Auto dealers applaud asbestos ban

Canadian consumers and automotive technicians might be surprised to learn that select aftermarket parts pose a serious health risk to the technicians who work with these materials.

These items include brake friction products, clutch plates, hood liners and other aftermarket parts made from asbestos, a known carcinogen that has been linked to certain types of cancer and deaths.

In 1987, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer declared asbestos a human carcinogen. Asbestos has claimed the lives of nearly 5,000 Canadians since 1996 and is considered “the top on-the-job killer in Canada,” according to Automotive News Canada.

Despite the evidence that asbestos poses a health risk, more than $6 million in asbestos-related items are imported into Canada each year, and asbestos brake linings and pads represented the lion’s share of these items, according to Statistics Canada.

The reason asbestos is used in aftermarket brake components is because it is good at absorbing and dissipating heat (brakes cause a lot of friction and heat), its strength, and because it

is cheaper than non-asbestos materials. When asbestos brake pads wear out or disintegrate, the asbestos escapes into the air.

The risk to technicians is that cleaning brake assemblies and grinding brake linings can expose them to this potentially toxic asbestos dust.

Although auto manufacturers have eliminated asbestos in new vehicles, the aftermarket is a different story. In Canada, it is still legal to import aftermarket parts that contain asbestos; in the past decade, more than $100 million worth of asbestos automotive parts have been imported into Canada.

The good news is that in December 2016, the government of Canada announced that it will impose a ban on asbestos and asbestos-con-

taining products in 2018, a move hailed by industry professionals, politicians, public health officials and other stakeholders, who have long advocated for such a ban.

The Trillium Automobile Dealers Association, which represents 1,100 registered new car dealers across Ontario, applauds the ban.

According to a government of Canada statement, the ban on asbestos will include:

Creating new regulations that ban the manufacture, use, import and export of asbestos under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999;

Establishing new federal workplace health and safety rules that will drastically limit the risk of people coming into contact with asbestos on the job;

Updating our international

position regarding the listing of asbestos as a hazardous material based on Canada’s domestic ban before next year’s meeting of parties to the Rotterdam Convention, an international treaty involving more than 150 countries that support listing asbestos as a hazard, and;

Raising awareness of the health impacts of asbestos to help reduce the incidence of lung cancer and other asbestos-related diseases.

Canada’s decision to impose a comprehensive asbestos ban by 2018 is a step in the right direction in protecting the health and safety of Canadians.

This column represents views and values of the TADA. Write to president@tada.ca or go to tada.ca. Larry

Lantz is president of the Trillium Automobile Dealers Association and is a new-car dealer in Hanover, ON.