International medical officials and government parties continue their efforts to dissuade Canada from asbestos exportation. Known to cause severe respiratory illnesses, including rare cancer mesothelioma, asbestos has been mined in Canada and shipped overseas for decades. Although the 1900s saw many leading industrial markets grow on the backs of asbestos use, health hazards associated with the substance have either discontinued or heavily regulated much of the western world’s asbestos use.
Canada’s asbestos market, backed by the federal government, continues to export its asbestos products to developing countries where health awareness, safety precautions and treatment facilities are rare if present at all. World Health Organization estimates twenty thousand cases of mesothelioma worldwide each year, and this is a conservative estimate considering how many cases are going unrecognized and unrecorded. Without an immediate worldwide ban on asbestos, annual, global mesothelioma case numbers are expected to quickly rise to ninety thousand.
According to a story covered in an article of The Star, one Ottawa woman has taken a different approach to raising awareness about Canada’s asbestos exportation. After loosing her husband Robert to mesothelioma in 2009, Michaela Keyerlingk began considering the incongruence between Canada’s heavy asbestos exportation and the country’s equally heavy domestic asbestos use regulations. Why is Canada leadership willing to sell and ship a substance to other people groups—many known to have limited, if any, health precautions in place–if they are so stringently careful with the substance themselves?
Michaela put a banner ad on the internet that reads: “Canada is the only western country that still exports deadly asbestos!’’ Alone, this ad is bound to draw attention. But to cinch the connection to what Michaela considers hypocrisy on part of Canada’s federal government, she placed the Conservative Party of Canada logo on the banner as well.
Not only did Michaels receive countless responses from people who have also lost loved ones to mesothelioma or are concerned about Canada’s exportation of asbestos, but she received a response from a government official calling her use of the logo unauthorized and requesting that it be removed immediately.
Michaela agreed that her use of the logo is unauthorized, rather than immediately consenting, however, she came back with a request of her own. If a leading government representative would meet with her to hear her story and explain Canada’s asbestos exportation, she would remove the logo. So far, no such meeting has been scheduled and the banner ad continues to gain attention.
