Stallen en schuren van boerderijen worden te vaak gesloopt zonder dat de regels voor het verwijderen van asbest worden nageleefd. Dit blijkt uit controles van het Fries milieuoverleg. De onderzoekers wijten dit aan de hoge kosten die gepaard gaan met het inschakelen van externe deskundigen.
Bron: Leeuwarder Courant, 28 mei.
Meer http://www.leeuwardercourant.nl/…
Werknemers hebben sinds 1 juni 2005 het wettelijke recht onbetaald verlof op te nemen om te zorgen voor een levensbedreigend zieke partner, kind of ouder. De totale duur van dit zorgverlof is maximaal 6 keer de wekelijkse arbeidsduur in een periode van 12 achtereenvolgende maanden, bij voorkeur op te nemen in deeltijd.
Bron: ministerie van SZW, 26 april
Meer http://home.szw.nl/actueel/dsp_persbericht.cfm?jaar=2005&link_id=67263
Minister Hoogervorst is niet van plan om asbestslachtoffers een voorschot te geven voor het nieuwe, relatief dure astbestmedicijn Alimta. Volgens hem is de Regeling tegemoetkoming asbestslachtoffers (TAS) hier niet geschikt voor. Dat schrijft de minister vrijdag in antwoord op vragen van Tweede-Kamerlid De Wit.
Bron: Telegraaf.nl , 29 april.
Meer
Het Zweeds-Zwitserse concern ABB heeft over 2004 een verlies geleden van $ 35 mln in plaats van een winst van $ 201 mln, die het eerder heeft gemeld. De herziening van het resultaat is het gevolg van een extra storting in een fonds dat is opgericht om slachtoffers van asbest tegemoet te komen. In maart verklaarde ABB $ 232 mln extra inzake de asbestclaims te betalen.
Bron: ANP/Het Financieele Dagblad, 23 april.
Het slopen van schepen gebeurt in ontwikkelingslanden. Prachtige stranden in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan en Turkije zijn veranderd in scheepskerkhoven. Als ze uit de vaart zijn, worden schepen verkocht vanwege het waardevolle staal. Maar in oude schepen zitten veel gevaarlijke stoffen, zoals asbest, loodverf en PCB s. Als de schepen worden gesloopt komen deze stoffen vrij. Ze komen terecht in het milieu en in de lichamen van de arbeiders. Greenpeace roept op tot actie.Bron: Greenpeace.nl , 1 april.
Meer http://www.greenpeace.nl/campaigns/giftige-stoffen-2/giftige-sloopschepen
Malafide aannemers die illegaal asbest verwijderen kunnen ongestoord hun gang gaan doordat gemeenten en inspecties geen toezicht houden. Sloopprojecten waarvoor geen vergunning wordt aangevraagd, worden niet gecontroleerd. In een vorig jaar verschenen rapport spreekt de Vrom-inspectie over een aanzienlijk handhavingstekort.
Bron: Apeldoornse Courant, 7 april.
Alle mesothelioompatiënten die ziek zijn geworden door het inademen van asbest, hebben recht op het nieuwe geneesmiddel Alimta.
Het ministerie van Volksgezondheid, Welzijn en Sport heeft de FNV verzekerd dat deze patiënten nooit om niet-medische redenen het geneesmiddel geweigerd mag worden. Mocht dit wel gebeuren, dan kan de patiënt met zijn zorgverzekeraar naar het betreffende ziekenhuis stappen.
Bron: FNV e-Magazine, 27 april 2005, jaargang 6, nummer 17.
Meer http://www.fnv.nl/nieuws/renderer.do/clearState/true/menuId/9028/returnPage/8886/
Australische onderzoekers hebben een bloedtest ontwikkeld die kan helpen bij het opsporen van mesothelioom. De niet invasieve test, Mesomark genaamd, werd ontwikkeld door onderzoekers van de Universiteit van West Australië. In Australië krijgen ongeveer 700 mensen per jaar deze ziekte.
Bron: The Advertiser, 20 april / The West Australian, 19 april.
The Advertiser
April 20, 2005 Wednesday
HEADLINE: Breakthrough
AUSTRALIAN researchers have developed a world-first blood test which could help people worldwide in the early detection of mesothelioma, a deadly asbestos-related cancer of the lung lining. The non-invasive blood test developed by University of Western Australia Professor Bruce Robinson and researchers is a breakthrough in the early detection of the disease. About 700 people each year are diagnosed with the disease in Australia, which has the highest reported incidence in the world.
The West Australian (Perth)
April 19, 2005 Tuesday
HEADLINE: Test offers hope on mesothelioma
Rockingham man David Saw believes a new blood test for mesothelioma, which is being launched today, could have saved him a three-day hospital visit and a lot of trauma.
Mr Saw went to his doctor last year believing he had pulled a muscle.
He was suffering chest pain and shortness of breath.
After a CAT scan and biopsy, it was revealed the 49-year-old had contracted the deadly lung cancer from working with asbestos as a young man.
“A test would have been a lot easier, I ended up in hospital and they had to cut me open,” he said.
The test, called MESOMARK, will be available from general practitioners or specialists who can order it from a pathology provider.
The head of the mesothelioma research team at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital which developed the test, Professor Bruce Robinson, said it would not only help in diagnoses of the disease, but also in treatment.
