At break time, factory workers mingle outside under a bright sun, wandering past row upon row of asbestos cement roofing. They say bags of asbestos are still opened by hand when machines break or are being serviced, meaning that asbestos fibres can be released into the air. A camel nibbles the leaves from a tree. An empty kilogram bag of Russian cement is given as a souvenir. Russian asbestos is favoured at the facility.

The state of Gujarat, and its capital, Ahmedabad, has become the health crucible in the fight against the asbestos industry, a war most visibly fought by the Ban Asbestos Network of India. The cast of characters includes the workers who laboured at a nearby power plant; others who have retired out of a now-closed asbestos textile manufacturer. The corrosive after-effects are documented in medical reports: lung cancer, asbestosis, mesothelioma.

Reliable statistics are impossible to come by. There are no long-term independent epidemiological studies. Dave, pronounced Dah-vey today sits on the Ministry of Environment and Forest committee whose job it is to approve new asbestos cement facilities. Twenty years ago, Dr. Dave was sounding the alarm over levels of asbestosis in the state. Today he has adopted the argument of relative risk.

He advises a trip to the Chamanpura slum. Fifty per cent of the people sleeping on the footpath. Two hundred women passing stool at four in the morning. My country is my country. Manohar Matta, a gentleman I did not know, suggested lunch at the Imperial Hotel, the gated, restored tribute to colonial India. He frowns when I pull out a notebook. He does not want to be quoted. He will say that LAB exports to one or two textile manufacturers, in addition to the asbestos cement producers, but he later corrects himself and says that no, LAB no longer includes any asbestos textile makers on its client list.

He would later get in touch regarding some travel stories I was writing on my travels through India. The slum settlement outside Hyderabad, 1, kilometres due south of Delhi, nestles in the lee of the Deccan Plateau. Merchants from Asia and Europe made Hyderabad a trading mecca centuries ago, when the city was called Golconda, an exotica that still evokes great wealth not least for its fabled diamond mines and that magical blue formation, the Hope Diamond.

Today Hyderabad is a go-go city with a shiny new airport and flyovers to ease traffic congestion. Twenty minutes from the city centre, Hyderabad Industries Ltd. Pallet after pallet of pale grey waves of corrugated cement roofing stretch as far as the eye can see.

The Last Breaths of a Dying Asbestos Mine

The manufacture of fibre cement products absorbs as much as 98 per cent of the mineral imported to the country. Hyderabad Industries is owned by the Birla Group, which dates its lineage to Along with Tata chemicals, housing, telephony , Birla is credited with creating industrialized India. Inside the factory, bags of asbestos extend from wall to wall to wall in a storage area. Asbestos from Russia. Asbestos from Brazil. There is no asbestos from Zimbabwe, which has suffered from mine flooding, heightening demand for product from elsewhere and further teasing the appetite of Canadian producers.

Above the logo sits a white maple leaf. Beneath the logo is printed a second maple leaf, alongside the words Product of Canada. The plastic-wrapped fibre bags are drawn up a conveyor belt and then into an enclosed automatic bag opener. The bags, once sliced open, release the fibre into a shredder. The asbestos has the appearance of a torn load of laundry being churned through a wringer washer, before it is processed into a slurry with water and fly ash and cement. The asbestos comprises approximately 8 per cent of the slurry.

Without it, the product would be friable and unmarketable. The wet cement rolls off a drum in sheets, which dry on corrugated moulds for 12 hours before being stacked and cured for 21 days. The air is continuously tested. The bags of fibre are never to be opened manually. The Canadian fibre is much admired for its consistency and its quality. Visaka Industries also has a production facility on the outskirts of Hyderabad.

Showing its age after 25 years, the factory has gone on a cleanup tear. The shredder, installed in , is not fully automatic. Instead, a worker reaches in through protected arm covers and manually rips the plastic casing off the fibre. He additionally promotes a non-asbestos fibreboard company he has created called 3S. Pattabhi has seen recklessness in the use of asbestos, which he files away as a circumstance of the past.

And today? What are the effects of mishandled fibre?

