled, it is capable of causing mesothelioma and that has been proved by epidemiological, clinical and experimental studies,” says Dr Sanjay Chaturvedi, one of the co-authors of the study.
Dr TK Joshi, director of the Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health in Delhi’s Lok Nayak Hospital, warns that “given the latency period for asbestos cancers, in another decade, we will witness a major cancer epidemic caused by asbestos, at a point when this disease is on the decline in industrialised countries”. He explains that widespread use of asbestos started in India in the 1980s, but 21 million people in the construction industry have already been exposed to it.
The Indian medical fraternity cites as a warning the example of United Kingdom, where consumption of 1.6 million tonnes of asbestos had produced the country’s worst epidemic of occupation disease and death, leading it and other industrialised nations to put an end to its use.
But India, like other rapidly industrialising countries, is not collecting enough data on the morbidity and mortality coming from workplace diseases. Its asbestos cement industry uses great quantities of chrysotile fibres, 85% of which is imported, primarily from Russia and Kazakhstan.
“The number of workers exposed could easily run into millions,” Dr Joshi said.
Polluting air and water
Sanjay Parikh, counsel for the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology notes that India is “importing 1 lakh metric tonnes of toxic waste in India. This is a dangerous trend since asbestos waste is being left in open landfills, where it can pollute both the atmosphere and ground water”.
Realising the gravity of the situation, the previous United Progressive Alliance government had introduced The White Asbestos (Ban on Use and Import) Bill, 2009 in the Rajya Sabha, but in the end little was done to convert the bill into a law.
Before the Geneva conference commenced a few days ago, Gopal Krishna, who heads the environmental group Toxics Watch Alliance, had dashed off a letter to Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, warning that India should remain consistent in its stand, especially since his ministry had declared white asbestos a hazardous substance.
Javadekar forwarded the letter to Shashi Shekhar, a special secretary in the ministry and chairman of the Central Pollution Control Board, under which the hazardous substance management division of the ministry falls. Shekhar is also responsible for all international negotiations in the ministry.
Krishna said, “Nepal had agreed to put a complete ban on asbestos use from June 20, 2015. China is close to imposing a ban as they look for alternative substances. Russia remains the biggest supplier of asbestos to India. But we need to disassociate ourselves from Russia in these international negotiations and curtail domestic use.”
