II. ASBESTOS: A TRAGIC AND MAGIC MINERAL
Regardless of his location on this earth, man's need and search for adequate shelter and respite from the elements is rivaled only by his need and search for food and water. Asbestos cement...
...9 In its Manville, NJ production complex, which makes a-c pipes among other asbestos and non-asbestos products, J-M eliminated 45% of the workforce in the process of providing its first round of safeguards between 1967 and 1973.10 SUMMARY As we have seen the manufacture of asbestos products in the United States is a complicated industry, weak in some sectors but secure in its position as a non-substitutable product in many of its thousands of uses...
...9 Despite industry's overriding efforts to keep the truth from getting to the workers, the danger was made common knowledge in the mid-60's with Dr...
...Comments of Johns-Manville Corporation with Respect to Notice of Proposed Rulemaking Occupational Exposure to Asbestos, (April, 1976), Letter to Docket Office...
...Bureau of the Census, Census of Manufacturers, 1972, Industry Series-SIC No...
...Technological Feasibility and Economic Impact of OSHA Proposed Revision to the Asbestos Standard (Pennsylvannia: March, 1976), pp...
...29 Pushing the panic button a little harder, the report states that "foreign competition, some from Korea, has started to penetrate the market...
...they are giving up that hegemony to Mexico, Colombia and Taiwan, as asbestos capital from the industrialized countries finds "unregulated" and low-wage regions attractive new centers for export production...
...Correspondence from Gold Bond Building Products, Buffalo, NY...
...The real test of how the industry will respond to strict health standards is, however, only beginning to be played out...
...industry, the forward lines of defense are in Brussels and London...
...MAGIC MINERAL" Asbestos is most commonly associated with phenomenal heat and fire retardant capabilities...
...Centralization of textile production is already in an advanced stage...
...picture is different...
...Asbestos friction products are found anywhere motion must be controlled, from railroad cars to tape recorders, but their most important commercial applications are as automobile brake and clutch linings...
...The table below lists major cost factors as a percentage of shipment value for the past decade...
...OSHA MOVES ON THE CASE The first hazardous substance to be regulated by the newly-created OSHA was asbestos...
...Asbestos Information Association memo to Executive Committee, AIA/NA, December 12, 1977, pp.1-2...
...And Sheldon Samuels, of the AFL10MarchlApril 1978 CIO's Industrial Union Department, laid out the longer-term goal in a pre-hearing press conference: "Since constant monitoring of fiber levels in hundreds of plants is obviously impossible, we are calling for the installation of engineering controls and work practices designed to bring asbestos exposure ultimately to a zero level...
...13 MarchlApril 1978NACLA Report Asbestos ore, mine in background...
...Where wall or ceiling repairs are being made, frayed asbestos sound insulation is usually exposed...
...One blatant instance of this was revealed in a recently won class action suit by 400 workers from the Pittsburgh-Corning plant in Tyler, Texas...
...Irving Selikoff, quoted in Washington Post, February 24, 1973...
...Ibid., p.4-90...
...3. Ibid, p. 325...
...That turns the standard into a sixteen million fiber-a-day standard, to say nothing of the millions which are smaller and even more dangerous.' 0 Dr...
...The fiber is elaborated into an intermediate or final product, and then sent on, either to a secondary industry for further elaboration, or a consumer industry for installation or application in another product...
...According to Robert Clifton, "1973 [world] demand outstripped capacity to produce for the first time in recent years...
...In most sectors a few large companies dominate production and control an important percentage of the market...
...The Weston report stresses that sloppy work practices and lack of skills on the workers' part are responsible for high fiber counts, electing not to correlate that with the demands placed on workers for speed and shortcuts that are a well-known part of incentive pay systems...
...The Weston study describes the production processes, presents industry information on fiber counts in each process, and estimates the cost of compliance with a 0.5 fiber standard...
...This public relations arm of the industry was created explicitly to combat the bad press the industry has been receiving on the health issue...
