Fact 3. Prevention of asbestos-related diseases is possible, and it has practical results. Long-term epidemiologic studies conducted by the Yekaterinburg Medical Research Center (Yekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk Region) show nothing extraordinary in the health of people dwelling in Asbest, the town in the Sverdlovsk Region where the Joint-Stock Company “Uralasbest”, the world largest chrysotile mine and mill, is situated. Asbestos-related diseases have not been detected in people having no occupational exposure to chrysotile. The mean life expectancy of Asbest citizens is comparable to that in the Sverdlovsk Region and Russia. And this is not by chance.

In the past decades fundamental measures to improve labor conditions and environmental protection have been taken in all Russian chrysotile mines and mills. Specifically, a complex of the most important technical and technological actions aimed at the improvement of labor conditions has been realized at “Uralasbest”. As a result, levels of chrysotile-containing dust at workplaces have decreased by tens and hundreds of times.

Results of over 80 years of research into health effects of occupational exposure to chrysotile support the possibility of its further safe use. Findings of studies conducted in 1994-1997 within the Russian-Finnish-American Project on studying health and labor conditions of chrysotile miners and millers are very interesting. In the course of the X-ray examination of pensioners who had worked at least 10 years in chrysotile mines and mills in 1950-60s, when concentrations of the chrysotile-containing dust were tens and hundreds of times higher than the permissible level, specialists from different countries found no radiological changes related to the chrysotile exposure in almost 90% of the examined. No X-ray changes were observed in 70% of cases.

In the past 30 years not a single case of asbestosis has been registered in Canadian asbestos mines and mills where concentrations of asbestos do not exceed the permissible level of 1 f/ml. Many scientists have reasons to think that asbestosis is a disease of the past.

At present, none of the documents prepared by international organizations gives evidence of a higher risk of asbestos-related diseases posed by the exposure to chrysotile (but not asbestos in general) in concentrations equal to modern standards in workplace and ambient air.

Thus, to date there exist no studies proving a higher risk of cancer posed by the controlled use of pure chrysotile as compared to other, especially substitute, fibers; so there are no grounds to call chrysotile a particularly dangerous chemical. Occupational asbestos-related diseases registered today are the result of an uncontrolled use of asbestos in the past.

Fact 4. High-density chrysotile-containing materials and products, if handled properly, cannot emit free fibers, especially in concentrations dangerous for human health, since fibers in them are encapsulated in the cement, resin or other binding matrix.

Fact 5. The world knows no scientifically proven cases of non-occupational asbestos-related diseases.

Fact 6. Over 22 million tons of asbestos were consumed by 15 countries of the European Union in 1950-1999 for the construction of industrial premises, drinking water supply and sewage systems. In fact, Europe would have never achieved the current level of its development without chrysotile-containing products. The peak of asbestos production and use dates back to 1970s. Precisely at that time numerous predictions of the expected hundreds of thousands of deaths from asbestos-related diseases were made. In 1978, for instance, the U.S. National Cancer Institute and the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Sciences predicted that the occupational asbestos exposure would induce over 2 million pre-term cancer deaths in the following 3 decades (i.e. by the year 2008). At the same time Joseph Califano, the U.S. Minister of Public Health stated that 5 million American men and women were at risk because they inhaled a significant number of asbestos fibers annually.

Edit Efron, the columnist, having summarized these statements, published that according to responsible sources asbestos would gradually kill 2 million workers and could even kill 5 million people who had never worked with asbestos. The terrible threat became known to the whole country, to international trade unions. Soon this sensational news traveled to many countries and gave the start to the anti-asbestos campaign forming an anti-asbestos mood in the public. However, 30 years have passed but no epidemic of asbestos-related diseases and deaths has been registered anywhere. Consequently, the predictions have never come true but their authors fail to mention that. "Ban Asbestos” predictors now speak about new terms of the epidemic of asbestos-related diseases that is due to come, as they claim, in 2020-2039. This means that, to please their customers, “Ban Asbestos” supporters can go on scaring the public with chrysotile during almost 20 years to come and bear no responsibility for their deeds.

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