Most people in the United States are under the impression that our government banned the use of asbestos decades ago, but the truth is that’s a lie. Asbestos is still widely used in many objects that you use every single day and to make things worse, the amount of asbestos that we import into this country has doubled in the last two years. Mike Papantonio, host of America's Lawyer, discusses this with Farron Cousins.

Watch America's Lawyer featuring Mike Papantonio on RT: [ Ссылка ]

Asbestos has been used all over the planet for well over 100 years in all different types of manufacturing. From insulation to paper products to car components, there was a time when modern life on earth was surrounded by asbestos products. But as the public became aware of the deadly nature of asbestos, the US government took action to reduce our risk of exposure to this substance. Or at least, that’s what they wanted you to think.

If you were to ask the average person on the street if asbestos was still being widely used in the United States today, they’d probably tell you “no,” or that the product has been banned in this country for decades. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In the late 1970’s, the US government began drafting new rules that would severely limit the amount of asbestos in our lives, and these rules were finalized in 1989 after a ten year investigation that resulted in more than 100,000 pages of evidence that confirmed a link between asbestos exposure and cancer.

But thanks to asbestos companies like WR Grace and Johns Manville, those strict rules were thrown out the window, resulting in watered-down versions of regulations that were supposed to stop the rising death toll attributed to asbestos.

These asbestos companies poured millions of dollars into lobbying campaigns to convince politicians and regulators that asbestos wasn’t really as bad as they were making it out to be, and that we shouldn’t follow other countries who had banned its use. Of course, these lobbying pitches were completely devoid of any actual facts, because the industry had been aware of the dangers of asbestos for nearly 100 years.

It was in the year 1900 that a British physician first documented a direct link between asbestos and death – a death that we know was from asbestosis, the form of cancer that develops from inhaling asbestos particles. Soon after, doctors from other countries, including the United States, began making the same discoveries in the bodies of asbestos workers.

In a move that set the stage for the next 100 years of corporate behavior, the asbestos industry decided to not only cover up the dangers of their product, they tried to make it sound like a noble way to die.

свернуть