...Russell F. Settle, et aL Benefits and Costs of the Federal Asbestos Standard (February, 1975), p.27...
...2 To affect lower standards would require "far reaching advances"--new facilities and processes based almost exclusively on automation...
...Although there is no explanation offered for why this should be particularly true for the friction products sector, the alarm is then sounded that "this could result in substantial loss of business to imported friction products...
...By the 30's a German study proposed that lung cancer also be designated an occupational disease of asbestos workers...
...16MarchlApril 1978 Workers tend the mechanized weaving process One factor limiting the effectiveness of this strategy is the vulnerability of this sector to foreign competition...
...Ibid, pp.4-44 and 4-45...
...1112 NACLA Report At Home With Asbestos Workers confront deadly asbestos dust every day in measurable amounts...
...MarchtApril 1978 13 drugs...
...establishing manufacturing plants in foreign countries where pollution regulations are much less stringent than in the U.S...
...That may not sound like a lot, but a worker will inhale up to eight million cubic centimeters of air in a working day...
...It is true that ore coming from some of the historically rich mines contains a lower ratio of recoverable asbestos than twenty years ago, but there is no indication that the world's resources are nearly depleted or that the problem is one of "finding" new deposits...
...In addition to all its other attributes, asbestos is resistant to electrical effects, flexible when woven, alkali-resistant, slow-wearing and non-abrasive even when used as a friction material.2 Ironically, asbestos even has specific lifeprotecting uses...
...Bureau of the Census, Census of Manufacturers 1972, Industry Series: Abrasive Asbestos and Miscellaneous Nonmetallic Mineral Products...
...Such applications include building insulation, joint compounds, battery separators, etc...
...While this sector is highly centralized, dominated by giants like General Motors and Chrysler Corp...
...14MarchlApril 1978 DECLINING DEMAND If on a world scale the demand for asbestos products shows signs of increasing, the U.S...
...Cost of Materials Payroll Total Value of Shipments 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 25.8 -3.3 45.9 25.0 26.9 =2.6: 45.6 24.9 26.1 -- 3.1...
...This seemingly exaggerated estimate would only reduce workers' exposure to between 1.0 and 0.5 fibers/cc...
...We have also seen that asbestos manufacturers have willfully built their little empire off the ruined health and shortened lives of their workers...
...Irving Selikoff, a leading researcher in the field, found in a study of asbestos insulation workers that deaths from mesothelioma averaged "about one in 60 or 70 instead of one out of 10,000" in the general population.' Mesothelioma in particular results from exposure to the tiniest of fibers-those that can pass right through the protective membrane...
...The claim serves another purpose however...
...There is no question that capital expenditures for technology that would virtually eliminate exposure to ambient asbestos dust would be great, though not as expensive as the Weston report indicates...
...Among the most common household products containing asbestos are the following: Insulation materials: Anywhere heat is found in the home you will find asbestos...
...breathed into the lungs over time they lodge there, and within ten to fifteen years can develop scar tissue known as asbestosis...
...When one considers that in the U.S...
...less commonly known is the fact that most grades of asbestos fiber have a tensile strength superior even to piano wire, capable of sustaining an average load of 400,000 lbs...
...The U.S...
...This means there may not be more than two fibers of a maximum five micron length in a cubic centimeter of air...
...3 0 The threat sounds ominous, but is quite overstated...
...According to Dr...
...Correspondence from Southern Asbestos Company, Charlotte, North Carolina...
...There are only two possible conclusions...
...The 1975 NIOSH proposal for a permanent standard of 0.5 fibers/cc has been revised to 0.1 fibers/cc, in other words, "the lowest level detectable by available analytical techniques...
...And that was only a few years ago.., the early 70's...
...ASBESTOS: A TRAGIC AND MAGIC MINERAL 1. K.V...
...Ibid, p.4-45...
...The water supply of many U.S...
