Abstract
This paper provides a narrative of the national intervention strategy in Sweden aimed to restrict the industrial use of asbestos. For many years, asbestos was imported for widespread industrial use, resulting in large amounts throughout Swedish society. In 1972, the whistle was blown in a Communist Party parliamentary motion describing asbestos as a health hazard and requesting action to prohibit its use. Although the motion was rejected, it initiated the extensive charting of asbestos sources on a tripartite basis, involving government agencies, and employer and trade-union organizations. Restrictive asbestos management practices were enforced from July 1982. The year 1985 saw the Government Asbestos Commission review, covering use-determining factors, international regulations, and assessments of cancer risks. The relative risks of chrysotile and amphibole were considered internationally (by the IARC), since chrysotile (a Canadian export) was regarded as unharmful in Canada at that time. Prohibiting asbestos use resulted in its virtual disappearance as an import to Sweden from the early 1980s. However, asbestos has undergone a transition from an occupational to a public-health hazard (although some work-related hazards, such as handling and disposal, remain). The transition reflects the public’s exposure to existing stocks, in homes, workplaces, etc. Mesothelioma incidence has come to be regarded as an indicator of prevention effectiveness.
Highlights
We give an overview of changes introduced in Sweden during the 1970s and 1980s into the regulation and use of asbestos as a raw material
The changes were made for a variety of reasons, and there was a downgrading of asbestos use resulting from successive legal regulations restrictions and supervision from the mid-1970s onwards
The first general clause on the restriction and the authorization of exemptions was later qualified following review by the Government Asbestos Commission 1985 [15,16]. It considered the issues involved in prohibition of the use of asbestos products in 1986, unless authorized as above, or, optionally, unless a notification of working with asbestos was submitted to the Factory Inspectorate
Summary
We give an overview of changes introduced in Sweden during the 1970s and 1980s into the regulation and use of asbestos as a raw material. The focus is on the development of hazard assessment and management of significant consequences for the enforcement of the Working Environment Act and for collective occupational exposure to asbestos fibres during the 1970s when thereand wastrade a transition agreements in the labour market between employers’. To more restrictive practices In in this the use of asbestos materials and in the management of exposure asbestos fibres paper, the focus is on the development of hazard assessment and to management of in the workplace to exposure include wider issuesfibres of public health. This implies a shiftissues in attention the installed and used for many years inwider the past. It is not to be expected that these issues can be resolved and by banning the present‐time use of asbestos
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