Industry critics, including the Ban Asbestos Network of India, have taken their fight not just to the factory floor, but the aftermarket. As millions of metres of cement roofing are raised over shops and above rickety homes, purchasers are somehow meant to know that the material is never, ever to be cut with power tools, causing the release of potentially asbestos-tainted dust.

Last July, Lisa Raitt, minister of Natural Resources Canada and thus the overseer for asbestos exports, explained controlled use in a letter to Colin Soskolne, professor of epidemiology at the University of Alberta. Yet NRC has no means or jurisdiction to control the use of exported fibre.

The federal government provides funding support to the Chrysotile Institute, an industry body, which in turn provides information on how to manage the risks associated with chrysotile. The ministry says it is unaware of any instances in which the federal government has stepped in to prevent the export of chrysotile asbestos. Narendera Pandya is surprised by my visit. Though retired, he remains a director of Eagle Asbestos Pvt. He hurries to comb his hair before a picture can be taken.

He drops a plastic bag on his desk that contains a creamy-coloured fibrous stick. The fibres are long, three to four inches.

Where were you hurt?

Eagle has had to look elsewhere for its best fibre. Pandya makes the A-okay sign with his thumb and forefinger. With Canadian fibre, we can make thread and out of thread we can make rope. That facility, run by his son, still uses the dry method, he says, and still purchases asbestos from LAB Chrysotile. The conduit? Matta very well. LAB, says Leblond, has placed between five and 10 companies on its so-called black list.

Eagle is one of them. Maybe labour, environment. It can be pretty confused some times. This is undoubtedly true. Exhibit A could be the director of industrial safety for the state of Gujarat. The scene is something out of a theatrical review as bureaucrats stream constantly in and out of his office, which is chiefly marked by the bucket catching a consistent drip from an air conditioner and the shrill ring of his phone, which sounds like a smoke alarm going off.

The book bears a copyright of and begins to fall to pieces as he leafs through it.

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The director is a jolly, round-faced fellow who oversees 52 field workers who in turn have the daunting task of inspecting 34, factories. The monsoon rains have left small eddies by the roadside, which will quickly bake off under the high heat of this southern coastal city. The colours here are so sharp the city is a kaleidoscope. Saris in tangerine, hot pink, fuchsia and turquoise. Madhumita Dutta is dressed in a white kameez with a bronze dupatta gracefully placed about her shoulders. This term has been incorporated in the final rule, and is defined to mean a person who has a special skill in a particular area and has been assigned by the employer to do a specific task in that area.

Examples of the use of this term in the final Longshoring Standard are: The definitions for "enclosed space" and "fumigant" in the final are essentially unchanged from those proposed in the Longshore Standard.

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In addition, these definitions are essentially identical to those found in the Marine Terminals Standard. A definition for "fall hazard" has been added to the final rule in According to the final rule, a fall hazard exists when employees are working within 3 feet of the unprotected edge of a work surface that is 8 or more feet above the adjoining surface and 12 inches or more horizontally from the adjacent surface, or when weather conditions are such as to impair the vision or footing of employees working on top of containers.

This definition was proposed as a footnote to the container top fall protection section; however, because it has application in several other sections of the Longshoring Standard The definition makes it clear that it is the unprotected edge that poses a fall hazard and not necessarily the entire work surface except in bad weather or when ice, grease etc.

Additionally, any gap of 12 inches. OSHA believes that any work within 3 feet.

In proposed The final rule, however, sets the vertical height for fall hazards at 8 or more feet above the adjoining surface; this fall height is consistent with the fall height established in the final rule for non-containerized cargo see The final trigger height of 8 feet is identical to the existing requirement for fall protection found in OSHA believes that this height was originally adapted from an industry practice that pre-dated containerization. At that time, cargo was usually palletized into a standard 4 foot high pallet.

It became an industry practice that whenever pallets were stacked two or more, the top working surface would be considered a fall hazard, thus requiring nets or other equivalent protection. The definition of "Hazardous cargo, materials, substance or atmosphere" in the final longshore rule has been expanded to reflect the Marine Terminal Standard's definition of hazardous cargo.