...The dust raised as the broken strands fly around is particularly severe, and complete enclosures are not possible due to this necessity of access...
...Asbestos cement products provide the world's population with safe, long-lasting, weather-resistant homes and places of work...
...p.4-81...
...Both can well afford the cost of compliance...
...J-M threatened that the high cost of such standards would mean plant closures, loss of jobs across the country, and "in addition, Japan, Taiwan, India, other Asian countries, and nations in South America would come on strong and flood the American market with asbestos products...
...The asbestos king is again threatening that it is technologically unfeasible to control fiber emission down to 0.1 levels and that to insist on such a standard would economically destroy the industry in this country...
...Soon after, asbestos was shown to be responsible for mesothelioma, an inoperable and otherwise extremely rare cancer of the chest or abdominal membrane...
...Susan Daum, of the Environmental Sciences Laboratory, Mt...
...In Roman times, slaves mining asbestos were provided respirators by their masters who had a material interest in maintaining the productive capacity of their chattel...
...19...
...First we are asked to accept that "friction companies must pass the cost on to the consumer...
...The uses of asbestos textiles range from ironing board covers to boiler wrappers, from electrical wire insulation to packings in giant oil well pumps...
...1 While moving production to low-wage, unregulated countries is a future option for some, it is a major decision that will not suit the needs of every company...
...Companies further complain that productivity of their workers is lowered due to interference by hoods, curtains, etc...
...Weston says the friction products industry would be the second most costly sector to clean up, requiring an initial capital outlay of $30 million, with future annual costs of $17 million-almost 8% of annual sales...
...You couldn't tell the features on a man's face from more than three feet away...
...It strikes people who simply live in asbestos towns and families of workers whose only contact is with the dust carried home on work clothes...
...Johns-Manville, which had in fact already achieved the proposed level in most of its plants, carried the banner of industry intransigence...
...4 2 To undermine growing demands for engineering controls that could really make a difference, the industry brandishes the threat that such compliance will make companies uncompetitive with foreign imports...
...The first modern diagnosis of asbestosis was made in 1900...
...Ibid., p.128...
...2 "" In fact, this is a misleading statement of the problem, bearing some similarity to the "oil crisis" of the early 70's...
...l 9 His projections indicate that "asbestos reserves could well be in danger of depletion by the year 2000 at the forecast rates of consumption, if the 'find' rate of new sources does not increase...
...Note the steady decline of wages...
...Marsha Handelman and David Kotelchuck, "Editorial: Your Job or Your Life," Health PAC/Bulletin, no...
...Talc: This mineral, commonly used in body powders, often .is found in combination with asbestos...
...TEXTILES Unlike friction products, the asbestos textile sector has well-established examples of runaway producers...
...Weston notes that "considerable automation could be incorporated in machinery redesign, thereby reducing employee exposure while increasing productivity and profits...
...Robert A. Clifton...
...9. Ibid, p.21...
...September, 1967), p. 7 . 6. NACLA interview with Dr...
...It is true that imports of cheaper products have grown in the last decade at a faster rate than either exports or domestic production in general...
...All but a fraction of domestic production is now controlled by three major companies, although there is further processing by a host of secondary manufacturers...
...The next article discusses the attractions of Latin America for companies such as asbestos producers, who are anxious to lower their existing costs of production and avoid major new ones...
...Irving Selikoff, Address to the delegates of the Twenty-First Convention of the International Association of Heat Frost Insulators and Asbestos Workers, Chicago...
...Chest cancer, the womenfolk told me...
...Asbestos cement (a-c) products are not particularly subject to competition from foreign imports (since they are too unwieldy to economically ship great distances...
...While there is a clear shift of demand out of the U.S., a-c pipe is still a major product category, using nearly 20% of domestic raw asbestos consumption...
...nor is there a threat from substitute fibers...
...The workers charged that, although both the company and the government knew that asbestos was hazardous, neither warned the workers of the danger...
...Weston, op.cit., p.4-43...
