Misuse of Discussion Lists by the Asbestos Industry
Under the pretence of free and full information, some discussion lists have been used by the asbestos industry and other industries to disseminate propaganda about discredited technologies and prohibited products. This is done using supposedly neutral people as authors of scientific and journalistic articles which reproduce the industry lines.
PAHO, the Pan-American Health Organization, supports some lists in developing countries where no moderator reviews the messages which are disseminated. Recently, an article was spread through the "red de salud del trabajador" (workers' health network) apparently distributed by Cepis-Centro Panamericano de Ingenieria Sanitaria (Pan-American Sanitary Engineering Center) from Peru. This network supported by PAHO, circulates Spanish articles throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.
An Argentinean engineer, Néstor Botta, was listed as author of a 117 page article, "La Dos Líneas del Amianto" (The two sides of asbestos), which included a lot of misleading information about the ban asbestos movement. Botta stated that the global ban asbestos movement is financially linked to the industries making non-asbestos products and quotes that some lawyers "smelling" (like dogs) money joined the campaign, especially one, from the British Asbestos Newsletter and the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat".
In the same way, he accused Prof. Julian Peto, one of the most prestigious epidemiologists from the Institute of Cancer Research, of having been financed by the asbestos replacement industry when he conducted the studies which predicted that between 1995-2029 there would be 500,000 deaths from asbestos cancer in Western Europe. Peto's findings appeared in the paper entitled: The European mesothelioma epidemic which was published in 1998 in The British Journal of Cancer, a peer-reviewed journal. The discovery by Peto and his team of the horrifying scale of Western Europe's asbestos legacy contributed to the determination of the European Union to ban asbestos. The charges that IBAS, the ban asbestos movement and Prof. Peto were ever supported by asbestos-substitute industries are completely groundless. All this from an author who states (at the beginning of his article) that he doesn't have any position and he wants only to inform readers about the current world situation and debate on asbestos! Could you imagine if he had a position?
This is not the first time the asbestos industry has used a prestigious organization to spread their propaganda of controlled use of asbestos. In 1994, they promoted workshops in Brazil and Mexico to defend asbestos use. These conferences were promoted by ILO; a document was drafted by the asbestos interests and sent to ILO for its approval, provoking outrage among scientists asked to review the document before its rejection by ILO.
The same year, 1997, a draft of a WHO report that made short shrift of the risks from asbestos in buildings provoked widespread indignation. This report was nonetheless issued in 1999 by the WHO Regional Office for Europe, and only after continuing protests did WHO headquarters step in and have it withdrawn and revised. (B. Castleman. Controversies at International Scientific Organizations over Asbestos Industry Influence. INTERNAT J HEALTH SERV 31: 193-202, 2001)
Many other tricks to confuse the scientific community have been promoted by the Asbestos Institute from Quebec (the ILO fiasco above was their doing), a group created by the asbestos mining companies and the Canadian government to defend asbestos uses around the world. These have included threats to professionals around the world who campaign for a global ban of asbestos and intimidation of governmental institutions which promote seminars or debates about the risks of asbestos. The Asbestos Institute's website, of course, is one of the consulted sources mentioned in Botta’s article!
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August 23, 2002
