Abstract
Industries that mine, manufacture and sell asbestos or asbestos-containing products have a long tradition of promoting the use of asbestos, while placing the burden of economic and health costs on workers and society. This has been successfully done in recent years and decades in spite of the overwhelming evidence that all asbestos types are carcinogenic and cause asbestosis. In doing so, the asbestos industry has undermined the WHO campaign to reach a worldwide ban of asbestos and to eliminate asbestos-related diseases. Even worse, in recent years they succeeded in continuing asbestos mining and consuming in the range of about 1.3 million tons annually. Nowadays, production takes place predominantly in Russia, Kazakhstan and China. Chrysotile is the only asbestos type still sold and represents 95% of asbestos traded over the last century.The asbestos industry, especially its PR agency, the International Chrysotile Association, ICA, financed by asbestos mining companies in Russia, Kazakhstan and Zimbabwe and asbestos industrialists in India and Mexico, continues to be extremely active by using slogans such as chrysotile can be used safely.Another approach of the asbestos industry and of some of its insurance agencies is to broadly defeat liability claims of asbestos victims.In doing so they systematically use inappropriate science produced by their own and/or by industry-affiliated researchers. Some of the latter were also engaged in producing defense material for other industries including the tobacco industry. Frequent examples of distributing such disinformation include questioning or denying established scientific knowledge about adverse health effects of asbestos. False evidence continues to be published in scientific journals and books.The persisting strong influence of vested asbestos-related interests in workers and public health issues including regulations and compensation necessitate ongoing alertness, corrections and appropriate reactions in scientific as well as public media and policy advisory bodies.
Highlights
The ongoing promotion of chrysotile asbestos combined with downplaying its adverse health effects in paying compensation continues to be the driven by commercial interests of the asbestos industry and its insurance systems which apply unsound restrictive compensation practices
This paper refers to publications from these vested interests which appeared in recent years in international journals and a book, respectively
But not all studies, provide evidence of differences of the various asbestos fiber types. In this connection recent publications by Lenters, Burdorf et al [100, 101] are worth mentioning. These authors had a closer look at the quality of asbestos exposure assessment; they came to the conclusion that differences between risks of chrysotile and amphiboles are mainly due to shortcomings in exposure assessment than in fiber types
Summary
The ongoing promotion of chrysotile asbestos combined with downplaying its adverse health effects in paying compensation continues to be the driven by commercial interests of the asbestos industry and its insurance systems which apply unsound restrictive compensation practices. Published work by Feder et al [55] is based on asbestos fiber burden in human lungs and on Roggli’s diagnostic modifications; it fits very well with the studies casting doubt on the well-documented adverse health effects of chrysotile Their non-substantiated claim that chrysotile fibers are persistent in human lung is contradicted by the collective experience of many experienced research groups [17, 18, 20,21,22,23, 70] including the Institute for Occupational and Social Medicine at the Justus Liebig University of Giessen, Germany. They further manipulated the results of scientific findings from major research institutions, delaying important knowledge about the asbestoscancer relationship” [79]
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More From: Journal of occupational medicine and toxicology (London, England)
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