Bernard Coulombe, president and chief executive officer of the Canadian asbestos extraction giant Mine Jeffrey, defended his company and the asbestos industry against charges of failing to provide proper safety measures for workers in the country’s chrysotile mines and concrete mixing plants. With increased pressure from public health officials, environmental activists and government agencies in North American and Europe, Mr. Coulombe has moved his company’s focus to Asia, Africa, and other parts of the developing world to keep the industry afloat.
Currently, Canada is one of a few developed nations that do not have any serious prohibitions on the mining, manufacturing or export of raw asbestos. Most European nations, as well as Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S., have banned or severely limited most uses of asbestos since the 1980s. Many of these bans have come as the result of scientific research that has established a strong link between exposure to asbestos fibers and the incidence of mesothelioma, a rare and aggressive form of cancer that attacks the fluid lining of the lungs.
Despite the adverse effects that the data from the medical studies have had on the asbestos market, as well as the resulting flood of civil litigation initiated by mesothelioma patients against asbestos manufacturers, Mr. Coulombe has stated his belief that the demand in markets such as India, Indonesia and Thailand for asbestos-laced concrete can help the industry survive and provide much-needed jobs and building materials for nations struggling with poverty, homelessness and massive unemployment.
Another problem that Mr. Coulombe may have to face deals less with demand and more with supply. The open-pit asbestos mine near the Quebec town of Thetford Mines produced less than fifty thousand metric tons of material last year, well below the half-million metric tons the facility produced less than twenty years ago. To counteract any potential supply shortfall, the company is nearly finished with an underground mine that will, according to Mr. Coulombe’s estimates, provide enough raw asbestos material for the next fifty years.
Even with the underground mining project near completion, Mr. Coulombe is still seeking investors to provide an additional CA$32 million (US$30.4 million) to finish the work. He cited two instances, one with a Chinese investor and another with a Greek firm, where potential partners backed out of agreements when they learned that the project involved mining asbestos. Mr. Coulombe blamed the political pressure from activists and public health agencies for spoiling the industry’s reputation.
In an effort to stem much of the negative publicity, the firm has established guidelines for the safe handling of their asbestos-laced concrete. Mr. Coulombe stated the examples he found in a plant in Vietnam that had poor ventilation and opened bags of concrete mix by hand rather than using automated openers that would prevent loose fibers from becoming airborne. In another instance, he said that workers would cut cement roofing panels with a power saw without proper ventilation and without wetting the slabs beforehand, minimizing the chances of exposure. He stressed that, with proper precautions and controlled use, the risks to workers exposed to asbestos could be substantially reduced, but not completely eliminated.
Industry experts forecast that, if the new underground mine opens in 2010, production can expand to meet a growing demand in countries like Mexico, Venezuela and Pakistan. In India, one of the leading users of asbestos-laced concrete, demand is expected to grow by more than half in the next few years, despite the increasing incidence of mesothelioma and other lung diseases linked to asbestos exposure in the country’s poorer regions.
Sources: The Sherbrooke Record, The Toronto Star
