Though the U.S. banned asbestos in 2024, the fight to enforce and expand that ban is only just beginning.

In March 2024, the United States became the latest country to ban asbestos. However, we’ve been down this road before. In 1989, the Environmental Protection Agency enacted a similar rule. Asbestos company lawyers used an obscure provision in the Toxic Substances Control Act to overturn that ban. Even as you read this, a new group of asbestos company lawyers huddles over dusty law books, searching for another loophole. So, asbestos legislation in the United States isn’t ending. It’s probably just beginning. More on that below.

Global Disparities in Asbestos Bans and Accountability

Asbestos, a mineral that doesn’t conduct electricity or heat and causes fatal disease, was legal worldwide until 1983, when Iceland was the first country to ban this substance. Several other countries quickly followed suit, and the U.S. tried to ban asbestos, as mentioned above. In the early 1980s, asbestos demand in the United States tapered off, as liability lawsuits mounted. But most other countries don’t have well-developed, accessible court systems. 90 percent of the world’s jury trials occur in the United States. So, in other countries, companies could continue using a cheap, hazardous substance and get away with it.

The Role of American Lawyers in Shaping Policy

Here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, an asbestos exposure lawyer can obtain significant compensation for asbestos poisoning victims. This compensation usually includes money for economic losses, such as medical bills, and noneconomic losses, such as pain and suffering. Additional punitive damages are usually available in these matters as well. Moreover, an asbestos exposure lawyer advocates for victims in the statehouse as well as the courthouse. Attorneys testify before Congress and otherwise help ensure that lawmakers pass evidence-based, victim-friendly laws, in this area and other areas as well.

Asbestos Laws in the United States

Money, Influence, and the Next U.S. Legislative Battle

The next asbestos legislation step in the United States will probably be a Congressional ban. Executive agency rules come and go. Congressional laws aren’t set in stone, but they’re close. 

The next step will be challenging. Asbestos exposure lawyers have very limited resources to use in lobbying efforts. But the asbestos industry’s resources are almost unlimited. Worldwide, this industry grows 10 percent annually and its value should exceed $1.75 billion by 2028. 

Money buys influence in our system. Actually, we should say that money buys access in our system. Companies that make large contributions to lawmakers get face time with these lawmakers, so they can plead their cases. If a U.S. Senator or a die-hard Republican only hears one side of the story, that person’s conclusions are inevitably, albeit not maliciously, biased.

Asbestos use has always been a profits-before-people matter. Asbestos companies, as they’ve done for decades, muddy the waters and argue that if fifty people get rich and five people get sick, maybe asbestos isn’t so bad. But asbestos poisoning victims don’t just get sick. They die.

Lung cancer, specifically mesothelioma, is the most common fatal asbestos exposure-related illness. Lung cancer is bad. Mesothelioma is worse. Most victims aren’t diagnosed until Stage III or IV, when their illness is all but untreatable.

Currently, U.S. laws don’t protect Americans from this disease, and others like it. Only an asbestos exposure lawyer can do that.

Russia and Asbestos Production

Russia’s Surprising Regulatory Shift

Even if the ban holds up and Congress passes supporting legislation, for many companies, the low cost and high efficiency of asbestos will be too much to pass up. Generally, laws don’t change behavior. Recently, a hit-and-run wreck occurred on a Los Angeles street during a live TV report about a previous hit-and-run wreck. 

Law or no law, asbestos exposure will continue in the United States. So, the focus of this post shifts to legislation in Russia, which is, by far, the world’s largest asbestos exporter. It has been the world’s largest asbestos exporter since the 1980s, even while mining was still legal in the U.S. and Canada.

In a move that came as quite a shock to the industry, a June 2024 Ministry of Health proposal, which was published on the Ministry’s portal of draft regulatory legal acts, included the addition of cancers caused by workplace exposures to “asbestos, soot, welding aerosols, and so on” to the official list of occupational diseases.

Quite simply, the asbestos exposure problem in Russia has become too big to ignore. The number of occupational cancer victims has increased 120 percent since 2021. This increase is part of a larger global problem. 

Officials will finalize the new list in March 2025. It’s too early to tell if this classification is the first step toward asbestos activity limitation or simply a showpiece.

The Asbestos Industry in China and Central Asia

China and Kazakhstan: A Grim Outlook

This country may be the world’s largest asbestos user. This substance is completely unregulated and, as mentioned above, civil courts in most foreign countries, including China, are powerless to protect victims.

Asbestos is often associated with construction. Indeed, that’s probably the largest single sector of asbestos use. However, this mineral also appears in manufactured products, mostly auto parts and other components that must resist heat or friction. Many Chinese-made brake pads, hood liners, and other such parts contain significant amounts of asbestos.

China’s workplace safety laws, which are extremely weak, allow unlimited use of chrysotile (white) asbestos, the most common type of industrial asbestos. China limits amphibole and other types of asbestos that aren’t used very much.

China’s Centers for DIsease Control has urged the government to adopt a comprehensive “asbestosis management” strategy. This proposed strategy says nothing about asbestos control laws, let alone a usage ban. 

Much like America’s CDC, China’s CDC is an advisory body which lawmakers are free to ignore. Given the worldwide size of the asbestos industry, as mentioned above, official asbestos controls in China are very unlikely.

Kazakhstan: An Asbestos Case of Willful Ignorance

This former Soviet republic in west central Asia is the largest user and exporter of asbestos, other than China and Russia. Continuing a familiar theme, asbestos is largely unregulated in Kazakhstan, aside from a 2013 rule that classifies asbestos as a hazardous waste. That rule isn’t much, but it’s a step in the right direction.Russian and Chinese officials have largely ignored the asbestos exposure health problem. But in Kazakhstan, lack of knowledge seems to be the primary issue. The asbestos cover up, which unraveled in the 1970s in the United States, is still in full force here. Until the asbestos cover up ends in Kazakhstan, don’t expect any rules or laws in this area.