Ten years ago, Canada exported more than 600,000 tonnes of asbestos to the U.S., mostly from Quebec mines. Last year Canadian exports to the U.S. dropped to 75,000 tonnes and by 1996 the U.S. market will be virtually wiped out.
“The damage right now has been mostly to morale,” states Quebec’s minister of mines, Raymond Savoie. “There have been no immediate effects on our export or on our production. But the ban certainly will have an effect over the next couple of years as it comes into effect.” He pauses, then adds defiantly, “If it comes into effect.”
Canadian producers have been fighting the EPA since the asbestos war began, and despite this latest setback, they remain determined to defend asbestos from its critics.
Just 10% of Canadian exports head south to the U.S. and will be affected directly by the ban. The real fear is that other countries will follow the American lead and ban asbestos too.
“If the ban goes into effect, it will probably have a ripple effect and in the long term could certainly create pressure on the market not to use asbestos,” Savoie tells The Northern Miner Magazine.
If that happens, it could spell the end for the Canadian asbestos industry, the world’s leading supplier of the mineral. Canadian producers exported 685,000 tonnes worldwide last year and brought home $268 million in return. But the global market already had been wounded by the U.S. threat. In 1978, Canada exported 1.4 million tonnes of asbestos worth $600 million (1978 dollars). Chrysotile Asbestos
Asbestos is not a single mineral but a generic term describing a variety of fibrous silicate minerals, each with distinct chemical composition. The most common variety is chrysotile, a fibrous form of serpentine, rich in magnesium and silica. The huge open pit mines of Quebec’s Eastern Townships produce chrysotile and so do the smaller mines in Newfoundland and British Columbia. Chrysotile accounts for 95% of world production.
It is the fibrous nature of asbestos that makes it so useful. The average diameter of a chrysotile fibre is just 0.02 micrometres. But while the thinness of the fibres makes asbestos valuable, it also makes it dangerous. The slightest wind current sweeps millions of the minute fibres into the air where they can remain suspended for many hours. This is the asbestos dust that coats towns like Thetford Mines in a thin mantle of white powder and can be breathed deeply into the lungs of asbestos workers.
Early workers were ignorant of its dangers. They worked their entire lives in the mines and mills with no protection from the dust. Years later, many would develop asbestosis, a debilitating lung disease that robs the lungs of their ability to absorb oxygen. When the danger of asbestosis became known in the mid-1960s, steps were taken to reduce airborne dust levels.
In Quebec, the maximum allowable limit for airborne asbestos is 2.5 “regulated fibres” per cubic cm and most operations attain levels of less than half this. (Regulated fibres are fibres with a length equal to or greater than five micrometres and with a length-to-width ratio greater than 3:1. It is these fibres that are considered most dangerous.)
Where possible, asbestos dust is wetted down to keep it from becoming airborne. Powerful vacuums and fans clear the dust from the air of mills and milling machinery is entirely encased to contain the dust. The machinery is also kept at a negative pressure to ensure that dust cannot escape into the atmosphere. In areas where dust levels are impossible to control, workers wear respirators or masks to protect their lungs. Safety Concerns
But safety concerns remain and reports have linked asbestos to lung cancer, cancer of the larynx, mesothelioma (a rare malignancy of the pleura of the lung) and a variety of gastro-intestinal cancers. Asbestos has been the subject of dozens of studies, but the results have only stirred more debate — a debate in which no one is impartial.
Canadian asbestos producers argue that amphibole asbestos minerals such as crocidolite and amosite present a much greater health risk than does chrysotile asbestos. Writing in The British Journal of Industrial Medicine (45, 1988, pp. 305-308) Dr Chris Wagner stated: “We believe that chrysotile is the least harmful form of asbestos in every respect and that more emphasis should be laid on the different biological effects of amphibole and serpentine asbestos fibres.”
Dr Jacques Dunnigan of the Montreal-based Asbestos Institute, shares this concern. “The EPA risk assessment model does not take into account the differing potencies according to fibre types,” he says. “The mathematical models they used are flawed and have been much discredited in the international scientific community.
“Size and shape of the fibres is very important (in determining toxicity),” Dunnigan says, “but durability is also very important. That depends on the chemical make-up of the fibres. Some fibres will gradually dissolve away in lung tissue and that’s the case for chrysotile asbestos. Others persist for practically the whole lifespan of the person and that’s the case for amphibole asbestos.”
The Asbestos Institute, like the International Labor Organization and the World Health Organization, maintains that asbestos can be used safely in controlled conditions, despite its hazards.
