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Campaigners denounce Canada on asbestos

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Campaigners denounce Canada on asbestos

A protest outside London's Canada House was intended to 'shame' Canada for promoting asbestos exports, the organisers said. The protest on 1 July, timed to coincide with official celebrations to mark Canada Day, took place as plans were being finalised to pump Canadian federal and state funds into an expansion of asbestos production and exports (Risks 463). Demonstrators carried banners bearing messages including: 'Canadian asbestos - buy now, die later.' Alan Ritchie, general secretary of the construction union UCATT, said: 'It is disgraceful that Canada continues to wilfully produce and export a deadly substance. It is essential that nationally and internationally unions and other sympathetic groups, increase the pressure on Canada to end this lethal trade once and for all.' GMB national health and safety officer John McClean said: 'It is disturbing that Canadian asbestos is still killing British workers 11 years after asbestos importation was banned in the UK. It is even more worrying that asbestos from Canada continues to be exported around the developing world. Unbelievably the federal government of Quebec is offering a loan of $58 million to the Jeffrey mine so it can be reopened to mine and export 200,000 tonnes of asbestos, every year, for the next 25 years.' He added: 'GMB joins in the call from Stephen Hughes, a GMB sponsored MEP, for the European Commission to investigate this loan as we feel it is in breach of World Trade Organisation rules.' Tony Whitston, who chairs the national forum of asbestos groups, said: 'It is morally indefensible to export asbestos to developing countries when it is deemed too dangerous to use in developed economies, even those with sophisticated means of protection.'

UCATT news release. GMB news release. Asbestos Forum news release [pdf

].

A worn-out welcome: Renewed call for a global ban on asbestos, Environmental Health Perspectives, 1 July 2010.

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