The WTO asbestos dispute seems long over (thank goodness, many people would say), but some issues related to exporting asbestos are still out there. The Economist reports:
FOR more than a decade, workers in hazmat suits have been boring into the walls and ceilings of Canada’s parliament buildings to remove tonnes of asbestos insulation. This tedious and expensive work is to protect the health of lawmakers and their staff: even limited exposure to asbestos can cause lung cancer or mesothelioma, a deadlier cancer. These risks have prompted most rich countries, and many poor ones, to ban all forms of asbestos.
But they have not stopped Canada from exporting large quantities of the mineral to developing countries, especially in Asia, nor discouraged the government from paying to promote its use abroad. This is “corporate welfare for corporate serial killers”, says Pat Martin, a former asbestos miner who is one of the few members of parliament to denounce the hypocrisy.
Campaigners hope that it will end at a meeting in Rome, starting on October 27th, of the Rotterdam Convention, a registry compiled by the United Nations of hazardous substances which require “prior informed consent” before they can be exported from one country to another. Canada has lobbied vigorously to prevent chrysotile, or “white” asbestos—the only kind still mined—from being included.
The article mentions India, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Peru and Ukraine as other countries opposing the listing of asbestos in the UN registry. Thus, even if Canada bans asbestos mining, which the article suggests it might do, there are still other countries who will be trading it, and possibly raising trade disputes over it in the future.
