How asbestos firms brush cancer, disease under industry carpet
SONU JAIN & RUPAM JAIN
Saturday, January 07, 2006
TOLERATING TOXINS NEW DELHI, AHMEDABAD, JANUARY 6: When 68-year-old Mangabhai Patel tries to breathe, it’s like he’s breathing through a straw—constricted and extremely painful. Suffering from asbestosis, a severe form of lung impairment, he’s one of the few surviving victims of this lethal form of asbestos exposure spending his last days in a hospital in Ahmedabad.
His crime: He worked for the thermal power plant, Ahmedabad Electric Company (AEC), now a Torrent Power plant. His typical day involved stopping leakages from pipe-joints and carrying asbestos blocks, ropes and belts from the stores to the factory floor.
Company doctors failed to diagnose his condition. It was only in 1996 when the Ahmedabad-based National Institute of Occupational Health concluded he was suffering from TB and asbestos-related illnesses. Armed with this, Mangabhai filed a writ petition in the Gujarat High Court asking for compensation from the company.
The Court passed an order on May 8, 1997 to pay Rs 10,000 as interim compensation to Mangabhai. With no family to support and even provide him medical assistance, he is one of the rare cases still fighting for compensation. Most of the others give up even before they start.
For the asbestos industry, people like Mangabhai are, effectively, invisible. With no regulatory structure in place to diagnose and monitor for mesothelioma—the lung cancer caused by asbestosis—industries are getting away. Even hospitals aren’t equipped to diagnose the disease. Result: compensation, the one stick to hold industry accountable, is a far cry.
This is evident in case histories of 500 asbestos patients that form the basis of a pending PIL in the Supreme Court asking for a ban on the use, import and manufacture of asbestos.... more
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