Despite a lot of hard work and lobbying on Capitol Hill, the Bruce Vento Ban Asbestos and Prevent Mesothelioma Act of 2007, H.R. 3339, is still in the House Committee on Energy in Commerce. It’s been stuck there since August 2007!

Next Friday, Sept. 26, is National Mesothelioma Awareness Day. That sounds like the perfect time for those who support the complete ban of asbestos in the United States, and who support research funding for mesothelioma, to petition their Representative to finally move this bill forward.

Asbestos-banning legislation has been brought before the Senate and the House of Representatives numerous times in the past decade, but has never been able to get to a final vote of both houses and reach the President to be signed into law.

This bill is strong, and would require the federal government to take action ot address asbestos and its harmful effect. It would require the disposal of asbestos-containing materials within two years, and would prohibit the importing, manufacturing, processing or distributing of asbestos-containing materials (except for specific exemptions for the Department of Defense and NASA).

H.R. 3339 also would require the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to establish a plan to increase awareness of the danger of asbestos-containing materials in homes and workplaces, and would encourage reserach and treatment of asbestos-related diseases like mesothelioma.

Contact your Representative NOW. It’s easy. Just click on this link to visit the House of Representatives online. Find the Rep for your Congressional District and email him or her and ask for this bill’s passage. If your Representative serves on the House Committee on Energy, it’s even more important that you let him or her know that you want to see this bill passed. Please help!

Let’s do more than acknowledge mesothelioma this Sept. 26. Let’s make a stand to eliminate this unecessary killer.

We’ve added a Ban Asbestos Bill tracker on our home page to help you keep up with this bill’s status.

Tags: asbestos, Bruce Vento Ban Asbestos and Prevent Mesothelioma Act, mesothelioma, United States House of Representatives

This entry was posted on Monday, September 15th, 2008 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Legal, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.