Action Alert!  Learn about and support this legislation to ban asbestos in America!

STATEMENT OF SUPPORT FOR THE BAN ASBESTOS IN AMERICA ACT OF 2007

Americans are dying at the rate of one per hour from past use of
asbestos and the continuing contamination it leaves behind. National
and international authorities agree that even slight exposures to
asbestos carry some risk of cancer, and there are many tragic examples
of this.

The US is practically the only industrial nation (along with Canada, a
major exporter of asbestos) that has not banned asbestos. As a result,
even though very little asbestos is used in American industry, asbestos
brakes, asbestos-cement panels, and other asbestos products not made
here continue to be imported. These imported products endanger workers
and the general public, while competing against safer products made in
the USA.

In addition, the presence of asbestos as a contaminant of other
minerals, vermiculite, talc, and stone, has not received the attention
it deserves. This has resulted in environmental and occupational
hazards at quarries and mines and the asbestos contamination of consumer
products. The government urgently needs to analyze this problem from
coast to coast and take appropriate regulatory action to protect public
health and the environment.

Over 40 countries have banned asbestos, including all of Europe and
countries around the world, the latest to announce bans being Peru and
South Korea. The US EPA tried to ban all major uses of asbestos in
1989, but the regulations were overturned in a court challenge. It now
falls to the Congress to shut down what little asbestos use remains in
the US economy and close the door to deadly asbestos product imports.

We therefore support the enactment of S. 742, the Ban Asbestos in
America Act of 2007, sponsored by Senators Patty Murray, Harry Reid,
Clinton, Kennedy, Durbin, Feinstein, Baucus, Boxer, Leahy, Casey, Brown,
Cardin, Feingold, Harkin, Kerry, Lieberman, and Whitehouse.

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