Quebec has been highly criticized in the past several years because of its continuing stake in the asbestos industry. Now, new plans to expand the province’s asbestos mining operations have caused further outrage among local and international activists, as well as from prestigious doctors and medical communities.

Asbestos causes a variety of serious diseases including lung cancer and mesothelioma, a terminal cancer of the soft tissue which protects the body’s organs. While the effects of the substance have been well known for nearly a century, it’s only the last several decades that popular support and general awareness has begun to put formidable pressure on the asbestos industry.

Mesothelioma, which is linked exclusively to asbestos exposure, claims the lives of some ninety thousand people worldwide every year. The number of annual diagnoses is on the rise, despite the world’s new found negative opinion of the industrial substance and efforts to control its use and sales. The increase in diagnoses is partially due to the disease’s long latency period, or the amount of time it takes to develop from initial contact with asbestos. Mesothelioma can take anywhere from ten to fifty years to present after the patient first breathes or ingests asbestos fibers.

Quebec is the world’s fourth largest asbestos exporter. Their primary mine is in the process of seeking a government loan of nearly $60 million to dramatically increase its production and subsequent export. The complaints against Quebec don’t end with its asbestos production, either. The province’s asbestos mining advocates and lobby groups have spent more than $100 million on public relations in the past twenty-some years in Canada, India and Brazil to create a friendlier face for the deadly industry.

A recent report concerning the asbestos industry in which the BBC was involved illuminated the degree to which lobbyists strive to founder activists and medical experts.

Jim Morris, a lead journalist for the investigation, reported:

“One of the real surprises was how closely the pro-asbestos lobby groups work with one another. Groups in India, Russia, and Mexico work very closely with the Chrysotile Institute… sharing information, coordinating their public relations strategies. And they’ve been pretty successful. In countries like India, they’ve overwhelmed the activists and the health organizations.”

While Quebec’s government has stood behind a stone-silent defense for years, that may be slated for a slow change.

“It has become impossible to export a product like [asbestos],” commented Quebec’s Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff last month, “because we can’t have guarantees that it will not be harmful in India or in other countries.”

An appellate court recently ruled that Bonnie Anderson, a Berkeley Heights, New Jersey woman, was entitled to $7 million in damages from Exxon Mobile. The ruling is particularly important to ongoing asbestos litigation because of the way that Anderson contracted the disease. Anderson, whose husband’s employment with Exxon Mobile involved handling asbestos laden insulation, was exposed to the dangerous mineral when she washed her husband’s clothes.

In 2006 the state Supreme Court decided that those with secondary asbestos exposure, such as exposure to their spouse’s contaminated clothes, could pursue lawsuits against the companies they believed to be responsible. Anderson’s case represents the first time that a jury verdict within those specifications was upheld, according to her representation.

“If we had a picture under the definition ‘innocent victim,’ this would be it,” said her lawyer, “this is a tremendous precedent in terms of the families of workers.”

Kevin Allexon, Exxon Mobile Corp.’s spokesman, said that the company hadn’t decided whether they would attempt to appeal the decision to the state’s highest court.

“Whatever the end result is, I hope I’m alive to see it,” said Anderson about the ruling.

Once a self-titled “supermom,” Anderson worked as an electrician, a librarian and a dedicated mother and wife. Her battle with mesothelioma, which has included surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, has left her with less energy but no less determination. She spends most of her time advocating mesothelioma awareness measures and participating in support groups for the disease from her home.

“For me, it’s not about the money, it’s about the disease,” says Anderson, “I’d give anything to get my life back.”

According to the court proceedings, Exxon held safety meetings and provided some safety equipments to its many employers. It did not, however, mention the danger of asbestos to its workers, and failed to provide respirators or masks to those working with the dangerous material. If inhaled, asbestos fibers can cause a variety of respiratory issues including lung cancer and mesothelioma, a terminal and aggressive cancer of the lung’s soft tissue lining.

“John never knew what kind of insulation it was,” the court proceedings recorded, “he worked in his own street clothes, which Bonnie always laundered. Standing near the washing machine, she would shake out as much dust as possible. She often complained about the dust in his clothes and hair.”

“It’s obviously a very positive ruling for injured people — particularly here in New Jersey where the we have the highest percentage of mesothelioma victims per capita,” said one attorney. “It reaffirms the duty of a property owner to provide a safe workplace.”

