Asbestos Disaster

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Frontmatter

2. Chapter 1. A Political Economy of Asbestos Disasters

   Hiroyuki Mori

   Abstract

   Since the end of the twentieth century, asbestos disasters as “complex-stock disasters” have evolved into a serious social problem in many advanced industrialized nations. In Japan, prompted into action by the Kubota Shock in 2005, the government enacted the Act on Asbestos Health Damage Relief in 2006, thus creating a new safety net to provide coverage for victims of environmental asbestos exposure and other asbestos victims not covered by the nation’s workers accident compensation insurance framework. However, no comprehensive study on asbestos disasters has yet been conducted to demand a synthesis of knowledge from the social and natural sciences. In the view of social science, it is essential to understand asbestos disasters by combining multiple economic approaches. Specifically, occupational disasters and environmental pollution need to be analyzed independently of one another and then identified as a series of connected events. To that end, there seems no choice but to establish an entirely new field of political economy that can aid our understanding and eventual solution of asbestos problems as an unprecedented complex-stock disaster.

3. Chapter 2. An Exploration of Measures Against Industrial Asbestos Accidents  *

   Kenichi Miyamoto

   Abstract

   In June 2005, three mesothelioma-afflicted residents of the community surrounding Kubota Corporation’s Amagasaki factory, together with their support groups, filed charges demanding that Kubota assume responsibility for their exposure to asbestos. Kubota offered relief money to them, and the number of victims who received this money from Kubota has increased. In February 2006 the government, responding to the outcry of public opinion, enacted the Act on Asbestos Health Damage Relief for cases of asbestos contamination and the victims thereof who were not deemed eligible for workers accident compensation. Japan has used an estimated 10 million metric tons of asbestos to date, and the cumulative number of deaths from mesothelioma is estimated to be approximately 100  000 over the coming 40 years. Extrapolating from that estimate, mesothelioma deaths world-wide may reach as many as 1.8 million. Under the Helsinki Criteria, nearly twice as many deaths are believed to stem from asbestos-induced lung cancer. Japan must establish a public social insurance-type framework for relief compensation. To offset current deficiencies, Japan must also move forward with litigation seeking civil damages from asbestos polluters.

4. Chapter 3. Why Did the Asbestos Disaster Spread?

   Takehiko Murayama, Yuji Natori

   Abstract

   A historical review of the asbestos issue in Japan indicates that the social application of medical knowledge, the activities of governments and industries, the economic advantage of asbestos products in the short term, and the knowledge gap among stakeholders are the four factors which caused the asbestos disaster to spread in Japan. While some experts reported that the Japanese society needed asbestos products for modernization, nonasbestos products originally existed in many fields before asbestos products were developed. It is rational to recognize that asbestos products were over-used, and its use should at least have been limited. Asbestos products are still being used in developing countries where medical knowledge is not widely shared, and some Asian countries have increased their amounts of asbestos consumption in recent years. Some companies in Western countries, and national governments which have asbestos mines, encourage the diffusion of asbestos products among Asian countries. Such behavior, based on the knowledge gap, will be seen as criminal in future generations.

5. Chapter 4. Asbestos Pollution and Its Health Effects: Asbestos-Related Diseases in Japan

   Kenji Morinaga, Yasushi Shinohara

   Abstract

   Asbestos-related diseases are disorders that are caused by the inhalation of asbestos dust. They include pulmonary asbestosis (one type of pneumoconiosis), lung cancer, mesothelioma (a malignant neoplasm of the pleura or peritoneum), benign (noncancerous) pleural disorders such as circumscribed pleural thickening known as pleural plaques, pleurisy, and diffuse pleural thickening. Of the asbestos-related diseases, malignant mesothelioma and lung cancer are known to manifest their symptoms only after a long incubation period, which ranges from 20 to 50 years from the first exposure to asbestos. The number of patients who have been compensated has been climbing sharply year by year since 2005. The sharp surge in compensated patients from 2006 is presumed to be an outcome of coverage triggered by the Kubota Shock. The Act on Asbestos Health Damage Relief, enacted on March 27, 2006, granted relief eligibility to victims of asbestos-induced diseases who were not compensated by workers accident compensation.

