FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 4, 2011<\/p>\n
Powerful public relations company, APCO Worldwide, is being challenged to stop trying to crush a proposal to ban asbestos, put forward by government health experts in Malaysia.<\/p>\n
\u201cAPCO was hired by the tobacco industry to undermine efforts by the US government to protect the public from cancer caused by exposure to cigarette smoke. Now APCO is seeking to undermine an initiative to protect people in Malaysia from cancer caused by asbestos,\u201d said Kelle Louaillier, president of Corporate Accountability International. \u201cThis is irresponsible corporate behaviour and must stop.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAPCO refuses to say who has hired them to try to kill the proposed ban on asbestos,\u201d said Kathleen Ruff, who has been given a prestigious National Public Health Hero award by the Canadian Public Health Association for her work in opposing the asbestos industry. \u201cAPCO states in its mission statement that it will act with transparency. Where is the transparency in APCO\u2019s covert lobbying to destroy this public health initiative?\u201d<\/p>\n
APCO organised meetings in Malaysia to lobby to exclude chrysotile asbestos from the ban. Chrysotile asbestos represents 100% of the global asbestos trade. In the past one hundred years, 95% of all asbestos sold was chrysotile asbestos. The World Health Organization and medical organizations around the world have said that use of chrysotile asbestos must stop in order to save lives.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have discovered that APCO\u2019s client is the International Chrysotile Association,\u201d said Barry Castleman, a world expert on the asbestos issue. “It is scandalous that these international influence peddlers representing foreign asbestos companies are blocking public health decisions in Malaysia.”<\/p>\n
\u201cWe call on APCO to disclose its client, stop pushing the deadly propaganda of the asbestos industry and support the proposed ban,\u201d said Dr Fernand Turcotte, Professor Emeritus of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Laval University, Quebec. \u201cThe world has seen enough asbestos deaths.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is imperative that Malaysia joins the global campaign to ban the use of all types of asbestos and not bow to pressure by groups that place financial gains before public health,\u201d said SM Mohamed Idris, President of the Consumers Association of Penang.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 4, 2011 Powerful public relations company, APCO Worldwide, is being challenged to stop trying to crush a proposal to ban asbestos, put forward by government health experts in Malaysia. \u201cAPCO was hired by the tobacco industry to undermine efforts by the US government to protect the public from cancer caused by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[153,326,147,152],"class_list":["post-1230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-apco-worldwide","tag-asbestos","tag-asbestos-lobby","tag-public-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightoncanada.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightoncanada.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightoncanada.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightoncanada.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightoncanada.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1230"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/rightoncanada.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1233,"href":"https:\/\/rightoncanada.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230\/revisions\/1233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightoncanada.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightoncanada.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightoncanada.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}