NGO says vested interests thwart asbestos ban at Environment and Health conference

At the Fifth Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health, organised by the European region of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO), Eastern European, Caucasus and Central Asia countries, which all produce and use chrysotile asbestos, committed to work on elimination of asbestos related diseases in cooperation with WHO and International Labour Organisation. However, Women in Europe for a Common Future (WECF) notes that the draft ministerial declaration contained a commitment to ban asbestos in construction materials by 2015. WECG says vested asbestos interests from Eastern Europe prevented this commitment to ban asbestos from being adopted.

Alexandra Caterbow, chemical spokesperson of WECF stated: “I am bitterly disappointed at the power of asbestos vested interests to frustrate the hard work of the drafting group and the wishes of the majority of the member states. WECF has tested chrysotile asbestos from several Eastern European countries, and we are in no doubt whatsoever of the hazardous risk to their environmental health that asbestos poses”.

• WECF statement

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