Susanne Wilson’s husband Bob Auger died of mesothelioma in 2000 — a disease related to his working with asbestos as a college student nearly 40 years ago. Ever since Auger’s passing, Wilson has put plenty of energy into fighting Canada’s asbestos mining and trade industries.

She has made presentations about our country’s asbestos exports, pointing out that although the material — a fibrous insulating substance that, when airborne, lodges in the lungs causing serious health issues such as cancer — is effectively banned here in Canada, the federal government supports selling it elsewhere. She gives media interviews whenever possible, explaining that the government’s position that asbestos is safe if handled carefully, makes no sense; if Canada, a country with excellent health regulations, finds asbestos too dangerous to use at home, how can we expect people in countries with substantially less regulatory oversight to handle it safely?

“I buttonholed everybody I could — I didn’t care who it was,” Wilson says. “It has got to stop. It’s a horrible death. You can’t breathe. It crushes the heart and lung.”

She certainly isn’t the only Canadian raising the red flag on asbestos. Across the country, health professionals, safety experts and ordinary citizens are making their views known: Canada should cease and desist asbestos mining and export. Nonetheless, the government seems to ignore the message, and activists such as Wilson are calling on everyone — especially people in occupational health and safety positions — to add their voices to the anti-asbestos choir. (A COS Reader Poll asked health and safety professionals whether they support a total ban on mining and export of asbestos. Close to 80 per cent support a total ban on Canada's asbestos industry.)

So what can you do? Wilson and others say it’s time to write letters to members of Parliament, and it’s time to publicize the fact that, for many, Canada’s position on asbestos isn’t supportable. (Vote in our Reader Poll)

Asbestos certainly is a controversial substance. Reports have drawn connections between the material and lung diseases such as mesothelioma. While the asbestos industry touts the latest form of asbestos — chrysotile — as safer than other iterations, organizations such as the Sierra Club say chrysotile is still dangerous.

It’s no secret that Canada’s asbestos mines (such as those in Thetford Mines and Asbestos, Que.) produce a substantial amount of the material, and that much of it makes its way to factories in third-world countries like India, where workers don’t have the personal protective equipment and training required to work with it safely.

And it’s well known that the federal government supports the asbestos industry, reportedly providing funding for an asbestos marketing organization (the Chrysotile Institute). The Canadian government blocked the addition of asbestos to the Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent during a United Nations summit last June; under the Convention, exporters of listed materials have to tell importers about health hazards that the materials may cause.

Wilson says that if Canadians want this to stop, they have to speak up. She recommends writing to members of Parliament – particularly those belonging to the majority-ruling Conservative Party, the people who currently have the most power to effect change.

Letter to Leitch
Gilles Paradis has done just that. A professor at McGill University’s Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health, and editor of the Canadian Journal of Public Health, he participated in a letter from health and safety professionals sent to MP Kellie Leitch, representing Ontario’s Simcoe-Grey riding.

Leitch is a medical doctor, and as such, she has become one of the anti-asbestos league’s main targets, the idea being that Leitch’s oath to do no harm should compel her to oppose the government’s support for asbestos mining and export.

“As a public health physician, I thought it important that we conveyed our major concerns about Canada’s role in helping this industry, which should have no place in our economy, and we certainly shouldn’t be supporting an export that has a marginal impact in Canada but has major detrimental effects on populations worldwide,” Paradis says.

The letter, dated Aug. 18, calls on Leitch to side with the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Canadian Public Health Association and the World Health Organization to stop the use of asbestos.

“We congratulate you for the prestigious awards you have won in recognition of your leadership to promote public health, particularly the health of children,” the letter reads.

“We respectfully point out that it is incompatible to show leadership for the health of Canadian children and at the same time, to support a policy that causes harm to children in the developing world by placing asbestos in their homes and schools, particularly since no regulatory oversight is in place in these countries to protect people from asbestos harm once the asbestos is out in the community.”

This isn’t the only letter that representatives of the health and safety sector have sent to Leitch. But in an email response to Canadian Occupational Safety magazine, the parliamentarian sticks to her guns.

“I support the safe and controlled use of chrysotile within Canada,” Leitch says, adding that Minister of Natural Resources Joe Oliver would be better to address questions about the country’s asbestos exports.

Oliver didn’t respond by press time.