ASBESTOS AND RATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY: ARE THESE TWO TOPICS IMMISCIBLE?

In 1994 I wrote the following in response to a rhetorical question “What’s asbestos?” “The question yields different answers depending upon the audience. To a mineralogist, asbestos is a mineral form. To an engineer, it is an industrial material with several useful properties. To a medical doctor, it is an agent that might cause certain diseases. The third answer invokes several more issues: to a lawyer, a possible lawsuit; to a news reporter, a story; to an asbestos abatement worker, a job; and to a public school administrator or a parent, a nightmare (JGE, 17-24).” Fifteen years ago it would seem incomprehensible to me that: 1) we would still be discussing asbestos-related issues and 2) my involvement would have escalated to the US Supreme Court. The former was mainly driven by the “discovery” of “naturally occurring asbestos” in El Dorado Hills, California, while the later involves the legal definition of asbestos. (For more details on these two see my recent editorial in Elements: http://elements.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/reprint/5/3/141).

In the past few years’ federal legislation has been proposed to ban asbestos in commercial products. Somewhat related to this is a “Roadmap” for future research on “asbestos fibers and other elongated mineral particles” being developed by NIOSH. On of the main issues in both is the definition of asbestos and its occurrence in natural settings. In fact, there is an entire session at this meeting dedicated to this topic (T78: Issues surrounding exposure to asbestos and other potentially hazardous minerals occurring in their natural settings). It is important to recall that as a society we chose to use asbestos products for safety, mainly to reduce deaths from building fires. By the late 1950’s in the US we used approximately 10 pounds per person per year. In the early 1960’s concerns arose on worker exposure to these products. Since that time asbestos use has declined, and it has been removed from many public schools. It is ironic that public school fires helped promote its use! And now with asbestos concerns shifting from the built to the natural environment, the geological community must become involved in helping to set a rational public policy for dealing with asbestos (i.e., we need to remind the public that we cannot ban asbestos from nature).