[The town of] Asbestos, Quebec is pushing for further development of their asbestos mining industry, an industry that represents the last foothold of new asbestos production in the developed world. The town has been severely affected by the recent economic downturn, and is hoping that widening their mining operations could replace some 450 of 1000 or so jobs that have been lost over the past few years.

The mining operation expansion is waiting for a provincial government loan to be approved in order to move forward, a loan that represents $58 million of $190 million total capital necessary for the project. The other $132 million has been raised between the miner’s owners, a miner’s coalition and various business investors.

The prospect of expanding the mining operation has come under the cold scrutiny of international disapproval. The World Health Organization has declared asbestos an unquestionably toxic material, and organizations like the United States Environmental Protection Agency and equivalent agencies throughout the EU have worked tirelessly against commercial interests to regulate or completely ban the substance.

Even in Quebec the substance is hardly used in the day to day industrial applications that its suppliers recommend it for. The vast majority of the asbestos mined in the town of Asbestos, Quebec, is exported to nations who have yet to form specific regulations preventing the use of the substance.

Quebec’s Premier Jean Charest has been publicly reproached by the Occupational and Environmental Health Network in India, a nation that much of Quebec’s asbestos is exported to, for taking advantage of their lack of regulations and treating the nation as a “second-class citizen”. Charest continues to suggest, however, that asbestos can be safe if handled properly and that safe handling is the responsibility of the consumer, not the supplier.

Asbestos exposure has been positively linked to a wide variety of health problems. Respiratory difficulty, asbestosis, lung cancer, and mesothelioma, a terminal cancer of the soft tissue around the lung, have all been ascribed to the dangerous substance.

The fate of the asbestos mining industry in Asbestos, Quebec pinions on the endorsement of the provincial government in the form of a loan agreement. Many well respected doctors, scientists, environmentalists and politicians have written letters to the government admonishing Asbestos, Quebec for its proposed plan and requesting that the government act in favor of modern medical science.

Quebec has long been known as the last front in the war against the asbestos industry. Whether or not Asbestos’s mines are approved for further development could determine just how long of a struggle the world is in for.

(Mesothelioma Watch, 24/05/2010)