The Toronto Star is running a two-part series about the Canada’s continuing export of asbestos, despite the fact that asbestos products are effectively banned within the country’s borders.  India is the primary buyer for Canada’s asbestos, currently being exported at the rate of about 175,000 tons per year.  The story of asbestos use in India is one that guarantees mesothelioma and other asbestos-caused diseases will continue to be a world health issue.

Indian manufacturing enterprises have discovered the value of asbestos cement as raw material for roof sheeting material.  It is used in the vast slums around the nation’s urban centers for roofing, fencing and other uses.  These shanty-towns generally have thatched roofs, vulnerable to fire, or stretched plastic or whatever else is available to provide some degree of shelter.  Asbestos exposure is everywhere in the poor communities of India and its use is expanding.

Some manufacturers of asbestos cement products use modern technology to minimize workplace exposure.  Others use outdated equipment that results in employees working amidst clouds of asbestos dust.  And of course, there is no control over what happens to the thousands of corrugated asbestos cement sheets once they reach the slums.  Broken and crumbling asbestos building products are common in India’s poor encampments.

The manufacturers and the government are matter-of-fact about the use of asbestos, recognizing that exposure to asbestos fibers floating in dust clouds can lead to asbestosis or worse.  But asbestos is cheap and effective, so the expansion of asbestos cement plants and textile mills continues.

There is nothing in India that compares to the types of asbestos litigation seen in the United States, the UK and even Canada.  Run a web search on asbestos suits in India and you’ll come up with a dozen firms that sell asbestos suits to be worn as fire protection gear.  So long as the government supports the manufacture of asbestos products there will be little legal ground for asbestos liability claims for those of future generations that develop asbestos cancer because they were raised in a shantytown.

During these years of the asbestos litigation saga, there have been stories of every kind of workplace exposure that has led to an asbestos disease of some sort for the employee.  In Libby, Montana the story of the W.R. Grace mine and its asbestos-contaminated vermiculite ore has exposed, perhaps for the first time, exactly how lethal secondary asbestos exposure can be.

The vermiculite mine operated from about 1920 through 1990, processing the ore on site.  The result was dust clouds emanating from the mine and the milling plant that regularly covered the town and surrounding environs.  Libby residents talk of finding trees in the surrounding woodlands with leaves coated with mine dust.

But most importantly what Libby provides is a picture of the impact that asbestos exposure can have on people who live near facilities that use or produce asbestos products, or that live with an individual who works in an asbestos-contaminated environment.

More than 300 deaths have been linked to asbestos exposure from the vermiculite mine, and the Center for Asbestos Related Disease in Libby currently serves 2,800 patients with various stages of asbestos disease. About two-dozen new cases of asbestos disease are diagnosed every month.  Many are some form of asbestos cancer.

It’s nearly impossible to get an accurate count of the deaths, because 80,000 people came and went in Libby while the mine was operating, CARD director Dr. Brad Black has said. With a 30- to 40-year latency period for asbestos disease, he predicts the last new cases will turn up somewhere around 2030.

When you link the current statistical picture in Libby with what is known about peripheral, or “paraprofessional” exposure, you will see a grim picture of what prolonged exposure to asbestos dust can do to people who live around it but do not work in it.

In the past, because of a lack of proper industrial hygiene, asbestos workers went home covered in asbestos dust. The workers’ families and other household contacts were then exposed via inhalation of asbestos dust from workers’ skin, hair, and clothing, and during the laundering of contaminated work clothes.

According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATDSR), A mortality study conducted in 1991 of 878 household contacts of asbestos workers revealed that 4 out of 115 total deaths were from pleural mesothelioma and that the rate of deaths from all types of cancer was doubled.  Other studies in Hanford, Washington and in foreign countries confirm the heightened level of cancer in households where asbestos workers dwelled, and the courts are now recognizing that threat as well.

There is one asbestos mine left in North America, in the town of Thetford Mine located in Quebec.  Keeping it open has become a cause célèbre among some Canadian politicians, presumably because there are about 400 people employed there.  Ottawa, a Canadian province with no commercial asbestos mining in its territory, has reinforced its support for asbestos mining and use by helping to fund a Canadian pro-asbestos organization called the Chrysotile Institute.

The institute is dedicated to debunking the myth that any asbestos exposure is dangerous.  They engage in lobbying efforts and in an ongoing public relations campaign based on two assumptions: that chrysotile asbestos is less harmful than other forms of asbestos, and that careful control of industrial environments can reduce the risk of exposure to acceptable limits.

All of Quebec’s asbestos ore is exported, because in Canada there is no longer any substantial use of asbestos in industrial or commercial products.  The Chrysotile Institute makes much of the fact that the world’s asbestos mining concerns have agreed not to sell their ore to asbestos product manufacturers who do not meet certain safety considerations.