...Despite the fact that the profit rate appears not to have declined, sectors of the industry BREAKDOWN OF MAJOR COST FACTORS ASBESTOS MANUFACTURING (listed as percentages of total value of shipments) Profits and unlisted expenses Capital Expen...
...Selikoff had warned that even a two fiber level was only intended for the prevention of asbestosis, and would not prevent cancer...
...If fire, war and uncontrollable speed are our greatest self-inflicted dangers-to which one is tempted to add production of hazardous substances--asbestos provides mastery over two of them...
...I These last points are laid out in a 1976 economic impact study conducted by Weston Environmental Consultants for the Asbestos Information Association...
...One such-brake linings-is addressed compellingly by this statement: "Man's need for transportation is as old as civilization itself...
...In addition to these consumer products, the public is exposed to the dangers of asbestos in the form of air and water pollution...
...ASBESTOS CEMENT Production of asbestos cement materials in this country is shrinking...
...A-c manufacturers could reach a 0.5 fiber level in most stages of production with an expenditure of about 3% of annual sales, according to Weston...
...While the various processes of carding, spinning, twisting, braiding and weaving are mechanized, they must be constantly attended by workers...
...imports used to be Belgium, Japan, UK and West Germany...
...As to the rest, we can make some rough inferences on the basis of available information...
...FRICTION PRODUCTS Friction products comprise both the largest branch of domestic asbestos manufacturing, and one of the most secure...
...In fact, many U.S...
...Behind the scenes the industry remains determined to sabotage efforts to eliminate the hazards of asbestos...
...3 In one grown-up's toy-synthetic fireplace logs-asbestos is used as a component to retard burning...
...In its public pronouncements, the industry lauds its own advances and continues to lay responsibility at the feet of the workers...
...Lindell, Industrial Uses of Asbestos (paper presented to the Lyon Conference on Asbestos, 1972), p. 326...
...Ibid...
...FROM POTHOLDERS TO PIPES Asbestos manufacturing is characterized by three stages of production...
...Industry-wide, its average capital costs are sufficiently low and its profit rates sufficiently high to be able to improve the conditions of work...
...In so-called "developing" countries, on the other hand, the need for new municipal water systems, sewage networks, irrigation projects, and low-cost industrial and residential buildings has turned a-c products into a potential high-growth industry in those countries...
...Clifton forecasts an annual growth in domestic asbestos demand of only 1.1% until the year 2000, compared to 4.5% worldwide...
...In response to the latest proposals, the industry, again led by Johns-Manville, has updated its 1972 litany...
...1. Boston Sunday Globe, January 22, 1978, magazine p. 13...
...3. Boston Sunday Globe, op.cit...
...In the period from 1964 to 1970, North American asbestos consumption declined by 0.9% while in the developing countries, consumption rose substantially: the Middle East 12%, Africa 16%, South America 10%, Pacific Basin countries 10%, and Eastern Europe and China 18...
...3 " There are only two major manufacturers of a-c products-JohnsManville and Certain-Teed...
...half a million people work directly with asbestos and more than three million are exposed to asbestos dust on their jobs, the dimensions of the hazard become clear., The industry's efforts to divert or distort nearly a century of information on the hazards of asbestos read like a Watergate expose, and reflect the capitalist treatment of workers "as part of the equipment and machinery of production...
...4. Washington Post, op.cit...
...50 (March, 1973), p. 1 1 . 41...
...Dept...
...only imported 2% of its asbestos product consumption in 1976, but that is twice as large a share as a decade ago, and preliminary import figures for 1977 show a 50% increase over 1976.25 Significantly, the major countries of origin for U.S...
...Two sectors-asbestos paper and gaskets and packings-are not included in these figures...
...SHORTAGE The shortage of asbestos supply results from the fact that asbestos is not being introduced into the market as rapidly as world demand is rising...
...7. Asbestos: Fighting a Killer, transcript of slide show produced for the Oil...
