If you thought asbestos was a settled issue, think again. While the majority of countries worldwide have long since banned the substance, some of the biggest nations keep using and producing it. Perhaps the most egregious is India, which continues to import asbestos at a startling rate, with the bulk of it coming from Russia, where there are even fewer restrictions on the substance.
India’s ongoing use of asbestos poses questions about both welfare and politics. The use of chrysotile asbestos in India is tied up in business concerns that continue to override people’s safety, in the face of almost all evidence worldwide. The only thing that continues to aid and abet them is the stance of international trade and health organisations – whose persistence with the idea that asbestos can be safely managed is a free pass for these countries.
Asbestos past and present
The reasons that India continues to use asbestos are obvious: it’s cheap and effective. Asbestos has been used for hundreds of years as a form of insulation, owing to its extremely high resistance to fire and electricity. Its abundance has always made it cost-effective, and this continues to be the case even as the market has dwindled. It’s also extremely flexible, with the ability to be used as roof sheeting, wall insulation, and even in home appliances.
Yet there’s also a reason why this ‘miracle material’ suddenly fell out of use. Despite efforts by the asbestos industry to hide the truth, an increasing number of studies and anecdotal reports showed that asbestos was deadly for the people who mined, refined and installed it. The unique, untreatable diseases of asbestosis and mesothelioma caused misery and death for thousands of people, and many are still being diagnosed decades after exposure.
Amphibole asbestos – characterised by its needle-like fibres – was widely banned in Europe by the 1990s, and in Asia by the 2000s. Yet chrysotile asbestos was not banned until 1999 in the UK and many countries across Europe, when an EU-wide ban came into effect, and remained legal in many other countries until the 2010s. It remains legal to use (but not produce) under specific circumstances in the United States, though this is under review by environmental authorities.
A select few other countries place fewer restrictions on the substance. Mexico produces a wide range of asbestos products, while Vietnam continues to use asbestos in the vast majority of new housing, and has indicated that it will continue to do so for decades to come. By far the biggest producer of asbestos today is Russia, whose laws on asbestos are muddled, and largely confined to general workplace safety and air pollution legislation. And by far its biggest customer is India, which imports over 360,000 tonnes a year.
Asbestos in India
Before decrying the use of asbestos in India, it’s important to provide some historical context. The use of asbestos started under British occupation, and was driven by British companies and British mining operations. This wasn’t exclusive to India – these companies covered up the effects of asbestos in the UK too, as we’ve written about before – but it did leave a lasting legacy. As the post-colonial period left India poorer, asbestos was a cheaper building material than the alternatives, and both old laws and embedded companies were hard to shift.
Fast forward to the present day, and India is one of the world’s biggest consumers of asbestos. While the mineral is no longer mined in India, the country is responsible for 46% of global asbestos imports, a figure that has risen for two consecutive years. Factories turn the asbestos into products predominantly for domestic use, including asbestos cement sheets and pipes, insulating boards, ropes and more. Estimates suggest that over a hundred million people from the Dalit caste live under asbestos roofs.
What makes this particularly dangerous is the lax safety standards applied in India. While regulation is not particularly well enforced in western nations – including the UK – India has a poor reputation for site safety. Asbestos factories have left a legacy of asbestos-related deaths and illnesses among workers and their families, not least due to careless dumping of asbestos byproducts near communities. And while many workers handle and fit asbestos without adequate protection, millions live in asbestos-riddled houses.
Controlling the narrative
So why hasn’t there been the kind of public outcry in India that followed revelations about the dangers of asbestos elsewhere? One argument is the same deployed in countries such as Russia and Vietnam: that ‘white’ (chrysotile) asbestos isn’t as dangerous as the other forms, which have been banned. While this is true, there is no safe level of exposure to any form of asbestos, and breathing in chrysotile asbestos is as likely to kill you as any other kind (just more slowly in some cases).
This hasn’t stopped politicians and asbestos industry representatives from making the argument, though. To reinforce their point, they cite advice from authorities such as the World Trade Organization, World Health Organization and the European Union, all of whom do state that chrysotile asbestos products can be safely managed if properly monitored and maintained. Though even this is arguable, it misses the point that these products are banned in those countries, with the advice only helping to reduce the crippling cost of removing all asbestos.
The reasons they get away with this, apart from the familiar polarisation of politics, are numerous. Many people are unaware and deliberately uninformed about the dangers of asbestos, or think that only banned varieties of asbestos are not harmful. Many of the people most affected by asbestos are poor and disenfranchised, and feel they cannot do anything even if they want to. And many of the asbestos workers and their communities are fearful of factories closing down or moving away, denying them their livelihoods.
It’s obvious that substantial work remains to eliminate asbestos around the world. While it remains in schools, hospitals, houses and water pipes, crumbling and degrading, it’s important to hold governments to account, and force them to deal with it. But what the case of asbestos in India reflects the most is the ability of vested interests to deny obvious truths in the pursuit of monetary gain.
Nobody can seriously deny that asbestos causes deadly illnesses after decades of evidence – but none of the perpetrators of the current situation in India will be in power when those illnesses take their toll. As with the settled issue of leaded petrol and the current issues of air and microplastic pollution, it’s contingent on all of us to educate ourselves on these issues, and demand that safety isn’t seen as secondary to profit.