Ban asbestos campaign gathers students’ signatures to hasten approval of Ban Asbestos Bills HB 896 & SB 89

ALU News Release

Ban asbestos campaign gathers students’ signatures to hasten approval of Ban Asbestos Bills HB 896 & SB 89

23 August 2011, Quezon City— The Associated Labor Unions’ (ALU) advocacy on asbestos begins today to hold a series of lectures to senior public high school students in Quezon City about the risks of asbestos to their health, and petition legislators to hasten approval into law pending bills banning the use of the cancerous dust.

Dr. Corazon Rubio, DepEd’s Quezon City Schools Superintendent, issued a memorandum on July 27 addressed to all assistant schools division superintendents, division and district supervisors, secondary school principals, and head teachers and teachers-in-charge allowing the ban asbestos advocacy lecture and signature campaign in some of the 46 secondary schools in the city.

The memorandum was in response to a letter by Gerard Seno, National Vice President of ALU, which requested for the campaign to reach out students. ALU is one of the largest confederations of unions in the country with a membership of more than 150,000 working in 14 various industries nationwide. The ALU partners with the Woodworkers International and Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (BWI-TUCP) in its campaign to ban and phase out asbestos in the Philippines.

“Our campaign’s engagement with third and fourth year students is a first of a kind. The two-pronged aim of this approach is to educate and inform their consent and, on the same breath, empower them to stand up to protect their future against asbestos exposure,” Seno said referring to the campaign initiative.

“The proposed bill (HB 896) must be approved as soon as possible for the sake of 1.3 million Filipino workers who are currently exposed daily to asbestos dust and for the sake of the protection of these children who are our future workers,” he added. The Lung Center of the Philippines (LCP) and the Philippine Cancer Society (PCS) has recorded since year 2000 twelve cases of Filipinos who were diagnosed with various cancers upon exposure with asbestos dust.

The House Bill 896 was authored and filed by TUCP Party-List Rep. Raymond Democrito Mendoza on July 2010. It seeks to ban the importation, manufacture, processing, use or distribution in commerce of asbestos and asbestos containing materials. It is pending at second reading after a Technical Working Group meeting in March. Its counterpart bill, Senate Bill 89, in the Senate is also pending.

Asbestos in the Philippines can be found in homes, malls, churches, old schools, power plants, factories, warehouses, and old buildings. Asbestos containing materials are cement flat sheets, cement roofing, sealing joints, battery separators, clutch linings and brake pads, gaskets, mechanical packing materials, fire-fighting suits. It is also commonly used as insulators in ceilings, walls, engine rooms, boilers, and airconditioning pipes.

There are 25 establishments in the Philippines that exports raw asbestos from Canada at more than 10,000 metric tonnes every year. Most of these establishments are found within Metro Manila.

Asbestos dust fibers cannot be seen by naked eyes because they are five thousand times smaller than hair in diameter. When inhaled, these fibers stick in the lungs causing various incurable diseases 10 to 40 years later. ###