Letter from Asian Ban Asbestos Network to Quebec Premier Jean Charest and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper

This document is part of a digital collection provided by the Martin P. Catherwood Library, ILR School, Cornell University, pertaining to the effects of globalization on the workplace worldwide. Special emphasis is placed on labor rights, working conditions, labor market changes, and union organizing.ILRF_ABAN_Letter_Canada.pdf: 182 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Reinforcement of polymeric structures with asbestos fibrils

Investigation determines structural potential of asbestos fibrils. Methods are developed for dispersing macrofibers of the asbestos into colloidal-sized ultimate fibrils and incorporating these fibrils in matrices without causing reagglomeration

The “Peripheral Plaintiff”: Duty Determinations in Take-Home Asbestos Cases

Since the 1970s, litigation concerning the dangers of asbestos in the workplace has transformed from a few workers’ compensation claims to hundreds of thousands of lawsuits against companies in nearly every industry. While the typical plaintiff in these claims is an employee injured while handling asbestos at the worksite, a new class of “peripheral plaintiffs” has recently emerged. These plaintiffs consist of family members who are exposed to asbestos after inhaling the dust that saturates an employee’s person and clothing. The family members then bring claims against the employers and the owners of the premises claiming that they were negligent in allowing the workers to carry asbestos home when the danger of asbestos was well known. The highest courts of six states stand divided on whether an employer or premises owner owes a duty to these third-party plaintiffs to protect them from asbestos-related harm. Two states have relied heavily on the foreseeability of the harm to hold that landowners and employers do owe a duty to third-party plaintiffs. On the other hand, four states have focused on a range of factors, like the lack of a relationship between the parties and the need to constrain asbestos litigation, to hold that landowners and employers do not owe a duty to third-party plaintiffs. This Note examines the interstate conflict and concludes that all six courts have engaged in an unclear and unnecessarily fact-specific analysis of duty. It argues that the Third Restatement’s method of determining duty represents a clearer approach, because it sends factual questions to the jury and encourages courts to take “no duty” decisions more seriously

Pleural mesothelioma and lung cancer risks in relation to occupational history and asbestos lung burden.

BACKGROUND: We have conducted a population-based study of pleural mesothelioma patients with occupational histories and measured asbestos lung burdens in occupationally exposed workers and in the general population. The relationship between lung burden and risk, particularly at environmental exposure levels, will enable future mesothelioma rates in people born after 1965 who never installed asbestos to be predicted from their asbestos lung burdens. METHODS: Following personal interview asbestos fibres longer than 5 µm were counted by transmission electron microscopy in lung samples obtained from 133 patients with mesothelioma and 262 patients with lung cancer. ORs for mesothelioma were converted to lifetime risks. RESULTS: Lifetime mesothelioma risk is approximately 0.02% per 1000 amphibole fibres per gram of dry lung tissue over a more than 100-fold range, from 1 to 4 in the most heavily exposed building workers to less than 1 in 500 in most of the population. The asbestos fibres counted were amosite (75%), crocidolite (18%), other amphiboles (5%) and chrysotile (2%). CONCLUSIONS: The approximate linearity of the dose-response together with lung burden measurements in younger people will provide reasonably reliable predictions of future mesothelioma rates in those born since 1965 whose risks cannot yet be seen in national rates. Burdens in those born more recently will indicate the continuing occupational and environmental hazards under current asbestos control regulations. Our results confirm the major contribution of amosite to UK mesothelioma incidence and the substantial contribution of non-occupational exposure, particularly in women

Explaining the Flood of Asbestos Litigation: Consolidation, Bifurcation, and Bouquet Trials

The number of asbestos personal injury claims filed each year is in the hundreds of thousands and has been increasing rather than decreasing over time, even though asbestos stopped being used in the early 1970's. Eighty firms have filed for bankruptcy due to asbestos liabilities including 30 filings since the beginning of 2000. This paper examines why asbestos claims are increasing over time. Because large numbers of asbestos claims are filed in particular courts, judges in these courts have adopted procedural innovations intended to clear their dockets by encouraging mass settlements. These innovations cause trial outcomes to change in plaintiffs' favor. As a result, the innovations make the asbestos crisis worse by giving plaintiffs' lawyers an incentive to file large numbers of additional claims in the same courts. The paper uses a new dataset of asbestos trials to test the hypothesis that three important procedural innovations--consolidated trials, bifurcation, and bouquet trials--favor plaintiffs and therefore encourage the filing of additional claims. I find that bifurcation and bouquet trials nearly triple plaintiffs' expected return from trial, while consolidations of up to seven lawsuits raise plaintiffs' expected return from trial by one- third to one-half.