A new study conducted by The Sierra Fund (TSF) and called The Gold Country Recreational Trails and Abandoned Mines Assessment has found that outdoor enthusiasts bear California’s Sierra Nevada Foothills may be in danger of exposure to dangerous minerals and chemicals. The study shows that the aftermath of the Gold Rush era continues to haunt the Sierra Nevada Foothills in the form of lead, arsenic and asbestos. The presence of both lead and arsenic pollutants are most likely due to the mining methods of yesteryear, while asbestos’s presence can be attributed to crushed serpentine – an asbestos containing rock that’s common in the area.

The CEO of the Sierra Fund, Elizabeth Martin, says: “More than 100 years after the end of the Gold Rush era, the environmental, cultural and health impacts of that time have still not been assessed or addressed. Our study documents that these abandoned mines pose a toxic health threat on public lands that are widely used for recreational activities. The time has come for a serious assessment of abandoned mines, and the public needs to be informed about potential exposure to toxic heavy metals and asbestos in areas with abandoned mines.”

The Sierra Fund researchers conducted the study by collecting samples of soil from around the Downieville, Foresthill and Nevada City areas where abandoned mines, waste rock piles and mine tailings are criss-crossed with recreational, public access trails. Toxins were found at incredibly high concentrations – easily high enough to affect human health – in many of the locations tested. The Foresthill ‘Off Highway Vehicle’ riding area, for example, tested positive for asbestos in a little less than half of the samples taken and showed levels of lead some 18 times the amount considered safe by state and federal regulations.

Asbestos occurs naturally in serpentine, a material that’s incredibly abundant in the Sierra Nevada Foothills and so iconic of the area that it even serves as California’s state rock. Serpentine in its natural form is hardly dangerous, but once it has become crushed into a fine, inhale-able powder, breathing it can increase the risk of certain terminal cancers. Mesothelioma, an aggressive and terminal cancer caused by asbestos exposure, can take up to fifty years to present after the initial exposure to asbestos occurs. Those who spend their free time hiking, mountain biking, and ‘offroading’ in the Sierra Nevada Foothills, the TSF claims, are risking exposure to the cancer causing dust.

A spokesman for the Central California division of the Bureau of Land Management said that decontaminating the areas would be virtually impossible due to sheer quantity of pollutants and the fact that they’re so thoroughly blended with the terrain. The Sierra Fund is hoping to restrict public access to some sites and place warning signs where applicable.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), according the director of its Department of Environmental Sanitation and Toxic Substance Management, Lin Chien-hui, is planning on phasing asbestos out of use throughout the United States by 2020.

Currently the United States remains as one of the few developed nations that has yet to ban chrysotile asbestos, a mineral now known to be carcinogenic which was once used fervently in a wide variety of industries. The mineral boasts several inviting properties including incredible insulation, fire retardation, building compound strengthening, and ease of fabrication. As early as the 1920′s, however, asbestos was linked to serious respiratory diseases including what was then known as fibrosis, or scarring of lungs.

While asbestos industry giants thwarted efforts to uncover the substance’s dangerous properties for several decades, undeniable evidence continued to accumulate. Lawsuits were brought against asbestos companies for the first time in 1929, and medical and scientific advances continued to point to asbestos as a cancer causing agent. The EPA passed a ban on asbestos in 1989 under the Asbestos Ban and Phase Out Rule, which was overturned just two years later in the case of Corrosion Proof Fittings v. EPA. Corrosion Proof Fittings fought for the right of manufacturers to sell asbestos products, claiming that the EPA’s classification of asbestos as hazardous was ungrounded.

Today, asbestos related diseases kill some 10,000 people in the United States every year. About one quarter of those victims suffer from mesothelioma, a cancer of a specialized tissue protecting the body’s organs which is caused exclusively by asbestos. Mesothelioma is an aggressive and terminal cancer which normally causes death less than eighteen months from diagnoses.

While the general asbestos ban passed in 1989 eventually failed, asbestos regulations and restrictions tightened significantly which began raising awareness of the mineral’s toxicity. More lawsuits accumulated over time and continue to accumulate to this day, making asbestos litigation the longest and most expensive bout of corporate negligence in U.S. history.

After billions of dollars in litigation and hundreds of thousands of affected families, the United States, it appears, is nearly ready to join the ranks of nations which have completely banned the use of asbestos.

Lin Chien-hui of the EPA stated that the general ban on asbestos will be rolled out in two phases. Regulations will be put into place on July 1, 2015, to ban asbestos from sealants and sealing materials. Five years later, July 1, 2020, asbestos will be banned from construction materials such as cement, tiles, panels and more.