“Obviously, we came to a different conclusion,” says Bruce Rigby, section chief of the EPA’s chemical control division and leader of the agency’s asbestos research efforts. “We concluded that most uses of asbestos did present an unreasonable risk and should be prohibited or phased out over time. Our risk assessment was based on a number of different epidemiological studies, some of which involved mixed fibre types. The evidence isn’t as clear as some people think it is. For example, the animal experiments show that, if anything, chrysotile asbestos is more dangerous (than amphibole and serpentine asbestos). For reasons of prudence, we considered all forms of asbestos as equally potent.”
Under the ban, 10% of asbestos products will be prohibited by next August, another 18% by 1993 and a further 66% in 1996. The EPA ruled that no suitable replacement is available for the remaining 6% of asbestos products. These include missile liners, asbestos diaphragms in chlorine production and high-temperature industrial gaskets. “We concluded that those uses did not present an unreasonable risk,” says Rigby. “They were either low-exposure uses or else the substitutes were either unavailable or very expensive.” Replacement Fibres
For the other 94% of asbestos uses, alternative products must be found. These include products as diverse as asbestos cement water pipes, fireproof clothing, asbestos reinforced asphalt and brake liners. For some applications, a suitable substitute for asbestos is not yet available. “Based on our analysis,” explains Rigby, “by the time the ban goes into effect, there will be equally effective substitutes available for the current uses of asbestos that we are banning.”
But asbestos proponents disagree. They say replacement products cannot compete with asbestos as friction liners in brake pads, for example, or as a concrete reinforcer. Nor is it known whether replacement fibres are any less hazardous than asbestos, and there are no regulat
ions governing the safe use of man-made asbestos substitutes.
Adds Quebec’s Savoie: “The EPA will be subject to a great deal of pressure in the coming months from the automotive industry, where asbestos is used in brake liners, and from people in California where asbestos cement water pipes are needed because of the corrosive soil.”
Lise Beaudry-Trudeau, head of the Asbestos Institute, suspects that the substitute fibre industry in the U.S. may have pressured the EPA into banning asbestos. The health implications resulting from the ban are very serious, she says. “We have only recently started to prove that there are (replacement) substances that are likely to be even more dangerous than asbest os, and we would like people to learn from the asbestos experience,” she says. “People may say, Oh well, it’s not asbestos, so we can use it without any precaution.’ And that’s where the danger lies — the feeling that if it’s not asbestos, it’s not dangerous.” The Industry Adapts
But the arguments for and against the ban seem academic to the miners and the managers of the asbestos mines. For towns like Asbestos and Thetford Mines, the deep thud of blasting and the continual roar of the machines working the open pit have meant jobs and economic stability. But activity in the once-bustling mines is now only a fraction of what it used to be and producers have had to adapt to the changing market.
“We’ve had this threat of a ban over our head for 10 years,” says George McCammon, president and chief executive officer of Asbestos Corp. in Thetford Mines. “We’ve been dealing with it constantly. Producers have coped with it by adapting to it. They’ve cut back on production and mines have closed. Three of us formed a partnership and put all our assets into one partnership to operate. This was a means of coping with the drop in demand.”
The partnership to which McCammon refers is lab Chrysotile, formed in 1986 by an amalgamation of Lake Asbestos, Societe Asbestos (now known as Asbestos Corp.) and Bell Asbestos Mines. Lab Chrysotile has its headquarters in Thetford Mines and is the umbrella company that streamlines the mining, processing and marketing of asbestos from each company. In a struggling industry like that of asbestos, cutting costs is vital.
But not even cost-cutting can solve the problem of a disappearing asbestos market. The Asbestos Institute, funded equally by the asbestos industry and the governments of Canada and Quebec, has been fighting to restore the tarnished image of the mineral. This year, the institute will spend more than $8 million promoting asbestos around the world. Though they object to the term, members of the institute essentially are in the business of lobbying.
“Our goal is to get people to use asbestos in a controlled, safe manner,” says Beaudry-Trudeau. Her organization conducts seminars and training sessions on the safe use of asbestos in Canada and abroad. “We are the only country in the world with this kind of safety training,” she adds.
“The Asbestos Institute was created to promote and defend the controlled use of asbestos,” says Mines Minister Savoie. “Producers work with the institute to ensure that we exert pressure on organizations and groups that try to ban asbestos and promote the use of substitutes instead.” The institute doesn’t directly push asbestos sales, but there is a spinoff effect. By encouraging the safe use of asbestos, the institute tries to overcome the fears that many countries have about the product.
