RightOnCanada.ca

Kathleen Ruff, RightOnCanada.ca

On December 1, 2009, a number of organisations, including the Canadian Cancer Society and the Canadian Teachers’ Federation, sent a letter to Minister of Health, Leona Aglukkaq, drawing her attention to the fact that exposure to asbestos is the single biggest cause of worker death across Canada. They noted that, as Minister of Health, Aglukkaq had a duty to protect public health and asked her to take action to address this “terrible, continuing and preventable public health tragedy in our country.”

The letter is available here as a pdf and is also provided below.

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Dear Minister Aglukkaq:

As Canada’s Minister of Health, you have a special duty to protect public health, a duty which overrides all other considerations.

Statistics Canada reports that 461 new cases of mesothelioma were recorded in 2006, an increase of 67 per cent over a decade and a half.

It is well recognized that for every case of mesothelioma from exposure to asbestos, there are at least two to three cases of lung cancer.(1) Consequently, taking a conservative approach and estimating only twice as many cases of lung cancer as cases of mesothelioma, one arrives at an estimated 1,383 new cases of asbestos-caused mesothelioma and lung cancer in Canada in 2006. That represents almost four new cases of asbestos-caused disease every day of the year. This figure does not include the many new cases of asbestosis each year.

Exposure to asbestos is the single biggest cause of worker death across Canada. From workers’ compensation statistics, it has been estimated that over 60% of Canadian workers who die from an occupational disease, die from having been exposed to asbestos.(2) Figures for Quebec this year show 84% of deaths from occupational disease were caused by asbestos.(3)

It is inconceivable to us that, in the face of this terrible, continuing and preventable epidemic and public health tragedy in our country, you, as Minister of Health, would continue to reject the call by the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Canadian Labour Congress, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Federation of Public Health Associations to end the use and export of all forms of asbestos.

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