Bangladesh Ban Asbestos Network officially launched with
OSHE as secretariat
Dhaka/Brussels,
27.11.2013 – During the annual Asia Ban Asbestos Network meeting, Bangladeshi
civil society organisations launched the Bangladesh Ban Asbestos Network
(B-BAN) under the auspices of OSHE, the Bangladesh Occupational Safety, Health
and Environment Foundation, a member organisation of the NGO Shipbreaking
Platform. Anti-asbestos organisations, victims groups, researchers, and medical
experts from all over Asia rallied in Dhaka, Bangladesh to demand a complete
ban on the mining and the use of asbestos, which is still causing
asbestos-related diseases (known as ARD) amongst workers and communities in
Asia.
Although
asbestos has been prohibited in many industrialised countries, including the
EU, there has not been a global ban on the killing fiber. As a result, the
asbestos industry has now turned its focus on the developing countries, where
it tries to convince governments that asbestos is safe, using the same baseless
arguments it already put forward in European countries in the 1960s to promote
its dangerous products.
To
change this, Asian activists have been meeting for years inside the Asia Ban
Asbestos Network (A-BAN), which is the umbrella organisation that created the
Bangladesh Ban Asbestos Network last week. The B-BAN secretariat will be
located in OSHE’s office. OSHE was founded in 2003 and focuses on
workplace-related development issues.
During
last week’s meeting, OSHE organised a panel discussion on the dangers of
asbestos in the shipbreaking industry in Asia. India, Bangladesh and Pakistan
are the three major shipbreaking destinations: 70% of all end-of-life vessels
were broken there in 2012. The Chinese ship recycling industry also has serious
issues with asbestos handling and disposal. The experts present at the meeting
agreed that exposure to asbestos is a major threat for all industries involved
in shipping, from shipbuilding, to ship repair, to shipbreaking. Participants
from South Korea and Hong Kong, which are major shipbuilding and ship repair
centres, said that they can now witness the devastating results of shipyard
workers’ exposure to asbestos years ago. In both places, they can see a steadily
raising number of victims of different ARD, such as asbestosis and
mesothelioma.
In
the shipbreaking yards in South Asia, neither the management nor the workers
are aware of the dangers of asbestos. A recent study by the NGO Shipbreaking
Platform on shipbreaking in Pakistan has shown that asbestos is removed by
workers without them being protected. Asbestos is then dumped in unmarked sites
behind the yards. A recent research by OSHE in the shipbreaking yards in
Bangladesh argues that nearly none of the supervisors in the yards is aware of
the dangers of asbestos. Therefore, no protective measures are taken there
either.
Moreover,
there is hardly any medical data available about ARD caused by shipbreaking, as
the workforce in the yards mainly consists of undocumented migrant workers and
the yard owners are not legally required to ensure regular health checks. Pilot
studies both in India and Bangladesh have shown asbestosis cases in the
shipbreaking yards. However, the circumstances – a migrant workforce, no
documentation of occupational diseases and yards that are not easily accessible
to civil society and researchers – make it very difficult to reveal the whole
picture.
“Asbestos-related
diseases are hidden. They are not as dramatic as major industrial accidents and
seldom make headlines”, argued Patrizia Heidegger, Executive Director of the
NGO Shipbreaking Platform. “Death by occupational diseases is slow, invisible
and painful. We want the governments in Asia to understand how harmful it is to
import asbestos into their countries and what huge human costs the ARD will
cause in the near future.”
The
NGO Shipbreaking Platform and its member organisation demand that all
end-of-life vessels need to carry an Inventory of Hazardous Materials (IHM) in
which asbestos, a common material found in the structure of ships, is
identified and quantified. The ship owners need to provide an IHM as a first
basic step towards clean and safe recycling. Moreover, shipbreaking countries
need to ensure safe asbestos removal and handling, storage and disposal if they
import end-of-life vessels for breaking. Bangladeshi courts have ruled that all
ships imported into the country need to be toxic free. Also, under European law
it is forbidden to export asbestos from the EU Member States.
Source:
shipbreaking platform.
No comments:
Post a Comment