...But at the same time these companies are in the best economic position to develop and install technological innovations...
...Its long list of special properties and uses is unrivaled by substitutes, yet breathing in fibrous asbestos dust has shortened the lives of many workers...
...MC72(2)-32E (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1974), p. 32E-6, and Annual Survey of Manufacturers, same as above...
...While there is no comprehensive or reliable data on industry compliance, it is generally conceded that at least the major companies have met the standard...
...Animal tests are cur- rently being conducted to determine the links between gastrointestinal cancers and ingested asbestos fibers...
...The category includes yarns, tapes, braids, felts and cloth, usually reinforced with cotton, nylon, polyester or wire, and/or bonded with resins...
...It was undoubtedly to forestall this threat of even more stringent standards that the industry fought as vehemently as it did at those hearings...
...329, and Annual Survey of Manufacturers, 1973-1976...
...but while it all begins in the mines and fac- tories, many of the 3,000 end products touch our daily lives in ways we never know or think about...
...3 5 Two of these three companies have already moved at least part of their Installation of asbestos cement sheet 18MarchlApril 1978 production across the border into Mexico and Venezuela...
...Mostly, they just seemed to stop breathing...
...J-M is now coldly claiming that the existing exposure limit of two fibers/cc "will not have any adverse impact on morbidity or mortality," and that there is no new medical evidence to prove the need for a lower standard.1" With this manuever J-M has put itself in the embarrassing position of defending as valid the very evidence it tried to discredit six years earlier...
...Raybestos-Manhattan has patented a new yarn manufacturing technique called Novatex which reduces dust emission by extruding the fiber wet through a nozzle and binding it with resins...
...1 - 4 . 18...
...Selikoff, "we have yet to see a sample of air in an American city without asbestos in it...
...Robert A. Clifton, Asbestos...
...their resistance to fire, weather, rot, rust or oxidation and destruction by rodents and insects is unparallelled among building materials.' I remember on construction jobs, the only way you knew the foreman was coming, you memorized his footsteps...
...Weston Environmental Consultants-Designers...
...The primary manufacturers are the "commanding heights" of asbestos production...
...Unloading sacks of asbestos is one of the most hazardous tasks for workers...
...blocks to full scale research that not until twenty years later was it finally demonstrated through a time-lapse study of a large population of workers that the rate of lung cancer among asbestos workers was in fact unusually high...
...323-328...
...Yet the industry's capital spending for the crucial years 19721976 hardly varied from a decade-long average of 2.8% of product shipment value...
...Chemical and Atomic Workers by Bonnie Bellow and Nick Egleson (1976), p. 5 . 8. Brodeur, op.cit., p.72...
...p. 5 . 20...
...The air was so thick with asbestos dust from sawing insulation block and sweeping up the mess that you could barely see a 200W lightbulb fifteen feet away...
...The problems of raw asbestos shortage, declining demand and increasing prices are not experienced equally by all sectors of the industry...
...Since we cannot do without friction products, and because there are no competitive substitutes, major producers can force their prices up to compensate for most, if not all, of the cost of compliance, just as they have done with raw material price increases...
...Meylan, op.cit., p.95...
...Ultimately, however, companies will accede to such costs only if they are forced to...
...45.2 25.6 25.7 -- 2.7 45.9 25.7 26.2 46.0 25.2 27.3 "-2.7 45.0 25.0 1973 1974 1975 22.7 -3.4" 51.2 22.3 25.2 46.4 24.8 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 Source: U.S...
...Mt...
...6 Added to that are higher rates for gastrointestinal cancers and heart failure (derived in many cases from taxation due to severely reduced lung capacity...
...Selikoff's well-publicized studies, and as a result the industry is finally being forced to react...
...Next to fire and war, stopping motion represents perhaps mankind's greatest self-inflicted danger...
...Clifton...
...Fully half of all who have worked with it can be expected to die of asbestosis or asbestos-related cancers...