6. Chapter 5. Mesothelioma Due to Neighborhood Asbestos Exposure: A Large-Scale, Ongoing Disaster Among Residents Living Near a Former Kubota Plant in Amagasaki, Japan

   Norio Kurumatani, Shinji Kumagai

   Abstract

   We describe a serious on-going outbreak of asbestos disasters which were uncovered in Japan in 2005 (the Kubota Shock). According to our epidemiological study, around 100 residential mesothelioma cases have been attributed to a single asbestos cement pipe plant. That plant, now closed, was located in Amagasaki City, Hyogo Prefecture, west of Osaka. It was run by the Kubota Corporation, currently a large machinery company world-wide. A significantly increased risk of developing mesothelioma occurred among residents in the area which extends 2  200 m south south-east and 900 m north north-west from the center of the plant. This is in accordance with the predominant wind direction in the area, which blows from the north north-west. New cases of mesothelioma have continued to arise among residents, with the total number of mesothelioma patients currently near 200. Asbestos has been widely used since the early twentieth century, and therefore many factories world-wide, some of which are now closed, have handled asbestos and asbestos-containing products and may have spread asbestos into the surrounding communities. Mesothelioma develops more than 40 or 50 years after the first asbestos exposure. Public health policy-makers, health professionals, and industry need to recognize the serious health risks associated with the wide areas of neighborhood asbestos exposure in the present and in the future.

7. Chapter 6. Asbestos Disasters and Public Policy: From the Prewar Era Through the Postwar Economic Boom *

   Hiroyuki Mori

   Abstract

   It is extremely important to understand why the spread of asbestos-related pollution and harm was not prevented even though the hazardous properties of asbestos itself were clearly known. For this purpose, it is necessary to recognize the economic and public policy-related features of asbestos, and explore the implications of the asbestos problem for economic policy, with a focus on Japan. Given that the utilization of asbestos for textiles in the Sennan district of Osaka has the longest and most terrible history, it is appropriate to focus on the Sennan case. The government was both directly and indirectly involved with the cluster of small operations in the Sennan district that handled the primary stages in the manufacture of the asbestos products that played a key background supporting role within Japanese industry at large. Since the government put the ultimate priority on economic growth as a “national interest,” government policies on labor and the environment were assigned a subordinate role, and asbestos exposure and harm in the Sennan district spread as a result.

8. Chapter 7. Persistent Thorns: Responsibility for Asbestos Disasters

   Masafumi Kato

   Abstract

   The problem of industrial pollution starts and ends with victims. This can be described as one of the lessons of history. One event hinted that the asbestos crisis might become known as one of the worst industrial calamities in history. That outlook was driven home in late June 2005 by a press announcement by the Kubota Corporation that there had been a heavy outbreak of asbestos-linked diseases among former workers for, and residents living near, its defunct Kanzaki factory in Amagasaki, a city in Hyogo Prefecture. The Kubota Shock was a news event which suggested that the outbreak needed to be treated as a case of industrial pollution on a scale surpassing the conventional bounds of workplace disasters. Now, over 5 years later, a damage compensation lawsuit launched on behalf of a group of former workers from the Sennan community of Osaka has thrown the spotlight of public scrutiny on a pattern of inaction by the national government. On May 19, 2010, the Osaka District Court issued its ruling, finding the national government liable for a failure to take appropriate action against asbestos despite its knowledge of the hazards associated with this material, thereby allowing the extent of victimization from asbestos exposure to spread. This was the first court ruling to find the national government liable for health problems associated with asbestos.

9. Chapter 8. Asbestos Industry Transplants from Japan to South Korea

   Shinjiro Minami

   Abstract

   The asbestos industry has been moving plants overseas (primarily to developing countries) to take advantage of locally inexpensive labor and weak regulatory frameworks for worker safety. Using the transplantation of the asbestos industry from Japan to South Korea, this chapter explores the “exportation” of the asbestos industry and associated asbestos hazards and harm.

   The chapter first sheds light on the history of asbestos industry relations between Japan and South Korea, and drawing from three case studies of Japanese companies, then explores the transfer or “exportation” of the industry’s manufacturing processes and the accompanying health problems associated with asbestos exposure. Their decisions were motivated by the conclusion that overseas operations would be able to enjoy reduced operating and labor costs as long as the benefits of asbestos continued to win societal acceptance in Japan. They withdrew those operations once their basis for establishment had been lost, i.e., after the benefits of asbestos had been rejected by society, and the expected savings in operating costs, etc., were no longer available.

10. Chapter 9. Inaction on Asbestos Disasters and Delayed Countermeasures*

    Norio Obata

    Abstract

    What might have changed had there been no Kubota Shock? Local residents viewed asbestos problems as workplace accidents, and rarely considered them to have a pollution-related dimension. However, it appears that the issue abruptly took on that dimension in 1987 with mounting public concern over the removal of spray-on asbestos materials from school facilities, and reports of asbestos dumping at the Yokosuka naval base. However, even in these cases, the issue was treated as a construction-related problem with sprayed asbestos applications, and was deemed unlikely to have occurred at all if workers had followed proper control procedures.

