Asbestos Legislation

Canada's parliament recently got in a heated debate about asbestos, with the country's opposition parties calling for the ban of the use and export of the naturally occurring substance.

America's neighbor to the north is one of the few remaining developed countries that continues to participate in the asbestos trade, mining the substance and exporting it to developing countries such as India. This has become a point of contention in the nation's politics, with many politicians and health experts calling for action to be taken by the Conservative government.

The New Democratic Party introduced a motion to ban the use and export of asbestos, support international efforts to have the substance marked as a hazardous chemical by the Rotterdam Convention and to create a plan to have workers in the asbestos industry find employment elsewhere, according to the Huffington Post Canada.

"Asbestos is extremely harmful; asbestos kills," NDP member of Parliament Claude Gravelle, who sponsored the motion, said. "This is a substance so noxious that is has been banned from manufacturing processes in Canada and yet we export it to countries such as India where our government has accepted the absurd claim that it is safe to use."

Exposure to asbestos causes malignant mesothelioma, asbestosis and lung cancer.