...cities flows through asbestos cement pipe and, according to Dr...
...They use 14% of total asbestos consumption and are therefore important, but they are not statistically isolated from similar products not using asbestos...
...5. Dr...
...Hearings were held in 1972 at which teams of industry lawyers, researchers, doctors and executives did everything they could to prevent the passage of a temporary standard setting the maximum level for airborne fibers at two per cc of air...
...It is a public justification for the fact that "some American brake lining manufacturers are currently...
...Weston, op.cit., p.4-44...
...Enough fibers were released into the air that the product was banned in April 1977...
...2. Dr...
...Children's Toys: Asbestos has been found in modelling clay and papier mache mixtures for children...
...3 3 Weston claims that even expenditures amounting to 20% of sales would not bring all sections of textile production down to 0.5 fibers/cc, even though extensive redesign of both production facilities and the product itself could achieve levels below two fibers...
...The study does not specify what this extraordinary amount of money would buy...
...4. Paul Brodeur, Expendable Americans (New York: Viking Press, 1973), p. 86...
...Ibid, p.1 4 . 22...
...By contrast, present day profit requirements and the "free labor market" system which allows for the easy replacement of disabled workers has produced a history of coverups and negligent murder of hundreds of thousands of people...
...Based on this assessment of the problem, one solution suggested by the study is "control supervision to minimize worker carelessness" -a repressive measure based on circular logic that conveniently shuts out the real issue: how work is organized and for whom...
...Ibid, p.4-38...
...While labor intensity and 17NACLA Report low cost of product transport are reason enough to encourage offshore production, the particularly hazardous nature of this sector, and the difficulty and high cost of cleaning it up, provide a strong additional motive...
...2 6 It is undoubtedly some of these smaller manufacturers that Raybestos-Manhattan, the leading producer, had in mind when its 1975 annual report announced that the company expected to capture an even greater share of the market because of the inability or unwillingness of some competitors to meet more stringent government health regulations...
...Asbestos friction products are such a small category of imports that they do not even warrant their own customs listing...
...per square inch...
...Asbestos friction products historically have comprised this country's largest category of manufactured asbestos exports, but the industry would like us to believe its status is being threatened...
...Thus they concluded, in a fine spirit of capitalist doublethink, "it would be nothing less than complete social irresponsibility to adopt a two fiber standard for occupational exposure to asbestos without stronger medical evidence than that which presently exists...
...Yet in other instances, "loading new fiber into carding machines sometimes is a manual operation in which a worker picks up asbestos with his hands and dumps it into the carding machine...
...Weston, op.cit., p.4-85...
...8 It is as these primary components are shipped out across the country to become part of 3,000 other products that the hazard achieves a magnitude of numbers in terms of workers exposed...
...That is a decline from 26% in 1974.1 At least part of the drop is due to competition from PVC pipe, which is both lighter and therefore easier to install, and is free from the attack on asbestos cement pipe which claims that fibers are being released into the fresh water supply...
...Strategies to accomplish this have reached international proportions...
...Available from the National Technical Information Service, U.S...
...For example, during spinning, strands often break and must be repaired manually...
...While producers claim they have changed their sources to eliminate asbestos, this has not been confirmed...
...Department of the Interior), p.9...
...op.cit., 1974, p. 4 and 1977, p. 8 . 37...
...This is particularly the case with asbestos shingles and clapboard which have declined to less than a tenth of 1972 demand...
...THE KILLER The contradiction is obvious-the valuable products described above are at the same time potentially deadly for the workers who produce them...
...But the lid blew off only after decades of suppressed information could no longer be contained...
...Asbestos - 1977 (Washington, DC: U.S...
...2 The two fiber standard passed nonetheless and is in effect today, but the industry was able to postpone implementation until 1976, saying that technology would have to be deAsbestos fiber veloped to reduce exposure to that level...
...2 4 RISING PRICES This shift and overall increase in world demand, accompanied by the raw asbestos "shortage" has led to a price increase that does not reflect the domestic situation...
