China Continues Heavy Use of Asbestos

by Antoaneta Bezlova

After decades of heavy reliance on asbestos, Chinese officials are only now starting to realize the extent of the health dangers it poses to producers, processors and the public that uses products using the material for insulation.

But this does not mean solutions have been found to stop its production, reverse the lingering effects of the utilized amounts in the environment or replace the use of asbestos with less harmful components.

Chinese officials know asbestos hurts human health -- but research into its ill effects and prevention has been hobbled by the lack of money and lack of attention by the authorities dead set on rapid economic and industrial development.

Chinese scholars estimate that as many as 130,000 deaths in the United States alone will be traced to asbestos from 1985 to 2009. But reliable data for the number of Chinese with asbestos-linked illnesses are hard to come by.

The last reliable figure for the number of Chinese with asbestosis dates from 1986. It indicates more than 4,000 cases of the disease, of which 600 patients have died.

"I estimate that currently more than 100,000 people are exposed to the dangers of asbestos and some 10 percent are probably affected with asbestosis," said Dr Liu Shijie, honorary dean at the school of public health of the Beijing Medical University.

"But it is difficult to come up with a precise figure because there is no money to fund a nationwide survey to evaluate the situation," he explained.

After backlash of the public opinion in the industrialized West, the use of the asbestos fibers in products from buildings to clothing has been modified or greatly reduced to minimize health hazards.

For example, Canada, one of the world's largest producers of the mineral, continues to produce it but has ceased to process it. Health researchers regard the inhalation of dust containing asbestos as more harmful during the processing -- instead of production -- of the mineral.

China is headed in the other direction. It has expanded the use of the fibrous mineral and undertaken even to process the imported raw asbestos from Canada. So voracious is local appetite for asbestos that the deficit has to be offset by rising imports.

"In the past, we were importing asbestos and after processing it, we were re-exporting it," Liu observed. "These days, we produce and process the mineral but still our domestic output is not enough to catch up with the domestic demand and we have to import for our own needs."

Despite its being a dangerous agent, asbestos continues to be produced, processed and find broad use in fireproofing, construction materials, vehicles' brake linings and cement pipes.

Thus, those affected by the harmful asbestos particles these days are not only workers involved in the production and processing but increasingly the general public.

A leading researcher into asbestos-related health hazards with more than 20 years' experience in the field, Liu has followed the pace of expansion of exposure to the mineral for the public.

"I think that in the big cities these days, traffic policemen are among people most at risk," he explained.

"As asbestos is used for the brake lining of the cars, policemen who stand at major thoroughfares and crossroads, inhale the particles each time a car uses its brakes to stop at a red light," Liu added. "Just think what is happening today with the expansion of traffic in Beijing and other big cities."

In the following years, only peasants used the fibre now and then, to weave cloth and make asbestos gloves to resist heat.

State industrialization policies during the disastrous Great Leap Forward (1958-1960) of the late Chairman Mao Zedong paved the way for greater use of asbestos.

The deforestation of huge swathes of virgin forests in Sichuan and Yunnan provinces to provide timber and land for agricultural use exposed substantial reserves of asbestos just beneath the covering layer of soil. After torrential rains washed away that layer, it became easy for peasants to make use of the mineral.

"Our research shows that asbestos in these provinces was used to make mud stoves and whitewash walls of the houses," recounted Liu. "Even more astonishing is the tradition when during a wedding ceremony the bride was given a basin with asbestos to whitewash the walls of the kitchen for the newlyweds."

But the problem acquired new gravity when China embarked on a transition to a market economy with the ascent to power of the late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping (1978-1997).

Small mills producing asbestos were merged and production was expanded and regularized. China today has five major, state-controlled mines extracting the mineral and numerous processing plants run by local governments.

Working conditions in these mines and plants are very poor, say Liu and his doctorate students who have visited the sites. So poor that the biggest asbestos mine of Mangai in the western province of Qinghai was staffed for years with prisoners.

"In the past prisoners were sent there for re-education through labor because the work risk was high and because there was no way for them to escape from there," Liu said. "It is a very high place on a plateau and nobody lives there, one has to walk for days to meet other people."

In the future, some 70 to 80 percent of domestically produced asbestos will come from the Mangai mine and China is investing heavily to expand the potentials of its biggest mine.

While prisoners are no longer being sent there, it remains hard to implement even the simplest precautions like ventilation equipment and the use of protective masks.

Ventilation minimizes harm from asbestos particles, but this needs power supply that a mine in a mountainous area like the Qinghai plateau would be hard put to add. Mine workers are also unwilling to wear tight rubber masks as protection in the summer heat.