A new report produced from the joint efforts of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism (ICIJ) and the BBC’s International News Services sheds penetrating light on the development of asbestos issues worldwide. As the world barrels into the 21st century, seemingly aging issues such as the toxicity of construction materials continue to pose real threats to people around the globe.

Despite legal obstacles and public outcry from developed and developing nations everywhere, the asbestos industry continues to unearth and refine millions of metric tons of the cancer causing mineral chrysotile. While the sale of the toxic mineral is forbidden or heavily restricted in a vast majority of developed nations including Australia, New Zealand, the United States and most of the European Union, exports to vast nations such as India and China continue at alarming rates.

Asbestos fibers cause a variety of deadly health problems when accidentally inhaled or ingested. In addition to problems such as lung cancer, asbestosis, and a variety of painful and incurable respiratory illnesses, asbestos is the only known cause of mesothelioma, a terminal cancer of a soft tissue which encases our bodies organs. While the ill effects of asbestos have been common knowledge for more than half of a century, the industry continues spouting “safe use” propaganda that defies relevant medical and scientific findings.

Promoting the sale of asbestos isn’t a cheap business. The asbestos industry has channeled nearly $100 million in the past twenty-some years into various associations and institutes which defend its practices. Whether lobbying governments or distributing tracts which praise the mineral’s many construction uses in third world countries, the industry’s backers are fighting an uphill battle to continue the sale of the dangerous substance.

The report delivered by the ICIJ and the BBC suggests that more than a million people could die of asbestos related diseases by the year 2030. More than seventy five percent of the asbestos fibers causing these deaths will be exported by Brazil, Russia, and perhaps more surprisingly, Canada.

Vincent Cogliano, a member of the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, told the BBC:

“Chrysotile and other forms of asbestos… cause lung cancer and mesothelioma, and that’s been known for 50 years. My own personal view is that these risks… are as high as just about any known carcinogen that we have seen except perhaps tobacco smoke… so the continued export and continued use of chrysotile will increase the incidence of lung cancer and mesothelioma for many decades to come.”

Quebec’s National Director of Public Health, Dr. Alain Poirier, warned last week of the dangers of asbestos, remarking that Quebec’s Public Health Institute doesn’t hold that chrysotile asbestos can be safely used. Unfortunately, voices like Poirier’s don’t always carry far enough, as developing nations continue to import Quebec’s asbestos at alarming rates.

The position of “safe use” is a defense which many asbestos industry advocates stand behind, claiming that at relatively low concentrations the substance is harmless. While officials that support Quebec’s asbestos industry claim that one airborne asbestos fiber per cubic centimeter doesn’t pose any danger to human health, their figure differs greatly from those instituted in other parts of Canada and the world.

Other Canadian provinces, for example, hold that a concentration 1/10th of Quebec’s number poses a threat to human health, while European nations often recognize concentrations as dangerous that are 1/100th of Quebec’s figure. While the substance isn’t yet banned in America, the United States Environmental Protection Agency claims that there is no safe concentration, no matter how low.

Canadian doctors, scientists, and environmentalists agree that asbestos is unquestionably dangerous. In fact, many Canadian health organizations such as the Canadian Public Health Association, the Canadian Cancer Society, and the Canadian Medical Association have recently expressed their disapproval of the industry in letters to Quebec’s Premier, Jean Charest. The Canadian government, however, is still divided with some important figures like Prime Minister Stephen Harper still supporting the industry.

Just a few months ago in March the government paid the Asbestos Institute, an asbestos industry lobby group, some $25 million in tax dollars – a move that Harper supported. The lobby group uses government funding to publish informational tracts promoting “safe use” and spouting misleading information that’s simply not supported by modern research. These tracts, brochures and informational booklets, as well as the Asbestos Institute’s other efforts, help pave the way to increased asbestos exports in a variety of developing nations.

Asbestos exposure has been conclusively linked to mesothelioma, a terminal cancer of the protective lining of the organs. More than 90,000 people worldwide die of asbestos related diseases every year – entirely avoidable diseases which are often contracted in the workplace by unsuspecting workers unaware of asbestos’s dangers.

Organizations across the world, including the World Health Organization, call for a ban on asbestos mining. Even in Canada’s own backyard the consensus is unmistakable: the Canadian Public Health Association, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Canadian Medial Association, and even the nearly ten thousand doctors in the province of Quebec oppose the export of asbestos.

With mounting pressure both at home and abroad, hopefully the days of “safe use” will soon come to an end.