...Ibid...
...Exploration and developing existing reserves now looks more attractive, but takes time, so that continued shortages and further price increases can be expected...
...In February 1973, a doctor reported, "We are still finding asbestos in about one third of all the drugs at Mt...
...Primary industries, which we will focus on, are those that begin with raw asbestos fiber after it has been mined and milled...
...Weston, op.cit., p.4-27...
...Most of the plants and processes are over 40 years old and involve extensive manual handling and transporting operations, and the fiber count thus has the widest range of all the industry...
...Department of Commerce...
...Construction worker Asbestos is both a "magic mineral" and a vicious killer...
...As a result this standard, whose maximum contribution is to prevent asbestosis, is less than two years old and is not yet fully enforced...
...The unwillingness of companies to develop new mines or exploit existing ones considered uneconomic has created a shortage that resulted in a 70% price increase between 1973 and the end of 1976...
...Over the past 20 years some asbestos products have been edged out by newer and more sophisticated materials...
...Ninety percent of the employees are exposed to the dusty refuse generated by these steps...
...1973-1976...
...Department of Health, Education and Welfare, NIOSH Revised Recommended Asbestos Standard No...
...2 2 More recently, minor or substitutable applications have been phased out or banned strictly because of their hazardousness...
...William Meylan, et al, Chemical Market Input/Output Analysis of Asbestos to Assess Sources of Environmental Contamination (Syracuse, NY: Center for Chemical Hazard Assessment, Syracuse Research Corporation, MarchlApril 1978 March, 1977), pp.62-64...
...A study for the U.S...
...We will examine the economic context of the industry today, in order to determine what role the threat of more stringent safety and health standards really plays...
...Ibid, p. 1 4 5 . 11.Ibid, p.118...
...Ill...
...And his wife added, "Some of them died of cancer, too...
...Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines, 1977...
...This cost-push inflation was somewhat unsettling to U.S...
...For example, a manufacturer in the northeast which buys raw asbestos from Canada, and which is situated close to its major customer, may find that extra shipping costs added to the costs of setting up a plant in Mexico outweigh other savings...
...Steam and hot water pipes and radiators, particularly in older buildings, are usually insulated with asbestos-containing material...
...As one 66 year-old worker, himself disabled with asbestosis, described the results in the Union Asbestos & Rubber plant in McGregor, Texas, "One by one, just about all the men who worked with me at that place have died...
...1976 19.0 -3.4 57.5 19.7 100.0 28.1 -2.6, 48.9 20.5 15 100.0NACLA Report still complain that they cannot compete with lower priced products from abroad, but lay the responsibility on the OSHA regulations...
...77169 (December, 1976), p.93...
...Preprint from the 1974 Bureau of Mines Minerals Yearbook (Washington, DC: U.S...
...This amounted to an average annual expenditure for all new plants and equipment of only $25 million a year total since the standard was passed...
...In fact government inspectors, in a concession to Pittsburgh-Corning, agreed not to wear respirators during an inspection, lest they "unduly alarm" the workers...
...Sinai School of Medicine, New York City, February, 1978...
...Although companies would like to portray the occupational safety and health issues as the cause of all their woes, other factors have combined to make this a period of unprecedented instability in the industry...
...The cost would be an initial $1.1 billion for the entire industry, plus an annual capital, operating and medical expense of $4 billion...
...But the industry put up such road9NACLA Report Companies play on the contradiction: Is life safer with or without asbestos...
...who produce for their own assembly plants, there are 35 companies, many of whom are small, single plant firms...
...How seriously individual sectors and companies are affected will in turn affect how they can be expected to respond to pressures to clean up the health hazards in their shops...
...COMPLIANCE No one any longer argues that adequate technology to meet the two fiber limit is nonexistent...
...thus for the U.S...
...As with any other lung fibrosis the tissue becomes increasingly, and permanently, non-elastic...