When it comes to selling, the industry has a powerful ally in the federal government. Documents obtained earlier this year by The Financial Post under the Access to Information Act reveal that Canadian embassies in Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong and other Southeast Asian countries were actively supporting the asbestos industry. The missions were ordered to distribute Canadian-produced information brochures on asbestos, organize safety seminars and collect market information for the Asbestos Institute.
In part because of this effort, Southeast Asia is now Canada’s most important asbestos market, buying up 44% of its exports. Asia imported 303,000 tonnes last year, representing a 53% increase from Asian sales in 1978 of 198,000 tonnes. The Asian market has buoyed an ailing industry which has had its total export volume cut in half during the same 10-year period. Trouble in Thetford
The aging wooden houses of Thetford Mines are a long way from the glass towers of Hong Kong and Bangkok where deals are struck between asbestos suppli ers and buyers. But the livelihood of thousands who make their living in the great open pits hinges on the wheeling and dealing of the politicians, bureaucrats and high-level managers who make the sales that keep the mines alive.
“Thetford has seen its workforce in the mines decrease to 1,500 from 3,500,” says McCammon. “The population is less. The young people are leaving because there are just no jobs for them.”
Rene Thivierge, industry and trade commissioner for the Thetford Mines region, says the drop in U.S. exports has been gradual enough that the town has been able to adapt to them. Manufacturers that used to supply the mines have sought new customers and services. Five years ago, 70% of local manufacturing and services supplied the mines. Today, the total dollar value of their business remains about the same, but the mines make up just 10% of the business.
Thirty miles southeast of Thetford Mines, the town of Asbestos, Que., has been harder hit. The huge Jeffrey open pit is the largest asbestos mine in Canada. In 1975, 12,000 people lived in Asbestos. Today, just 6,900 people live there and most of the young people have left for cities like Montreal and the promise of work. Some 2,000 jobs have been phased out at the mine in the past 15 years through layoffs and early retirements and today the work force at JM Asbestos numbers fewer than 1,000.
Not all producers have been hurt by the ban. In the rugged terrain of northwestern British Columbia, Vancouver-based Cassiar Mining Corp. strips asbestos from an open pit high in the mountains. The bulk of it is shipped to Pacific Rim countries.
“Last year we had record sales from the mine — a 37-year record,” says Jim O’Rourke, Cassiar’s president. “This year it looks as if we’ll even exceed that. We’re fully sold and we don’t see any short term effects (from the EPA ban). We only ship about 5% into the U.S. and the product that we ship there is used in their pipe- manufacturing, which isn’t affected until 1997.” Cassiar is confident enough about the future that it invested $8.6 million last year to develop an underground program to replace the exhausted open pit. The McDame project will add another 10 years to the mine’s life.
But Cassiar is an exception in a slumping industry and efforts remain directed at overturning the U.S. ban. In August, the Asbestos Information Association (AIA), a U.S.-based industrial lobby group, announced that it would fight the EPA ban in court. Moreover, American industries that use asbestos products are prepared to fight as a result of the added cost and problems of finding replacement substances for their products. To ban a product, the EPA must follow a stringent legal procedure. The AIA, supported by Canada’s Asbestos Institute, was successful once before in forcing a judicial review of the EPA’s decision because the latter agency did not follow the proper procedure. In 1987, a U.S. court ordered the EPA to do repeat some of its studies and re-submit the evidence, which it did.
To win another appeal, the AIA must prove, for a second time, that the EPA did not follow the correct procedure. Only if the review is granted, can the asbestos industry challenge the EPA’s evidence. If there are any winners from the EPA decision it is the U.S. artificial fibre industry and the U.S. asbestos mining industry. Critics of the ban eagerly point this out. The EPA maintains that it has banned asbestos in the U.S. because it is hazardous to people’s health and because artificial replacements are readily available for asbestos. It says asbestos may still
be the best product for the job in countries where substitutes are either unavailable or too expensive.
But others are suspicious of the agency’s motives. Raymond Savoie predicts that the next step for the U.S. is to promote the use of replacement fibres in other countries.
“A great many of these (U.S.) organizations that fund development work * *
will set conditions, for example in building codes, that discourage the use of asbestos and encourage the use of substitutes — substitutes which the U.S. happens to produce.”
Others, convinced that the EPA’s decision was politically biased, point to the fact that U.S. mining is allowed to continue. Says the Asbestos Institute’s Dunnigan: “The bizarre thing is that the EPA says, We’re going to ban asbestos in our country but be aware that our (asbestos) mining activities are not banned. Should you wish to order some, well, we’re open for business.” Blair Crawford, B.Sc., is a Toronto- based freelance writer.
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