“Until now you could only gauge whether treatment was working effectively by doing a CAT scan, and they’re difficult to do. With this test, we can gauge treatment and also diagnose it at an earlier stage,” Professor Robinson said. Biopsy would be needed to confirm diagnosis.
The blood test measures levels of a substance called soluble mesothelin-related peptide, a distinctive biomarker released by mesothelioma cells.
About 700 Australians are diagnosed with the disease every year and WA has the highest rate of mesothelioma in the world.
Asbestos Diseases Society of Australia president Robert Vojakovic said the test could help the possible 6000 people who were children in Wittenoom when the town still had an active blue asbestos mine.
Het verbod op het in de handel brengen en het gebruik van chrysotiel met ingang van 1 januari 2005, ingevoerd bij Richtlijn 76/769/EEG, zal bijdragen aan een aanzienlijke vermindering van de blootstelling van de werknemers aan asbest. Het op de markt brengen en het gebruik van de meeste soorten asbestvezels (crocidoliet (“blauwe asbest”), amosiet (“bruine asbest”), anthofyliet, actinoliet en tremoliet) en van producten waaraan deze vezels opzettelijk zijn toegevoegd was al eerder verboden.
Tekst richtlijn op: http://www.eu-milieubeleid.nl/ch07s06.html
Ondernemingen in de VS die zowel aangeklaagd zijn voor schade door blootstelling aan asbest als silicose hebben bewijs gevonden van fraude. Duizenden mensen hebben eerst bij een trustfonds een claim ingediend voor blootstelling aan asbest en daarvoor een vergoeding ontvangen. Zonder dit te vermelden hebben zij later een Texaans bedrijf via de rechter aangeklaagd voor schade door blootstelling aan silicose.
Bron: International Herald Tribune, februari 2005.
Fraud? Thousands in silica case also sued for asbestos damages
The International Herald Tribune, February 3, 2005 Thursday
BYLINE: Jonathan D. Glater
SOURCE: The New York Times
BODY:
Companies in the United States battling lawsuit claims of injuries caused by exposure to asbestos or silica have long contended that they are victims of fraud. Now, they finally have evidence that their concerns could be valid. Thousands of people who have said they were injured by one potentially lethal material are apparently double-dipping, now asserting separately that they were injured by the other.
More than half of the plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit in Texas seeking compensation for exposure to silica — used in making glass, paint, ceramics and other materials — previously filed claims against a trust set up to compensate victims of asbestos, a cancer-causing flame retardant.
Jared Garelick, a lawyer at Claims Resolution Management Corp., a trust that processes asbestos-related claims, says the discovery of the other suits came after defense lawyers in the Texas case provided a list of plaintiffs to the trust. It ran the names of 8,629 plaintiffs through its database and found that 5,174 had already filed asbestos claims, probably recovering money.
“That’s huge,” said Nathan Schachtman, a defense lawyer at the firm of McCarter & English in Philadelphia who has defended companies in both asbestos and silica cases. “It’s a big problem, not just for the courts,” he said, “because it’s difficult to get the information” about where plaintiffs filed claims previously.
The evidence of seemingly duplicate injury claims was expected to emerge at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday on proposed legislation on asbestos liability. The evidence will almost certainly be used by companies to ask for greater protection from silica-related lawsuits, while labor advocates will argue that blocking such suits may harm people filing legitimate cases. The evidence could also complicate efforts to enact a law that would remove asbestos claims from the courts.
According to prepared testimony by Lester Brickman, a law professor at the Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University, who was to appear at the hearing, “As with asbestos, the tragedy of silica exposure is being transformed into an enormous money-making machine in which baseless claims predominate.”
Labor advocates fear that Congress will not treat the asbestos and silica matters as separate issues. Dr. Laura Welch, medical director at the AFL-CIO labor federation’s Center to Protect Workers’ Rights, who also was to testify on Wednesday, said that legislation dealing with asbestos should not be expanded to limit the right to sue as a result of exposure to unrelated substances.
“We don’t want to derail what could be an important compensation bill for asbestos disease,” she said. “If there are bad claims for silicosis, they should deal with that head on.”
But any legislative solution to asbestos-related injury that does not deal with the possibility of a wave of silica lawsuits does not go far enough, said Michael Baroody, executive vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers and chairman of the Asbestos Alliance Steering Committee, a coalition of companies and associations.
“It is certainly our hope,” he said, “that the legislation would contain language that would make that clear, and preclude that sort of back-door return to the courts.”
The hearing is to take place as the administration of President George W. Bush is pushing for changes in the U.S. civil justice system, for example, limiting the amount of damages that plaintiffs in civil suits can be awarded. Evidence that claims filed against companies that made, supplied or worked with silica may be dubious could bolster the administration’s position.
It is possible that a person could suffer from exposure to both asbestos and silica. But such a high number of double occurrences is implausible, said Schachtman, the corporate defense lawyer. Asbestos litigants who also say they were injured by silica, he said, will have to claim “that they didn’t know that they had an injury from silica but they already knew they had a lung injury” from asbestos. That is a difficult argument, he said.
A legislative solution to the problem of asbestos liability is complicated by the fact that some people may indeed have been harmed by both substances, as Judge Edward Becker of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit said last month.
And there is recent evidence, unrelated to the problem of duplicate claims, that unsupported — even fraudulent — claims are a serious problem. In the lawsuit now under way in Corpus Christi, Texas, doctors who had signed documents saying that plaintiffs in the case were suffering from silicosis backed away from those conclusions when questioned under oath late last year
