A dramatic increase in asbestos use throughout Asia will trigger a surge of asbestos-related disease in coming decades, scientists have warned.
In a recent study published in the journal Respirology, a team led by a World Health Organisation occupational health expert has found that Asia now accounts for more than two-thirds of global asbestos use.
Although many of the 47 Asian countries examined in the study do not record asbestos-related deaths, the team drew on data from the WHO Mortality Database as well as published literature to find that 12,882 ARD deaths have been recorded cumulatively in Asia.
They pointed out that due to the long latency period of mesothelioma, these deaths were the result of relatively modest asbestos use in Asia (of 14 per cent) until 1970.
In 1970 Asian nations increased their global share of asbestos to 33 per cent. This has corresponded with a rise in the incidence of deaths from mesothelioma.
At the turn of the century, Asia’s asbestos use all but doubled to 64 per cent of the global total.
“Cumulative asbestos use before 1970 predicted the recent cumulative number of mesothelioma deaths. Thus we hypothesize that the increased asbestos use observed after 1971 will begin to take its toll,” the report said.
The researchers found that countries, such as Japan and Israel, with available data for asbestos and its links to disease, had banned or substantially reduced asbestos use since 2001 (the average annual mean was 0.1 million tons), while countries with available data for asbestos only had substantially increased asbestos use during the same period (the average annual mean was 1.2 million tons).
“Although the reduction of asbestos use may correlate with a country’s own acquisition of ARD data, the ‘lessons’ of other countries are not easily learned,” the report said.
The reports lead author, Dr Ken Takahashi, acting director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Occupational Health, lamented the lack of up-to-date data, saying that it probably led to an underestimate of death rates.
“Despite concerns of the global ARD epidemic and Asia’s growing importance in the world, data on current asbestos use and asbestos related diseases in Asia remain limited,” Dr Takahashi said in a statement accompanying the report.
“Asian countries should not only cease asbestos use but also prepare themselves for an impending epidemic of ARD.”
The highest asbestos-related mortality rates were recorded in Cyprus, Israel and Japan, all of which have banned asbestos in recent years.
But in China and India, where asbestos has widespread use as a cheap building material, it is unregulated and there is no official reporting of ARD.
According to the latest figures from the United States Geological Survey (http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/asbestos/mis-2007-asbes.pdf), the leading asbestos consuming countries in 2007 were China (30 per cent of global use, or 626,000 tonnes), India (15 per cent), Russia (13 per cent), Kazakhstan and Brazil (5 per cent each) and Thailand, Uzbekistan, and Ukraine (4 per cent each).
The full report can be read at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1440-1843.2011.01975.x/pdf
By Catherine Madden