Better late than never to ban asbestos
The Environmental Protection Agency made huge progress this week, finally banning the last type of asbestos still used in the U.S. — a sorely overdue measure for a material that has been recognized as extremely dangerous for decades. Eliminating its use has long been a vital public health need.
Inhaling the tiny, fibrous particles in asbestos irreversibly scars the lungs, and can cause mesothelioma, an aggressive form of cancer found in the lining of vital abdominal organs. Today, those most likely to be exposed include firefighters, contractors, electricians and others who work primarily in older homes and other structures. Their symptoms may only appear decades after exposure.
It’s hard to overstate the damage asbestos has done in the U.S. Some 40,000 deaths each year are linked to asbestos, which can still be found in older homes, car parts, shingles and cement. Compensation claims for people harmed by asbestos have become the longest-running mass lawsuit in U.S. history, and payouts are well into the tens of billions of dollars. The use of asbestos has had a particularly harmful effect in Allegheny County, where the asbestos-related mortality rate is 50% higher than the national average.
The ban hits the only type of asbestos still used in the U.S.: chrysotile asbestos, which is still used in automotive parts and sheet gaskets and in manufacturing chlorine, a necessity for water purification. In these cases, asbestos is used out of convenience and not necessity. Other materials have replaced asbestos in finished products and two-thirds of chlorine plants in the U.S. have switched to a more efficient process that does not use asbestos.
The U.S. first passed a ban on asbestos in 1989, but it was overturned
two years later after an industry challenge. The EPA settled for imposing piecemeal regulations, while other countries enforced their own bans. Iceland became the first in 1983, and the European Union followed suit in 2005. Today, 50 nations have banned all use of the material.
In 2016, in an unusual bipartisan effort for an election year, Congress updated the Toxic Substances Control Act, giving the EPA legislative authority to bring back the total ban. But the agency was hollowed out during the Trump administration, and struggled to comply with its responsibilities, including this one. Now, seven years later, the commonsense regulation has finally been enacted.
It won’t, unfortunately, have an immediate effect. The EPA has given the industries five years (and in some cases longer) to transition their plants to making their products without asbestos. The agency wanted to avoid disrupting the production of chlorine, for example, given its importance in purifying water.
Getting to this regulation has been a difficult, frustrating process, when it did not need to be, once the dangers were known. Kudos to the EPA for finally following Congress’s directions and banning it for good.