They don’t police these agreements, nor do they speak to the continuing diagnoses of mesothelioma in Canadians and in many workers in developing nations who know nothing of contractual agreements.  Industrial safety in many developing countries is rudimentary; probably incapable of managing the release of pollutants into the air in industrial sites.  The nautical salvage yards ships in India and Pakistan have developed international notoriety for the workplace exposure that occurs daily when old ships are being dismantled.

While the perception of asbestos in Canada is different among some groups, notably the Quebecois, some residents of the country feel that spending tax dollars to support an asbestos promotion organization may be a misdirected allocation of funds.  The Chrysotile Institute has received $20 million in government funding since 1984.

The Institute’s press releases and public commentary haven’t slowed the development of asbestosis and asbestos cancer among workers who were exposed to chrysotile asbestos during the 1960s and 1970s in shipyards, steel mills and refractories.  Nor has their advocacy slowed the asbestos litigation in Canadian courts, suits filed by Canadian nationals whose health has been ruined by asbestos exposure.

A jury in Baltimore Circuit Court has found Scapa Dryers, Inc. liable in the asbestos-related mesothelioma and lung cancer of former paper worker Carl Saville. In the 1960s and 1970s, Saville was exposed to asbestos-containing dryer felts produced by Scapa as well as pipe, cement and block insulation installed by insulation contractor Wallace & Gale. The jury awarded $1.718 million to Saville, who has waited for this retrial since the 2003 trial and verdict for the plaintiff was overturned on appeal.

During the mid 1960s and 1970s, he worked on drying machines in a paper plant which utilized Scapa-manufactured dryer felts containing chrysotile asbestos. Wallace & Gale, an insulation contractor to the paper mill where Saville worked, was added as a new defendant in the retrial after its emergence from bankruptcy. In 2002, Saville was diagnosed with lung cancer and a malignant mesothelioma tumor was discovered during the lobectomy. Saville has since gone without cancer recurrence for the past six years.

Mr. Saville is one of the lucky few to have had a case of mesothelioma go into remission.  The average survival term for malignant mesothelioma is eighteen months or less after diagnosis. Most plaintiffs in asbestos litigation don’t live long enough to see an appeal completed on the initial verdict.

Scapa Dryers, Inc. manufactured the 200-foot long dryer felts used in Saville’s paper plant. Wallace & Gale is a Baltimore-based manufacturer of sheet metals, fiber sheets and alloy sheets. The company served as an insulation contractor for the installation and repair of several types of asbestos containing insulation at the paper mill where Saville worked.

Another couple that sued Scapa Dryer Fabrics and an additional co-defendant was awarded $10.2 million in November due to workplace exposure in the Crown Zellerbach paper mill in Camus, WA.  Henry Barbin worked as a pulp tester, and paper tester at between 1968 and 2001. Exposed to asbestos fibers from dryer fabrics for almost 40 years, he was diagnosed with mesothelioma cancer in 2006.

Henry and Geraldine Barbin’s asbestos lawsuit claimed that the asbestos dryer fabrics were defectively designed and failed to carry warnings about the dangers of asbestos exposure. Henry Barabin was awarded $700,000 for medical expenses, lost income and household services and $8 million in non-economic damages for pain and suffering. Geraldine Barbin was awarded another $1.5 million for her loss of consortium claim.

A high-visibility, high interest criminal trial has opened in Italy over asbestos exposure that killed at least 2,200 former employees of the firm Eternit.  On trial are one wealthy Swiss national and an 88 year old member of Belgian nobility, both of whom worked with the company or served on the board at some point in the 1970s.

The company in question is the Italian firm Eternit, a corporation that turned out products made from cement reinforced with asbestos fiber.  The case has developed intense interest in Europe; on the trial’s opening day the courtroom had to utilize the space of four courtrooms because of the presence of 400 asbestos victims, family members, and 150 attorneys.

The victims - who died of mesothelioma or fell sick over at least the past four decades - were either Eternit workers or residents of towns where the firm’s four Italian plants were based. The two defendants are accused of negligence because there were no warnings to employees or anyone else about the potential hazards of asbestos.  The plants were all closed in 1986.

According to various European news agencies these defendants were high executives with the company and ignored the developing awareness of health problems associated with inhaled asbestos fibers.  The number of deaths attributed to these four plants suggests that not only workplace exposure but widespread distribution of asbestos dust to surrounding areas occurred during the years of plant operation.

There has been only one federal prosecution of asbestos company executives in the United States – similar charges of negligence filed against six W.R. Grace executives – and that case ended in acquittal in early 2009.  Nevertheless W.R. Grace has been in bankruptcy for years due to asbestos claims and has established a $2 billion trust fund to reimburse former employees.  The record of civil litigation in these Eternit cases is not clear, but the public anger over perceived negligence may be the precursor for substantial asbestos litigation yet to come.