Asbestos, a unsafe carcinogen outlawed in more than 55 countries, could make a comeback in the U.s.a., under Trump'south Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA has fifty-fifty made information technology easier for companies to innovate new uses of asbestos-containing products in America—many of which could end upward in common products in your dwelling house, as well as the materials used to build it.

While products derived from asbestos may not agree a direct threat to consumers, the ecology advocacy group Healthy Building Network tellsFast Company the health risks are significant for workers who mine the toxic material, every bit well as those who handle it in industrial facilities that import it. Surrounding neighborhoods where asbestos fibers may be released into the air, as well every bit those in proximity to the landfills where they may ultimately cease up, are also affected. People in the building community, who are exposed to the fibrous material while renovating and constructing our homes, schools, and offices, besides remain at risk.

Once touted as a "magical mineral," asbestos carries heat, electricity, and chemically resistant backdrop that made for common applications in a broad range of manufacturing materials, and peculiarly building insulation, earlier noesis of its grave wellness risks caused many countries to ban its use in the 1970s.

Today, asbestos exposure is irrefutably linked to illnesses including lung cancer and mesothelioma. While the U.S. has restricted use of the fabric over the years—most notably with the EPA'south 1973 Clean Air Human activity and 1989 Asbestos Ban and Phase Out Rule—it remains 1 of the merely developed nations that has nonetheless not banned it outright, in a clear ongoing tussle between corporate and public interest. New data released this year shows asbestos-related deaths in the U.S. total nearly 40,000 annually, more than double previous estimates of 15,000.

On June i, the EPA enacted a "SNUR" (short for Pregnant New Apply Rule) allowing the manufacture of new asbestos-containing products to be petitioned and canonical past the federal government on a instance-by-case basis. Under an amendment to the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) that passed in 2016, during the Obama assistants, asbestos also remains one of x prioritized substances currently being evaluated by the EPA.

On the nose, that may audio like Trump'due south EPA is diligently regulating asbestos—but as the New York Times reported, the agency has significantly narrowed the way it evaluates the risk of potentially harmful chemical substances, all but making these two condom measures moot, and signaling a win for the powerful chemic lobby. A lengthy report of EPA'south new "framework" for evaluating adventure, placed into effect this calendar month, detailed how it would no longer consider the effect or presence of substances in the air, ground, or water in its risk assessments—effectively turning a blind center to improper disposal, contagion, emissions, and other long-term ecology and health risks associated with chemical products, including those derived from asbestos.

"The Trump administration rewrote the rules to be dramatically less protective of man health … experts who have looked at [the document] have said that in the end, information technology pretty much gives EPA discretion to do whatsoever it wants," says Bill Walsh, board president of the Salubrious Building Network, which he founded in 2000 to bring greater transparency to the building products industry. The arrangement'due south resources include the Pharos Project, an independent database cataloging the risks of more than 88,000 chemicals and materials. "The EPA's failure to further regulate asbestos continues to provide a green light for its continued use in the U.S., even as it has been curtailed overseas," Walsh added.

Reached for comment by Fast Company on how exactly its agency was working to protect Americans from ecology and public wellness risks associated with asbestos, the EPA just confirmed its implementation of the SNUR and its plans to proceed its evaluation of asbestos nether the revised TSCA.

Co-ordinate to HBN, the but manufacture in the United States to still use asbestos is the chlor-alkali manufacture, which imports an estimated 480 tons of asbestos a twelvemonth. Final week, HBN issued an extensive written report detailing concerns on chlorine-based plastics that are used commonly in building and construction products. "In the case of asbestos, correct now almost all asbestos in the U.S. is used in the industrial process that makes chlorine," says Walsh. "Most of that chlorine is used to make plastics, and the largest unmarried apply of chlorine is for PVC or vinyl plastics," which makes its fashion into a plethora of building materials—everything from pipes, tiles, and covering, to floor, adhesives, topcoats, and more than.

For the record, Trump has been outward in his views on the asbestos industry—his 1997 volume Art of the Improvement, in fact, explicitly stated that asbestos bans are a conspiracy "led by the mob, considering it was often mob-related companies that would do the asbestos removal." In June, the nonprofits Ecology Working Group (EWG) and Asbestos Disease Sensation Organization (ADAO) flagged a controversial image that surfaced on the official Facebook page of Ural Asbest—one of Russia'southward biggest asbestos mining companies, reported to agree close ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin—picturing pallets of the hazardous material wrapped and stamped with a red seal of Trump's confront forth with the words, "Approved past Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States." (Fast Company was non able to independently verify the image, and the White Firm did not respond to our request for comment by press fourth dimension.)

The Russian company is based in the mining monotown of Asbest in the Ural Mountains, home to the largest open-pit asbestos mine in the world, much to the health detriment of its own residents, whose local economy depends on the visitor's success. On a windy day in Asbest, the carcinogenic dust tin can sweep through the air to create a persistent film of the stuff in residents' backyards and gardens, on laundry lines, and even within living rooms and homes.

[Source Images: rawpixel/Unsplash,tumoxasan/iStock]

Equally the Daily Brute previously reported, Ural Asbest has shipped more than 384 tons of asbestos globally to date. According to HBN's written report, Brazil and Russia are currently the sole exporters of asbestos to the Usa. That's due to change with a sweeping asbestos production ban underway in Brazil that, in one case finalized, will make Russia poised to go the sole source of asbestos.

With lax federal regulations, it will fall to local and state governments to enact regulations—and to companies and informed consumers to pressure them. "In the building products manufacture, we take also seen the lack of regulatory activeness by EPA shift the pressure to the building supply manufacture, as shown past the recent announcements of Lowe's, Dwelling Depot and Sherwin Williams to halt selling methylene chloride paint strippers due to market pressure from consumer groups," says Walsh. "Simply to be articulate, we really call up there should be much more than constructive authorities regulation."

Consumer pressure will likewise autumn heavily to the blueprint community. Focusing his environmental advocacy to the building sector, Walsh, a Greenpeace veteran, believes architects should need a alter in the building products market.

"Architects really sets the step of design, in terms of aesthetics and materials that we like," he says. "If they outset to incorporate wellness-based criteria into their palette, information technology could really accept an influence on what the manufacturers produce."