Asbestos News
WHO corrects asbestos entrepreneur's false asbestos assertion
The World Health Organization recently rebuked an entrepreneur who campaigned throughout Canada about the safety of asbestos.Baljit Chadha met with several prominent officials in an attempt to convince them that it was in the country's best interest to revive its asbestos mining industry. In a recent editorial for the Montreal Gazette, Chadha said that exposure to air with WHO-acceptable levels of asbestos "poses no health risk."
However, the WHO has spoken out against this false assertion, in what the Globe and Mail described as a "rare public rebuke."
"We have been receiving a lot of expressions of concerns from around the world that the WHO has been misquoted," Ivan Ivanov, the leader of occupational health at the WHO Department of Public Health and Environment, told the news provider. "There is no safe threshold of exposure to all forms of asbestos."
Of course Ivanov is correct as it has been proven for nearly 50 years that any level of asbestos exposure can cause a range of serious illnesses such as malignant mesothelioma, asbestosis and lung cancer. The WHO estimates these diseases kill 107,000 people each year around the world.
10/18/11
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