Russia, one of many countries in the world that has not banned asbestos, extracts nearly half a million metric tons from the Uralasbest Mine, near the city of Asbest, every year.
Asbest, also known as the “Dying City” due to unfortunate levels of asbestos-related diseases, is one of the increasingly rare yet still prosperous single-industry towns that dot Russia like a pox.
Russia is considering resettling many of these “monogorods” (cities that survive on a single industry), but Asbest may be exempt. The roughly 12,000 residents directly or indirectly employed by asbestos producer Uralasbest, (out of a total population of 76,000), and the $192 million in revenues from an estimated 500,000 tons extracted, makes resettlement both unlikely and unnecessary, at least in terms of economic prosperity.
Add to that the continuing support of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and resettlement will likely not happen until either the asbestos is gone or the entire town is decimated by asbestos-related diseases like asbestosis (a progressive respiratory disorder like COPD and emphysema), small cell and non-small cell lung and digestive system cancers, and mesothelioma, a unique cancer of the protective tissues that surround the lungs, heart and abdominal organs.
Unlike most other cancers, mesothelioma lies dormant, sometimes for up to five decades, before exploding into a fast-moving, highly lethal tumor that impacts so much vital tissue, and so many organs, that, once diagnosed, sufferers are commonly given about a year to live.
In Russia, this asbestos-related disease paradigm kills more than 10,000 people per year, according to the Geneva-based International Labor Organization. This toll has helped spark Russian activist Denis Nikitin to urge his country to ban asbestos.
Nikitin, a spokesman for the Russian anti-asbestos lobby organization, the Chrysotile Association, feels that it is possible to remove asbestos from Russia’s marketplace. Another activist, Olga Speranskaya of Eco-Accord, agrees, noting that the term “controlled use” implies asbestos’ very real hazards – since a non-lethal product wouldn’t need to be controlled.
Around the globe, 52 countries have successfully banned asbestos. The gap, unfortunately, is being made up for in Canada, China, India, Japan, Russia, the U.S., and 200 other countries who – if not actually mining the 2 million tons of asbestos produced in 2009 – are buying asbestos up in such record quantities that sellers are richer by an estimated $1.25 billion dollars.
These are also the countries which are blocking the addition of asbestos to Annex III of the Rotterdam Convention – a listing which would effectively outlaw asbestos globally.
In Russia, sales of asbestos amount to about a million tons of product (per year) and $613 million in profits, many of the sales made inside the country because Russia still uses massive quantities of asbestos in manufacturing roofing materials, brake pads, and insulation, thanks to Russia’s Chief Sanitary Officer (CSO) ruling that it is “safely saleable”. (Russia’s CSO is equivalent to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Administrator, Lisa Jackson).
With a worldwide recession hitting Russia especially hard, and asbestos disease rates rising, one might think Russians in towns like Asbest would rebel. But the head of Asbest’s trade union, Andrei Kholzyakov, says no. Russians are a stoic lot, and it would take a long period of economic hardship to get them to revolt.
Elsewhere in the world, asbestos has caused about 200,000 deaths and cost governments (and the asbestos industry itself) about $70 billion, between settlements and legal costs.
