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When Alan D. Quilley was a child, he played with asbestos modelling clay. As a young tradesman working on the railway, he fashioned insulation panels for box cars out of asbestos, breaking asbestos sheets by hand. Today, Quilley is a health and safety specialist — a Canadian registered safety professional, president of Safety Results Ltd. and author of The Emperor Has No Hard Hat – Achieving REAL Workplace Safety Results — who understands very well the dangers of asbestos, especially when it’s handled improperly.
But it seems the Canadian government isn’t quite on the same page. And some safety professionals are fed up.
“We know the right thing to do, but it it’s not the easy thing to do,” Quilley says.
It’s no secret that although the government has essentially banned the use of the material in this country — asbestos has been linked to lung cancer and other diseases — the feds still allow asbestos manufacturers to sell their product in third-world countries, where the material is used in roofing and other construction.
Federal literature suggests that Canada has taken a terribly pragmatic view: asbestos is safe when handled right; as long as buyers apply proper procedures, they’ll be fine.
But as feature stories in the Toronto Star and by the CBC have shown, construction outfits in third-world countries don’t necessarily apply proper procedures — and Canada has no way to make sure they do.
“It’s a bit like giving a loaded gun to someone you know doesn’t have the capability nor the knowledge to avoid shooting themselves... then blame them for the ‘accident,’” Quilley wrote in correspondence with Tim Uppal, Member of Parliament (MP) for Edmonton-Sherwood Park.
That Quilley wrote to Uppal in the first place indicates just how frustrated he is with the situation. “I think we’re all responsible for letting the government know what we think,” he says in a phone interview.
He isn’t alone. Other health professionals are raising their voices against what might be a national embarrassment.
“Embarrassment” is the word
In fact, “embarrassment” comes up often in conversations with safety specialists concerning asbestos.
“Personally, I’m embarrassed when I discuss this issue with my European counterparts or other international health and safety professionals,” says Jason Hoffman, past president of the Occupational Hygiene Association of Ontario (OHAO).
Hoffman brought the issue to the attention of OHAO members in an editorial in the organization’s newsletter last fall. He pointed out that Canada ships about 180,000 tons of asbestos a year, and that as far as health professionals outside of Canada are concerned, our national asbestos export business is baffling. He also brought to light a controversial report that some say the federal government quietly quashed for a convenient period of time.
In March 2008, a panel of experts gave Health Canada a report on asbestos — a comparison of different research methods concerning the material. But the federal department didn’t release the document.
The same year, the feds were preparing for the Rotterdam Convention — that’s where governments of various countries meet to develop regulations for hazardous materials. During the 2008 convention, Canada’s government successfully lobbied against new rules for asbestos export and sale.
In the May 2009 issue of Annals of Occupational Hygiene, its editor Trevor Ogden shared his thoughts on the government’s seeming unwillingness to release the asbestos report right away. “We do not know why this did not happen, but speculate that it is due to a perceived threat to Canadian chrysotile production.” wrote Ogden, who also chairs the expert panel that developed the report. Chrysotile is a type of asbestos.
“Several applications for the report were made under the Canadian Access to Information Act, and it was finally released on 9 April 2009, just before the Easter holiday.”
Did Health Canada sit on the asbestos report to simplify the government’s Rotterdam plan? The department didn’t meet our request for an interview. But we do get a sense of what the government might have said, thanks to its response to a letter sent to the Auditor General of Canada about the asbestos double standard.
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