ADPH calls for ban on asbestos, warnings for workers
12 Nov 2009 by Wendi Lewis under Events, News, Organizations
In a news release yesterday the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) applauded a recent decision by the American Public Health Association (APHA) to strengthen its policy against asbestos. The APHA has adopted a resolution calling on Congress to ban the manufacture, sale, export or import of asbestos containing products. ADAO co-founder Linda Reinstein says she hopes this is one more step forward in finally securing a total ban of asbestos in the United States.
According to its web site, the ADPH is the largest, oldest and most diverse organization of public health professionals in the world, and has been working to improve public health since 1872. The association “aims to protect all Americans and their communities from preventable, serious health threats and strives to assure community-based health promotion and disease prevention activities and preventive health services are universally accessible in the United States.”
“We can’t let history repeat itself,” Reinstein said in the news release. “APHA renews our optimism that a federal asbestos ban is imminent.”
The APHA resolution for the elimination of asbestos includes a brief history of the known links between asbestos and adverse health effects, including malignant respiratory disease, including asbestosis, lung and other cancers, specifically mesothelioma. It also states that the organization opposes legislation that would limit the right of victims of asbestos disease to recover damages from asbestos manufacturers, and supports the Bruce Vento Ban Asbestos and Prevent Mesothelioma Act of 2008.
In order to strengthen its stance on asbestos, the resolution not only calls for the complete ban on the manufacture, sale, export or import of asbestos-containing products, but also recommends the U.S. Congress should direct research funding to identify public health hazards resulting from asbestos mining or excavation of minerals that occur naturally with asbestos. It urges the U.S. Surgeon General to warn and educate people annually about the public health issues related to asbestos exposure (building on a similar warning issued in April this year) and to “disseminate widely and annually its asbestos warning to all federal and state health, consumer, labor and environmental protection agencies.”
The resolution also recommends that the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issue an annual statement to alert workers in high-risk occupations to the dangers and adverse health risks associated with asbestos.
Other recommendations address testing existing structures for the presence of asbestos, and asking the government to take a harder stance against asbestos manufacturing, sale and exportation by other nations, as well as by corporations, calling for a global ban on asbestos.
The ADAO news release quotes Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH, who is Chair of the ADPH Occupational Health and Safety section, as saying, “With this new policy, the ADPH is joining the World Federation of Public Health Associations and other international organizations calling for a global ban on asbestos mining and manufacturing, and the dangerous practice of exporting asbestos containing products.”
Read the ADAO News Release.
Read the full APHA Resolution.
