Connect with Us:
The Power of Information
Facebook Page Twitter @enviroblog Youtube Channel Our RSS Feeds
| ||
Banner photograph © Bill Ravanesi |
"Asbestos Litigation Reform" ReconsideredThis website provides the most thorough review to date of the size and scope of the public health tragedy caused by asbestos in the United States. For the first time ever, it provides the public with new, localized information on asbestos-related diseases, deaths, and contamination sources. This original research is combined with a detailed list of products that expose the public to asbestos, a review of the failed 1989 attempt by EPA to ban asbestos, and an analysis of businesses with the most deaths from the signature asbestos cancer, mesothelioma. It also includes a discussion of asbestos diseases and how even short-term exposures can produce tragic outcomes. The site takes the visitor behind closed doors at asbestos companies and their insurers via internal documents showing that company after company was willing to let workers suffer and die long after it was clear that asbestos was killing them. It is precisely the callous behavior evidenced by these documents that is at the core of all asbestos litigation. This fact, however, has been largely buried beneath claims that the litigation has "bankrupted" dozens of large U.S. companies. The companies, it turns out, have a much different take on these bankruptcies, calling them "good news" (Halliburton), with "little impact on day-to-day operations" (Babcock and Wilcox). As the Senate prepares to consider a sweeping, high-stakes bailout plan for asbestos companies and their insurers, the data and documents presented here should remind decision-makers that asbestos is a public health epidemic first and foremost. When viewed through the prism of public health, two clear principles emerge that should guide the current debate:
Next page > > | |