Shunned by the world, asbestos makes Sonia turf its new home

Visaka has six units all over the country for asbestos roofing sheets but this is its first venture in North India. Four other asbestos units of Utkal, Jaypee are coming up in western UP and there will be two units of Charminar. This makes it even more important for Visaka to get its act together to get some lead time. By the middle of this month, 1,800 tonne of these sheets would be made per day in western UP.

‘‘It is a scary scenario. It has been proven that when these sheets are cut or when wear and tear takes place, fibres are released which can be extremely hazardous,’’ said Qamar Rahman of the Indian Toxicology Research Centre. Her research in the 80s and 90s showed that 7 per cent of workers in the UP Asbestos Industry in Mohanganj near Lucknow were suffering from asbestosis.

These are some of the concerns that the fast-track clearances have germinated: Environmental clearance was sought in May 2 last year and the final clearance came on September 21. Four months is one of the fastest clearances by the Ministry of the Environment and Forests.

The Hyderabad industries that manufacture Charminar sheets applied at the same time but their clearance came in December. In this haste, has the due diligence been done on concerns related to asbestos? The Environmental Impact Assessment has been done by a Lucknow-based firm called DARB Consultants. It uses a set template and makes reference to asbestos in two paragraphs in more than a 300-page document.

Though the unit has started, they do not have medical check-ups for all the workers in the unit, as stipulated by the Supreme Court. They have a tie-up with a hospital in Rae Bareli but though production has begun, not all workers have been medically examined. No independent agency has been appointed to monitor the levels of fibre levels at the work-site, again a condition imposed by the Court.

A mandatory public hearing was done but located in one of the poorest districts of UP, it is anybody’s guess on what awareness related to asbestos would be. Both World Trade Organisation and World Health Organisation has stipulated that there can be no safe way of handling asbestos. Asbestos sheets are made of fly ash and cement but has 10 per cent of asbestos in them to make them heat and fire resistant.

After the four new units, manufacturers hope that North India will start replacing thatched roofs with these sheets. The area of concern is the fibre of asbestos getting air-borne, affecting workers in the factory and the population living close to the factory. The law in India stipulates that asbestos be transferred in close containers, in palette form and in impenetrable bags.

Even one fibre lodges in the lung of the worker, it can cause cancer of the lungs and asbostosis which is a severe form of lung impairment. Even though bag filters are installed to capture the fibre, ‘‘there is no way of capturing every single fibre, some will fall on the ground and be swept away,’’ said Ved Prakash, environmental engineer from the UP State Pollution Control Board. Factory owners maintain that they are able to deal with fibre with their precautionary measures. ‘‘This is a poor man’s roof. The West can afford to ban it because they have the money to go into alternative technology,’’ said G Vivekanand, chairman of Visaka industries. They claim they have spent nearly 40-50 lakh in installing asbestos-related measures. Though the factory has just started and the others are on the horizon, the question is whether the regulation will keep pace with concerns related to asbestos.