The drive to ban the asbestos cement industry is slowly gaining momentum but not without its usual obstacles.
Despite being banned in numerous countries for its toxic side effects and carcinogenic properties, the asbestos cement product manufacturers are still pushing for widespread usage of this building material in building large-scale low cost rural development here in India.
Asbestos cement products and their manufacturing technology today, according to their manufacturers are amongst the most eco-friendly and safe technologies but a survey conducted a few years ago showed that imported asbestos which was widely used in India, came without adequate protections for the workers who then proceeded to use to make asbestos cement products.
In India the workers slice open the bags of Canadian asbestos with knives, then shaking the bags into troughs and mixing it with cement to make piping, covering them in asbestos dust with no precautions in place.
Studies have shown that once the cement sheets are made, the discharge from the asbestos content is not as extensive but since in India, protection measures and policies for the labourers are not in place, they directly exposing themselves to asbestos causes a lot of long term damage to the labourers
