Quebec asbestos mine expansion faces opposition
The Collegium Ramazzini, an international society made up of scientists and clinicians, has joined the efforts to persuade Quebec’s Premier Jean Charest not to support the province’s asbestos industry. The government is currently considering the approval of a $58 million loan that will bolster Quebec’s Jeffrey Mine, one of the last footholds of the asbestos industry in Canada. The loan would see the addition of new mines, new equipment and other expansions which would drastically increase the Jeffrey Mine’s output of chrysotile asbestos.
Asbestos exposure is responsible for the development of several diseases, including mesothelioma, a terminal cancer of the soft tissue which lines our body’s organs. While public awareness of the dangers of asbestos is far from staggering due to the unflinching efforts of asbestos lobby groups, scientists and doctors have been agreeing on the substance’s toxicity for close to a century.
Today more than 90,000 people worldwide die from asbestos related diseases every year, a majority of those in developing nations which heavily import the substance. Many developing nations lack not only the effective asbestos regulations which could bar imports, but also the medical infrastructure that could help treat and prevent asbestos illnesses.
Prominent organizations across the world such as the World Health Organization agree that asbestos causes deadly diseases. More than fifty developed nations have completely banned the dangerous substance, while many others such as the United States have enforced strict regulations and restrictions regarding safe handling and permissible uses.
Many people in Quebec, Canada, however, continue to support the local asbestos industry and despite global disapproval. While a variety of Canadian health organizations and even Quebec’s own doctors repeatedly claim that asbestos exports are indefensible, it appears as if the government will continue to sponsor the industry with the $58 million that will guarantee another 25 years of reliable asbestos exports.
Organizations such as the Collegium Ramazzini which are ultimately aiming for a worldwide asbestos ban are intent on preventing the expansion of the Jeffrey Mine. The Jeffrey Mine, located in the aptly named town of Asbestos in Quebec, Canada, accounts for a majority of the asbestos used in developing nations today.
Asbestos, Quebec banishes Relay for Life
Asbestos, Quebec has canceled the Canadian Cancer Society’s “Relay for Life”, a fund raising event previously scheduled to take place within the town’s streets. The cancellation is the result of political differences arising between the town’s and the Canadian Cancer Society’s positions on the production of asbestos. While citizens of Asbestos push Quebec’s Premier, Jean Charest, for loans that will breath new life into the floundering asbestos mines, the CCS is urging Quebec’s Premier to “let [the mine] die.”
The Jeffrey Mine has been the economic heart of Asbestos, Quebec for more than one hundred and thirty years. When medical discoveries began to shed an ugly light on the mineral in the late twentieth century, Asbestos’s mine didn’t flinch. While Australia, the European Union, New Zealand, and the United States shut down mines and developed tighter and tighter regulations concerning the mineral’s use, Asbestos, Quebec kept right on with their mining operation.
The CCS’s urge not to loan the mine the funds necessary to expand its operations came in the form of a letter. The CCS’s letter was one among many composed by doctors, health organizations, cancer institutes, environmentalists, and activists across the world.
While the whole world seems to be pressuring the town to stop producing cancer-causing asbestos, the town’s residents themselves feel that the mine is not only part of their history, but also important to their livelihood.
“It’s our past, it’s our history, therefore the population is united in support of the mining industry,” says Hugues Grimard, the Mayor of Asbestos.
The town decided to prevent the CCS from conducting the leg of the “Relay for Life” scheduled to occur in Asbestos, choosing instead to support the local population.
“People have stopped me to say, ‘We don’t want to participate in that event anymore’,” says Grimard, “[and] we’re giving [those citizens] our support. We want to work with our partners and not with our detractors.”
Even with the setback of creating new enemies in Asbestos, Quebec, the CCS is respectfully sticking to their guns.
“Our mandate is really public health,” says a spokesmen for the CCS, André Beaulieu, “and right now, obviously, the community’s looking from an economic point of view and we understand.”
California state rock comes under fire
Serpentine, the California state rock, may be in peril of losing its title due to a small amount of asbestos content. Gloria Romero, the California state senator, is backing a bill that would drop the yellow, red and gray mineral from the state’s affections, claiming that its association with asbestos portrays a negative image. The bill that aims to discredit the mineral is gaining support quickly, much to the chagrin of local geologists.
“[Serpentine] contains the deadly mineral chrysotile asbestos,” Romero says, “a known carcinogen, exposure to which increases the risk of the cancer mesothelioma.”
Many geologists disagree with the movement, claiming that the mineral is far from dangerous and that the symbolic gesture of bringing Serpentine down a notch would be based on a misunderstanding. Serpentine, they say, is actually a family of twenty or so similar minerals, very few of which contain any asbestos. The types that do contain asbestos aren’t dangerous, either, they say. They have only a tiny amount of chrysotile asbestos, a type of asbestos of which exposure to in small amounts hasn’t even been linked to disease.
Fibrous asbestos, on the other hand, certainly causes a wide variety of serious and even fatal diseases. The size and power of the asbestos industry, however, has slowed the advance of negative sentiments concerning the dangerous mineral. While many nations including the entire European Union have completely banned asbestos, the United States continues to allow the substance’s use while applying strict safe-handling regulations.
The EPA attempted to ban asbestos in the USA back in the 1980′s, but the decision was overturned by the powerful asbestos industry within just a few years. Campaigns such as publicly denouncing Serpentine, California’s state rock, may help to increase public awareness of asbestos’s dangers, and turn the tides on still raging political and legal asbestos battles.
To many geologists, however, the movement simply doesn’t make sense.
“Serpentine is a very beautiful rock,” says the emeritus professor of geology at UCLA, John Rosenfeld.
“Holding the rock is not a problem and it’s nothing you should be concerned about. It’s part of the history of California, noticed by the early settlers of this state. It’s a beautiful stone and shouldn’t be removed.”
