HEALTH-BRAZIL: New Offensive Against Asbestos

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava* - Tierramérica

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 21 2004 (IPS) - Mining, industrialisation, sales and use of asbestos should be banned, the Brazilian Ministry of Labour and Employment has stated for the first time. The substance has been banned in 36 countries because it causes lung cancer and other irreversible respiratory ailments.

If the prohibition is implemented, it will be a personal victory for Fernanda Giannasi, labour inspector and the most prominent activists against asbestos in Brazil.

But the executive branch has yet to formulate a legislative bill for Congress to consider – and it will surely meet resistance from the private sector.

Giannasi fears that industry will be given a long period to eliminate the use of asbestos, such as the five years set by the European Union and which ends this year.

The Ministry of Labour set up a technical group in March, giving the team 90 days to draw up a detailed map of the production and use of this cancer-causing fibre in Brazil. The report is to help a commission with representatives from six ministries in defining the terms of the asbestos ban.

"Five years is too much. I hope for an immediate ban, or within one year, maximum, because the companies have already gained a lot of time," said Giannasi, who has been invited to advise the commission.

In her opinion, further delays are not merited because the health problems caused by asbestos are well known and scientifically proven, and there are alternative materials and technologies already available.

Working with the Brazilian association of people exposed to asbestos, Giannasi found 52 deaths and hundreds of cancer cases, asbestosis (a chronic pulmonary illness) and other ailments that cause permanent physical disability.

SAMA (Sociedade Anonima Mineracao de Amianto), the only producer of the mineral Brazil, and the industries that use it maintain that the controlled use of asbestos, in accordance with existing laws, poses no dangers.

Only the so-called white asbestos or chrysotile, the least toxic variety, is used in Brazil, and it is permitted in many countries, they argue.

Last year SAMA exported 140,000 tons of asbestos – two-thirds of its output – and saw revenues of 110 million dollars.

The company says it holds the right to 60 more years of mining at Minaçú, in the central-western state of Goiás, and warns that if the government implements the ban SAMA will seek compensation.

Some in the transformer industry maintain that replacing asbestos would drive up costs, but many companies are already working with alternatives because that is what the market demands.

Infibra/Permatex, for example, utilises plant-based and synthetic fibres to produce the fibre-cement used in making water tanks.

"That increases the cost by 10 percent, but there are consumers who prefer it," industrial director Luiz Fernando Marchi told Tierramérica. But this alternative production, with technologies developed by the University of Sao Paulo, remains a minor business at Infibra/Permatex, which uses asbestos in 90 percent of its products.

Fibre-cement is also used to make roof tiles. The alternative, with technology imported from Austria, costs 40 percent more and does not resolve the problem of the curved tiles, said Marchi.

Asbestos is a component of more than 3,000 products, including insulation and acoustic materials, protective clothing, vehicle brakes and clutches, industrial filters and special papers. It has proven difficult to find substitutes with similar qualities in terms of resistance to high temperatures, durability and flexibility.

Industry argues that the low percentage of the fibre in products reduces the danger, but the Ministry of Labour’s director of safety and health, Virgilio Cesar Alves, wrote in a recent article that there is no safe level of exposure to asbestos to avoid cancer.

Of the 36 countries that have banned the use of this mineral, most are European. In Latin America, the only ones to do so are Argentina, Chile and El Salvador, but Ecuador and Peru are expected to follow suit.

"The elimination (of asbestos) in Brazil could be gradual," Alves said in an interview with Tierramérica. He considers reasonable the five-year period feared by Giannasi.

One "solution", such as that adopted by Canada, is to ban the use of asbestos in the domestic market, but allow it to be exported. That could save towns like Minaçú, home to 34,000 people and dependent on mining for more than 800 jobs directly, and many more indirectly, noted the ministry official.

Some 300,000 people in Brazil are directly exposed to the carcinogenic material because they work for companies that use asbestos, according to Fundacentro, a health agency of the Ministry of Labour. But the public health problem is much greater because the fibres released from the products during shipping, for example, can be dispersed over long distances, said Alves.

The ailments caused by asbestos can appear as long as 30 years after exposure, meaning that Brazil could see a surge in asbestos-related illnesses between 2005 and 2015, because production intensified in the 1970s, he said.

(*Originally published Apr. 17 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)