...Weston, op.cit., p. 4 -28...
...The reality facing the industry is that the construction needs of an advanced industrial country such as this are no longer as adequately met by a-c products as they used to be...
...Their operations tend to be more hazardous in that workers move and empty huge bags of raw asbestos and mix it with other ingredients...
...Potholders, ironing board covers and scorch-protecting plates for stove burners often contain asbestos fibers that are released into the air as the material wears out...
...Filters: Because of its fineness, asbestos has been commonly used as a filter in the processing of beer, gin, wine, fruit juices, sugar, vegetable oil's, lard and certain Removal of health hazardous asbestos-soraved ceilin~ in school...
...producers at the outset, but they have rallied in classic fashion-that is to say by making up the cost from the workers' salaries instead of profits...
...products are uncompetitive with products made in third world countries, even without the added costs of occupational safety and health technology...
...but as his need for rapid transportation has increased, so have the perils he has brought upon himself...
...This puts asbestos workers in double jeopardy, for like workers in other industries, they are told that their wage demands too are endangering the companies' competitiveness...
...The Census Bureau records a total of only 87 companies, whose shipments last year amounted to less than one billion dollars...
...Asbestos-1977, op.cit., p.13...
...The primary industry itself is not large...
...3 2 Side by side in this industry are examples of both the most modern innovations and the most derelict practices...
...Sinai Hospital...
...According to one study, papier mache "can yield very high levels of airborne asbestos" before being mixed with water...
...Brake linings and protective clothing such as firefighters' uniforms are two such applications for which there are as yet no substitutes...
...Selikoff's study, "one in every five deaths among insulation workers is due to lung cancer, one in ten to cancer of the pleura (mesothelioma) and one in ten to asbestosis...
...Company compliance will depend on a number of factors that currently affect the profitability of the industry as a whole...
...Sinai Hospital tested several baby powders in 1976 and found them to contain varying amounts of the mineral.' Talc, bound in a glucose solution, is used to polish some brands of rice and peanuts, and as a base for chewing- gum...
...Department of Labor, p.28...
...The study concludes that in no work station can levels be brought to 0.1 fibers, and that even 0.5 is not technically feasible in all stations...
...An internal memo from the Asbestos Information Association to its executive committee concerns fears of "unnecessarily restrictive regulations" that may be adopted in Europe...
...of Commerce suggested that the industry would have to spend roughly $70 million annually to reach the standard in every workplace...
...The sleek asbestos fibers are virtually indestructible...
...2 The industry explains that this is because "developing countries have a much greater new construction potential," and therefore a growing demand for low cost asbestos cement construction materials...
...In particular, production of easily transportable and labor intensive commodities in an unregulated third world country offers the dual competitive advantage of significantly reduced labor costs and the avoidance of stringent compliance costs...
...1976 29.5 -2.0 49.0 19.5 (Average Mfring...
...Today domestic manufacturers of asbestos products face three serious and interlocking problems which threaten the profitability of the entire industry: a shortage of world raw asbestos supply, an apparent leveling off of overall domestic demand for asbestos products, and rising prices which exacerbate competition from foreign imports and previously uneconomic substitutes...
...Operating on three shifts, and at peak periods seven days a week, workers move the asbestos through mixing vats, chemical operations, grinding screens, pre-forming presses, rotary cutters, metal stampers or punch presses, curing ovens, sanders and drillers...
...Annual Survey of Manufacturers, 1976, op.cit...
...Either compliance was not as costly as the industry wanted us to believe, or many smaller companies are not in compliance...
...2 1 This decline in growth relative to other parts of the world has several causes...
...2. Ibid., pp...
...Mild exertion, even breathing, becomes finally impossible...
...Data taken from annual Schedule A and TSUSA (imports) and Schedule B (exports), Department of Commerce, Bureau of Census, and Annual Survey of Manufacturers...
Vol. 12 • March 1978 • No. 2
