Stop Exporting Asbestos! A Plea to Canadians

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Stop Exporting Asbestos! A Plea to Canadians

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While the Canadian Government takes great care to ensure its own safety against the dangers of asbestos, you’ll probably never hear them make too big a fuss about it — what with Canada being a leading exporter of the patient killer — it just wouldn’t be economical to draw too much attention to it.

So instead they seem to be using tax-payers dollars and their own embassies to actively promote the sale and distribution of abestos to countries like India and Pakistan. On top of that, at the moment the government is actively trying to sabotage the U.N. Rotterdam Convention, which aims to protect life and the environment by controlling the hazardous chemical and pesticide trade industry. You probably won’t hear about this in the news…

Well, to mark World Health Day, April 7, 2008, a handful of organizations from India wrote a letter (pdf) asking Canadians to help stop the government from exporting asbestos to India and the global south.

The letter reads,

We urgently request your solidarity with workers in India and the Global South. We appeal to you to please ask your government to stop exporting asbestos.
 
95% of Canada’s asbestos is exported to India and other countries where it is handled by desperately poor workers under dangerous conditions and is creating a public health tragedy of disease and death. Over 100,000 workers are exposed to asbestos daily in India and are falling sick and dying from Canadian Chrysotile asbestos. And it is not just the workers who suffer; their families bear the burden of the disease too by losing their sole bread winner and are left destitute.
 
We appeal to you to listen to our plea and support the health and lives of workers in India and the Global South. We have few protections and we need your help.
 
On 5th February 2008, all the major trade unions of India and labour support groups including the All India Trade Union Congress, Centre for Indian Trade Union, New Trade Union Initiative representing workers in India called for a ban on asbestos. Please listen to the voices of workers in India.
 
The government of South Africa, which was a major supplier of chrysotile asbestos, has just banned it. If the government of South Africa can put the lives of people ahead of the interests of the asbestos industry, why cannot the Canadian government do the same?

Right On Canada has a page on their website to let you send a petition letter to PM Stephen Harper, which asks that very question. Please take a moment to sign the letter.

This is part one of a two part article. The latter talks about Asbestos in Canada and the efforts of Raven Thundersky -- who has now lost SIX members of her family to asbestos-related diseases. To read the rest, please visit this page on Intercontiental Cry