India asleep over asbestos risks

By Krishnendu Mukherjee
23 Apr 2010

World over, for long, asbestos is known as being dangerous to human health. However, India, a dumping ground for asbestos, has no effective protection or restitution available.

Vasu Narayan Pujari worked for Hindustan Ferodo Limited for forty years. When he retired he was given a certificate commemorating his long service with the Company and asbestosis with an eighty percent disability. Asbestosis is an incurable disease affecting the lungs of people exposed to asbestos, a mineral which because of its unusual properties has widely been used globally in the manufacture of diverse materials from cement to textiles.

Exposure to asbestos can also cause malignant lung cancer and mesothelioma, a rare cancer strongly associated with asbestos exposure. Vasu Pujari is one of over a hundred ex-workers of Hindustan Ferodo Ltd, a former brake-lining company in Mumbai which closed in 2006, who are claiming compensation for asbestos-related diseases. If settled, it will be the largest asbestos claim in India's history.

Whilst this is certainly welcome news for the affected workers themselves, the figures illustrate the woeful lack of compensation provided for asbestosis-related diseases in India. A 2005 study published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, estimated that there are nearly seven thousand workers with asbestos-related diseases in India. However, given the lack of proper monitoring by statutory authorities, the healthy worker effect (where those who have difficulty in working because of illness are simply dismissed), and the large number of undocumented workers working with asbestos, the figure is likely to be much higher.

Over one hundred thousand workers working with asbestos in India are likely to be at risk. A recent application under the Right to Information Act 2005, filed by the Corporate Accountability Desk, reveals that over the last twenty years only fifty-three workers have been compensated for asbestos-related diseases under the Employees' State Insurance Act 1948, the statutory scheme for the compensation of low-paid workers for personal injury or disease derived through employment. This clearly indicates the huge gap between the number of workers who sustain asbestos-related diseases through the negligence of their employers, and those who are ultimately compensated.

The legal provisions for compensation themselves may also shed some light on these figures. The Employees' State Insurance Act is a piece of welfare legislation which was enacted in the post-war period, on the lines of similar laws in the UK at the time, in order to provide protection to workers. Asbestosis and lung cancer were added as occupational diseases, for which compensation could be claimed, under the Act in 1985. The Government, however, failed to amend the Act so that those who had left their employment with a company, in addition to those currently employed, could also claim compensation. In the case of asbestos-related diseases this is a major injustice. Asbestosis has a normal latency period of 10-20 years, whilst mesothelioma has a latency period of 20-40 years. Therefore, many workers will have left their employment either voluntarily, or as part of the "healthy worker effect", without these diseases being diagnosed.

Further, under an alternative scheme for obtaining compensation under the Workers' Compensation Act 1923, a claimant can be embroiled in the labour courts for many years in his/her struggle for compensation against the previous employer. For instance, a case lodged in 2004 in the Bandra labour court against Hindustan Composites Limited, the successor to Hindustan Ferodo, has been blighted by delays with no end in sight. Notwithstanding the Supreme Court holding in the case of Consumer Education & Research Centre v Union of India, that companies would be strictly liable for causing asbestos-related diseases to their employees, most companies are going scot-free.

Whilst the use of asbestos has been banned in many countries, including the European Union since 2006, India is importing and using asbestos in higher quantities, with the number of factory units using asbestos rising steadily. A related issue, is the fact that there is very little monitoring being done by statutory authorities on where imported asbestos is being used, or the effects of its use on workers.

The Rotterdam Convention 2004, which India bought into force in 2005, has prescribed five forms of asbestos which should undergo the Prior Informed Consent procedure. This procedure requires Convention signatories to provide national risk evaluations and any information on regulatory actions taken. However, in reply to a Right to Information Act request filed in October 2009 to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (the regulatory Ministry from the importation of asbestos), the Ministry admitted to: "not maintaining the list of importers of asbestos, country of originator of asbestos, and manufacturer of asbestos etc". Correspondingly, it is apparent that without such information no proper risk evaluation, nor decisions on regulatory action, can be undertaken.

All this can only lead to one, rather depressing, conclusion. India has become a dumping ground for a substance which has been known to the world since the 1930's as being dangerous to human health, and there is still no effective protection or restitution available. As Vasu Pujari knows, as he gasps for air at every step, a country which ignores its "asbestos time-bomb" today, will repent at its leisure.