Surface reactivity of amphibole asbestos. A comparison between crocidolite and tremolite

Among asbestos minerals, fibrous riebeckite (crocidolite) and tremolite share the amphibole structure but largely differ in terms of their iron content and oxidation state. In asbestos toxicology, iron-generated free radicals are largely held as one of the causes of asbestos malignant effect. With the aim of clarifying i) the relationship between Fe occurrence and asbestos surface reactivity, and ii) how free-radical generation is modulated by surface modifications of the minerals, UICC crocidolite and fibrous tremolite from Maryland were leached from 1 day to 1 month in an oxidative medium buffered at pH 7.4 to induce redox alterations and surface rearrangements that may occur in body fluids. Structural and chemical modifications and free radical generation were monitored by HR-TEM/EDS and spin trapping/EPR spectroscopy, respectively. Free radical yield resulted to be dependent on few specific Fe2+ and Fe3+ surface sites rather than total Fe content. The evolution of reactivity with time highlighted that low-coordinated Fe ions primarily contribute to the overall reactivity of the fibre. Current findings contribute to explain the causes of the severe asbestosinduced oxidative stress at molecular level also for iron-poor amphiboles, and demonstrate that asbestos have a sustained surface radical activity even when highly altered by oxidative leaching

Asbestos Trust Transparency

Originally and for many years, the primary defendants in asbestos cases were companies that mined asbestos or manufactured amphibole-containing thermal insulation. Hundreds of thousands of claims were filed against the major asbestos producers, such as Johns-Manville Corp., Owens Corning Corp., and W.R. Grace & Co. By the late 1990s, asbestos litigation had reached such proportions that the U.S. Supreme Court noted the “elephantine mass” of cases and referred to the litigation as a “crisis.” Mass filings pressured “most of the lead defendants and scores of other companies” into bankruptcy, including virtually all manufacturers of asbestos-containing thermal insulation. Following a 2000–2002 wave of bankruptcies among asbestos manufacturers, plaintiffs’ lawyers began “a search for new recruits to fill the gap in the ranks of defendants.” Many of today’s asbestos defendants are formerly peripheral or new defendants associated with chrysotile-containing products “such as gaskets, pumps, automotive friction products, and residential construction products.” One plaintiffs’ attorney described the asbestos litigation as an “endless search for a solvent bystander.” This Article argues for legislation, such as that enacted in many states, that requires asbestos plaintiffs to pursue quick compensation from the trusts and allows trust-related exposures and compensation to be properly accounted for in asbestos-related personal injury cases. States with substantial asbestos litigation, such as California, Illinois, New York, and Missouri, need the legislation the most

What Courts Can Do in the Face of the Never-Ending Asbestos Crisis

The purpose of this article is not to argue that claimants suffering from serious asbestos-related diseases should not be compensated. To the contrary, one of the points of this article is that absent some change in the way asbestos claims are resolved, claimants who become truly sick in the future may not receive adequate compensation. Changing the current asbestos compensation system would be pro-claimant. Also, the purpose of this article is not to ascribe blame. Rather, it is to fix a problem. The judges cannot be blamed for their good intentions. Neither can the plaintiffs\u27 attorneys be blamed for zealously representing their clients-which is what they are doing here. This normally produces great social good. However, in the case of asbestos, a seriously flawed system has resulted

Evaluation of Production Version of the NASA Improved Inorganic-Organic Separator

The technology of an inorganic-organic (I/O) separator, which demonstrated improved flexibility, reduced cost, production feasibility and improved cycle life was developed. Substrates to replace asbestos and waterbased separator coatings to replace the solvent based coatings were investigated. An improved fuel cell grade asbestos sheet was developed and a large scale production capability for the solvent based I/O separator was demonstrated. A cellulose based substrate and a nonwoven polypropylene fiber substrate were evaluated as replacements for the asbestos. Both the cellulose and polypropylene substrates were coated with solvent based and water based coatings to produce a modified I/O separator. The solvent based coatings were modified to produce aqueous separator coatings with acceptable separator properties. A single ply fuel cell grade asbestos with a binder (BTA) was produced. It has shown to be an acceptable substrate for the solvent and water based separator coatings, an acceptable absorber for alkaline cells, and an acceptable matrix for alkaline fuel cells. The original solvent based separator (K19W1), using asbestos as a substrate, was prepared