    The national government is clearly guilty of inaction on the asbestos issue. It is projected that the scale of asbestos harm and contamination will continue to grow in the years ahead. The Act on Asbestos Health Damage Relief has been established and is now in force. As noted in the review of selected provisions, the New Law has quite a few problems. This is a law that should be revised, with a preamble that clarifies the national government’s liability, and recognizes the asbestos crisis to be the stock pollution disaster that it is.

11. Chapter 10. Process Tracing of Asbestos Politics in Japan: Focus on Fiscal Years 2005 and 2006

    Michiya Mori

    Abstract

    This chapter examines the political processes in the enactment and implementation of the Act on Asbestos Health Damage Relief in 2006. A lot of earlier studies on asbestos problems have examined and clarified the state of asbestos-related health damage, the negative influences on society, and so forth. However, the political impact caused by asbestos disasters, especially the Kubota Shock (June 2005), has not been elucidated in detail. The political process approach is supposed to make up for a lack of comprehensive understanding of the asbestos issue. Based mainly on the Asahi Shimbun database and official documents, I explore how such diverse stakeholders as the ruling party, core government executives, ministries and government offices, companies, and local governments have mutually struggled and considered the measures over the asbestos issues.

12. Chapter 11. Future Challenges for Asbestos Policy in the Construction Industry

    Kazuhiko Ishihara

    Abstract

    Although virtuallty every asbestos product was prohibited in 2006, there remains the potential risk of asbestos exposure through existing buildings. Asbestos-containing materials in buildings require proper upkeep on a routine basis, and appropriate handling during structural demolition and other handling stages. Measures to deal with the asbestos that has accumulated in buildings face two major hurdles. One is the costs associated with maintenance and disposal, and the other is the task of ensuring total implementation. In terms of the construction industry, how to deal with asbestos-related diseases among workers is also significant. Many workers in the construction industry are actually the owners of small, one-person businesses, i.e., sole proprietors, and for that reason they are typically ineligible for workers accident compensation insurance even if they are given a diagnosis of an asbestos-linked illness. It is imperative to fully implement measures aimed at cultivating an accurate awareness of the problems, develop the necessary technologies and frameworks, ensure total compliance with the law, and secure the necessary funding to offset the costs.

13. Chapter 12. Local Government Measures Against Asbestos: Tokyo Metropolitan and Osaka Prefectural Governments as Case Studies

    Kazuhisa Hiraoka

    Abstract

    In Japan, local governments have a critical role to play in handling environmental pollution and industrial disasters. The Tokyo Metropolis and Osaka Prefecture have led with independent undertakings in asbestos countermeasures, and since the Kubota Shock, most local governments have pressed forward with emergency countermeasures against asbestos. However, it is evident that these actions at local government level have limits. Not enough has been done to identify the extent of harm caused by asbestos to human health. Frameworks for registration and the implementation of periodic health examinations have not been set up for citizens at risk of environmental exposure. Current measures to deal with asbestos in buildings are also marked by an array of deficiencies, including a lack of insight into the actual extent of asbestos use, inadequate frameworks for measurement and management, and weak measures for asbestos removal projects. These challenges demand that local governments take ownership of the problems at hand and pursue independent solutions. In addition, it is imperative that the national government also takes action, lays the legal groundwork, and sets the stage for further progress.

14. Chapter 13. Asbestos Litigation in Japan: Recent Trends and Related Issues

    Katsumi Matsumoto

    Abstract

    In Japan, the initial momentum for asbestos litigation proved slow, but starting in the 1970s, cases began to appear on a sporadic basis, mainly involving damage compensation claims by victims of diseases stemming from occupational exposure to asbestos, holding their employers liable for a failure to fulfill their obligation to implement safeguards, or for acts of tort. Since the Kubota Shock in 2005, several significant asbestos litigations have been filed. These included the Sennan lawsuit against the national government, representing former asbestos factory workers and surviving kin of deceased workers who had been employed by asbestos factories, damage compensation claims against asbestos product manufacturers and distributors to offset the cost of removing asbestos materials from buildings, and claims for compensation for airborne asbestos from asbestos product factories that could create health problems for residents in surrounding neighborhoods, such as the former Kubota Kanzaki factory. To cultivate the basic perspectives that facilitate progress toward a lasting solution to the asbestos problems, it is critically important to clarify in detail the fundamental legal liabilities of private companies and the national government for the harm suffered by the individual victims of asbestos-linked diseases.

15. Chapter 14. The French Indemnification Fund for Asbestos Victims: Features and Formative Historical Factors: Preliminary Observations for a Comparative Analysis of Asbestos Relief Frameworks

    Gakuto Takamura

    Abstract

    “FIVA” (Fonds d’indemnisation des victimes de l’amiante), a relief compensation fund for asbestos victims that France established in 2000, has been described as a historic step in labor–management (equating here to victims and offenders) conciliation that compares with the Workers Accident Compensation Law enacted in 1898.

16. Backmatter