Brasilia’s Asbestos Shame!
Albert Einstein was rumored to have defined madness as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” I guess we must all be mad because on March 14, 2025 we had great expectations that the Brazilian Supreme Court (STF) would issue the definitive verdict on the exports of asbestos, a substance banned in 2017 by the STF. We had waited for this ruling for eight long years. As has happened so many times before, the delivery of an STF asbestos decision was upended.
 Members of the Asian Ban Asbestos Mission to Brazil protesting outside the Supreme Court in Brasilia, April 2019. |
This time, we have been told the impasse was caused by Judge Kassio Nunes Marques, an appointee of the disgraced former President Jair Bolsonaro. Marques said he needed more time to consider the arguments of case ADI 6200 – a lawsuit started in 2019 which categorized as unconstitutional Goiás State laws exempting asbestos mining from the Supreme Court ban. ADI 6200 called for the closure of the Cana Brava chrysotile mine, the country’s sole remaining asbestos production facility. As he has been a STF Judge since November 5, 2020 one wonders why Marques had not found time to study the case files? There might be 103,000,000 reasons for this.1
March 14, 2025
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1 “In 2023, international sales of Brazilian asbestos were worth $103,000,000, making Brazil the world’s 2nd largest exporter. In December 2024 alone, shipments of this lethal material earned $7.67m.”
Joint Press release. Killer Double Standards in Brasilia. March 5, 2025.
http://ibasecretariat.org/press-rel-killer-double-standards-in-brasilia.pdf
