Asbestos – a never ending story?

Lars Vedsmand

Revealings during the last months of one scandal after the other show that there remains a remarkable long time until we just roughly may fulfil the action plan for an asbestos-free Denmark, which was debated in Parliament way back in 1986.

BAT has in media, towards Danish LO (TUC) and towards politicains in Parliament several times stroked the fact that even if there have been problems with urban-trains and a few ships, the vast majority of the asbestos has been and still is within buildings. It is high time to effect a national action plan for a completely removal of all the asbestos being used until the ban of asbestos in 1986. It is not the least asbestos in buildings posing a danger to tenants and users og asbestos-containing buildings. This has also been demonstrated be revealings of sports-arenas with sprinkling asbestos.

Through many years it has been the official policy, universally accepted to encapsulate or seal indoor asbestos containing materials. The original argument was that it would be all too expensive to remove all the asbestod. But the stories about the National Railwasy and the urban trains and the different sports-arenas show that this simply won’t work!

Encapsulation is after all only postponing the problem. The solution is removing all asbestos form our surroundings.

It is not a simple solution and may take many years, but nevertheless this work must be initiated now. Other countries like Poland has already adopted such plans.

The road to removal of asbestos is a complete overview of asbestos in buildings. In BAT we suggest the establishment of a “Danish National Asbestos Registry”. Here should be recorded electronically existing untouched asbestos-containing installations and building parts, as well as encapsulated or sealed asbestos-containing building parts as well as registration of areas in buildings where asbestos formerly has been removed. This would lead to not carrying out unnecessary investigations and measurements by many refurbishments.

It is frightening and quite unacceptable that we still 20 years after the final ban was adopted are being confronted with daily revealings of lethal exposure to asbestos.

Allready in 1986 something like that was said in a bill for Parliament – but the text is still very topic. Through many years we have tried to seal us out of the problems and by that we hand over the asbestos problem for our grand-children.

There is only 1 safe way of handling asbestos: To get the shit removed from trains, ships and not the least buildings. Asbestos may be removed with safe working methods, but construction workers have a right to know, whether there is asbestos or not, when buildings are to be refurbished or renovated.

Action Plan

Thus there is a remarkable need that a national action plan is put forward, adopted and developed with new political initiatives in the asbestos field. The plan must finally prevent employees and others for harmful handling of and exposure to asbestos.

The action plan should contain at least these elements:

• Occurrence of asbestos

• Registration

• Regulation and enforcement from the authorities

• H&S and occupational diseases

• Impact on evironment and waste management.

Already now we have a line of registries and information which could be used in the work with making an complete memorandum, but there remains a great need for developing and updating.

There must quickly be a much better documentation as a basis of a national plan of removing all asbestos in Denmark.

The results of the survey should be published continuously in a public accessible database.

The duty of management must be extended:

Today the duty to register damaged asbestos is solely laid on employers, i.e. when there are employees in a building. The decisive in this are 2 conditions: It is an employer, who has the duty of registration and the duty to manage through sealing, encapsulation or removal. And it is only applying to indoor asbestos containing materials. The statuary order applies to forms of asbestos containing material, but in lingvistic use it seems limited to buildings, which today must be considered a weakness.

Types of buildings which actual will be covered by the duty to register:

• Enterprise

• Institutions, kindergartens, schools etc.

• Public and private trade/industry premises

In these cases the employer by refurbishment, repairments and demolition must register and inform about occurrence of indoor asbestos containing materials. This can be carried out in more ways:

• To know the history of the building and former used materials, which may be found in the documentation for the national building research institute

• To use the Guideline ”when you meet asbestos” in which typical uses of asbestos are connected with information about the years used and the year of ban.

• To use “thumbnail-rules” for typical applications: Asbestos as insulation material around pipes and heating equipment

• To use survey measurements not the least when you are in doubt

In BAT we find it necessary to extend the duty of registration:

Extending the obligation for:

• All house-owners or other persons with the right of financial competence related to ordering and execution of refurbishment, alterings and demolition

• Also complying tenant’s licensing of trade premises and other fields where there is not a ordinary employer-relation, but where other persons have the right to be

• Also applying to outdoor use of asbestos containing materials

Establishing of Danish Asbestos Registry – a national database with at least 3 approaches:

• Registry of every premise with existing, untouched asbesto-containing installations and asbestos containing building parts

• Registry the same way on encapsulated or sealed asbestos containing installations

• Registry areas in which asbestos has already been removed. (for instance by help from references from the asbestos demolition companies), in order to avoid unnecessary investigations and measurements in many refurbishments

We can think of a number of tools useful for getting the more precise overview of existing and sealed asbestos. It is important to avoid the absolutely unacceptable situation we had in the late 1980’es where teachers and others started to pull down ceiling tiles without any form of protection.

Low practical approach

We don’t imagine in our union that everyone so to say begin by going through all buildings in the country from one end to the next. Registration may for instance occur related to sale, when reports of condition has to be made anyway and when refurbishment and renovation is decided or when the building by other means should be used as a workplace.

The single house owner should not scratch the insulation of pipes or behind the tiles in the bathroom. Leave the shit, observe and take notes, and if the sealing of insulation is broken, call for professional people.

A national plan of action should as mentioned on sight lead to a Denmark free of asbestos, but it is not out of importance which kind of asbestos should be removed first. Therefore the plan should also contain clear priorities regarding the removal of asbestos.

BAT will propose that the minister of employment and the Parliament Committee for the labour market jointly set up a very fast working expert group aiming at looking at possibilities of how to proceed with registration and removal.

The action plan for an asbestos-free Denmark must include experiences from the way other countries have handled the asbestos problems. Beside this it will be obvious that a Danish action plan is also incorporated in a global strategy, in which Denmark supports a global prevention as well as a support for the global ban for the use of asbestos.