For eight months, the Quebec government has been holding on to a report that explores the link between asbestos-related cancer and Canada’s only community that still mines the substance. The study is believed to be the first Canadian research to look at asbestos cancer in a specific region, examining the risk of disease in and around Thetford Mines in Quebec. The province’s public health institute delivered the completed report to regional officials and the provincial Health Department in March.
According to the news service Canadian Press, the study and its potentially alarming conclusions still hasn’t been made public. Officials say that will finally happen this month. “It’s very unusual,” said a source affiliated with the public health institute who is aware of the report, but did not co-author it. “The time it’s taking now is a little abnormal.”
The mining of asbestos is an intensely sensitive issue in Quebec, where it provides around 400 jobs at the province’s one remaining mine. The industry fiercely defends Quebec asbestos – also called chrysotile – and deems the product perfectly safe as long as precautions are followed.
Some might question that reasoning, as chrysotile asbestos has accounted for 90% of all industrial asbestos used by manufacturers over the years. Canada’s federal government and provincial officials in Quebec have traditionally supported the continued mining. For individuals who live in Quebec itself opposing the continued mining has been likened to living in Louisiana and opposing offshore drilling or living in Maine and opposing commercial logging. There are jobs at stake.
Meanwhile, the rate of deaths caused by mesothelioma cancer continues to climb in Canada. Once again quoting the website Canadian Press: “Mesothelioma, a lethal cancer for which the only known cause is asbestos, killed 32 per cent more Canadians in 2005 than in 2000 according to the most recent national figures available from Statistics Canada”. Also climbing is the amount of asbestos litigation in Canadian courts brought by people suffering from asbestos related diseases.
There are some signs that support for the continued mining is finally beginning to wane, in the face of a national ban on most asbestos products. In 2008 the Quebec mines exported 175,000 tons of chrysotile asbestos, virtually all of it to developing nations where industrial safety is rudimentary. Once that report is released, the debate is likely to escalate further.
