Specialists predict that the prevalence of asbestos related diseases could rise drastically in India over the next several decades. Indian imports of asbestos products continue to rise. Without adequate safe handling regulations in place the amount of dangerous asbestos exposure in the country can only increase as well. The increase of asbestos related illnesses in India and other Newly Industrialized Countries (NIC) such as China and Mexico is due, in part, to a radically changing asbestos market.
Asbestos was used fervently through most of the twentieth century in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and throughout the European Union. The mineral was fabricated in several products and used as an insulator, fire retardant, and strengthening substance in some building materials. Accumulating evidence of the substance’s toxic effects when inhaled or ingested began to mount, and by the 1930′s scarring of the lung tissues and other respiratory ailments were attributed to asbestos in some British medical journals.
In the late 1980′s many developed nations were facing the effects of asbestos exposure at full force in the form of asbestosis, lung cancer, and mesothelioma, a terminal cancer of the body’s organ linings. Asbestos bans became widespread, and where they were overturned by big asbestos companies – such as in the United States – strict regulations were enforced instead.
The resulting vacuum in the asbestos market forced suppliers to find new importers where bans and regulations wouldn’t be a problem. While new asbestos markets such as India, Mexico and China wouldn’t pay the same prices for asbestos products, the remaining asbestos companies would rather begin manufacturing more affordable products than go out of business altogether.
Today the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that some 90,000 people die every year from asbestos diseases. Most asbestos diseases take 20 to 50 years to fully develop from the time of exposure, meaning that the drastically increasing contamination in developing nations won’t be felt in the form of disease right away.
A British medical journal, The Lancet, recently published in an article pertaining to India’s increased asbestos imports: “India’s surging consumption of asbestos, the industry’s hefty political and economic clout, and the country’s poor record of worker protection… [suggest that] a sizeable burden of asbestos-related disease is inevitable… [the health consequences] will be felt into the next century.”
