Municipalities forget the risk of asbestos
Fortunately, most industrial companies start to understand, after the many convictions, that a small exposure to asbestos fibres, without adequate respiratory protection, is sufficient to cause a serious lung disease that causes ten times more deaths than accidents at work, even if they are silent. There is scientific consensus on the lack of safe exposure, even if this is the minimum. For decades, companies ignored the risk of asbestos without complying with the safety measures required by legislation. Now, after several convictions, they begin to take the risk that forces them to pay surcharges and large compensation of 30% of the Social Security benefits. These benefits are granted to the nearest victims or relatives for the failure to comply with the security measures required by the legislation a few decades ago.
It does not seem that awareness of the risk of carcinogenic fibres released from asbestos-containing materials is of concern to the majority of the buildings and mayors, which are still installed in several facilities in the municipality and whose service life has expired, as, except for honorable exceptions, they forget and violate the Law of Contaminated Waste and Soils as municipal officials.
Law 7/2022 of 8 April, in its Fourteenth Provision, provides that: Asbestos installations and sites: Within one year of the entry into force of the law, municipalities shall draw up a census of asbestos installations and sites, including a planning schedule for their disposal. The census and calendar will be public and forwarded to the health, environmental and labor authorities of the autonomous communities. Those authorities shall be obliged to inspect the site to verify the withdrawal and refer it to an authorised manager respectively. This withdrawal will prioritize installations and locations in relation to the degree of danger and exposure to the most vulnerable population. High-risk public facilities or sites should in any case be managed by 2028".
In 2002, the use and marketing of asbestos was banned for serious illnesses affecting workers (pulmonary fibrosis, lung cancer, larynx and mesotheliomas), as well as for workers with low exposure to fibrous carcinogens. We must not forget that there are still hundreds of thousands of tonnes of materials in industrial, agricultural or livestock decks, housing and churches, which are dismantled after their useful life has ended. In most homes built between the end of the 1960s and 1980s, particularly in working-class neighborhoods, asbestos remains present: pluvial or faecal drops, canals, roofs, insulation plates, gardeners, water network pipes...
Awareness of the risk of fibrous carcinogens released from asbestos-containing materials does not appear to be of concern to the majority of councillors and mayors.
The opinion of the European Economic and Social Council undertook to remove asbestos from the European Union by 2032. Time passes; whoever breaches the commitment will be punished by Community justice and will be liable for the diseases caused by neglect. The possibility of a wave of cancer by environmental inhalation of asbestos, by releasing cancer fibers from these invisible materials, is a real threat, although the "denier" tries to deny it (damage is not immediately expressed), avoiding its commitment to the plan for the eradication of killer asbestos.
But you don't see all the material. The detection or safe disposal of asbestos requires the awareness and involvement of citizens through union actions, neighbourhood associations (including asbestos victims), social awareness campaigns and public subsidies to help detect asbestos and ensure the safe removal of asbestos. French experiences, as well as health alerts, mark the way, as does the government of the Aquitaine region, which after a hail destroys the fibro-cement or uralite roofs.
Without high social awareness of the risk, without public help to eliminate it, "deniers" will succeed, as damage to health will not appear immediately. Managers of neighbouring communities will have to recruit the "pirates" to get asbestos materials at a much lower price, acting with the health of precarious workers, working without safety measures, with the aggravating effect that asbestos waste will be spilled out uncontrollably in nature, without limiting the contamination of carcinogenic fibres and bringing the public health problem to the next generations.
It must be taken up again, a good census of installed asbestos is not enough if the work is not monitored. The works licences granted by the municipalities, especially when the register collects asbestos, require the necessary monitoring of the undertaking performing it, if it is accredited to work with asbestos, if it complies with strict prevention measures and if hazardous waste is sent to an authorised manager. Without control, the pigeon of the "pirates" will be imposed and plans to remove asbestos will not be effective.
The political forces of the City Hall should be involved, promoting plans in the municipalities to carry out an inventory of asbestos and withdraw it safely, raising awareness and involving civil society for the proper implementation of the established asbestos eradication plans. Anyone who wants to save retirement costs, without complying with the law, must take into account the serious risk it creates for the health of the workers and for the neighbourhood involved. In the face of this fraud, we cannot close our eyes as if it did not affect us. It must be very expensive, especially for pirates or for the administrators of the community of neighbours, to mock safety, health or environmental standards by endangering the health of citizens.
Jesús Uzkudun Illarramendi
Occupational health activist and member of ASVIAMIE
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