Why has India not banned asbestos, a known carcinogen?

It’s everywhere—in your talcum powder, water pipes, car brake linings and office ceilings. You can’t escape it.

 

The name tells the story: asbestos comes from Greek, meaning ‘unquenchable’. It is an umbrella term for six mineral fibres, but we encounter mostly serpentine-curly fibres that look like tiny snakes under a microscope. This variety, called chrysotile or white asbestos, is what the ministry of education now wants banned from future construction of Kendriya Vidyalayas and Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas. Though these form a small slice of India’s government schools, it is, as Minister of State (Education) Jayant Chaudhary said, ‘a start’.

 

The Greeks and Romans found that asbestos did not burn, and thus used it for lamp wicks. Modern industry loved this, plus its chemical resistance, durability, flexibility, and low cost.

 

But here’s the terrifying part: asbestos kills.

 

“The dimension, dose, and durability determine how toxic these fibres are,” said Dr Sachin Almel of P.D. Hinduja Hospital, Mumbai. After entering your body, they trigger chronic inflammation in a vicious cycle of repair and damage.

 

Asbestos causes asbestosis (lung scarring), lung cancer (worse if you smoke), thickened lung linings, and fluid buildup around lungs. Then there is mesothelioma—a vicious cancer attacking lung, abdomen and heart linings.

 

The nightmare? Mesothelioma takes 30-40 years to appear. “Cases we’re seeing now result from exposures two to four decades ago,” said Dr Mandeep Singh Malhotra of C.K. Birla Hospital, Delhi. Most of these are from industrial areas in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Odisha, and old shipyards.

 

We don’t know the true scale. India’s cancer registries cover only 16 per cent of the population. Dr Gagan Saini, oncologist at Max Super Speciality Hospital, Ghaziabad, points to shocking numbers: 83 hospitals found 2,213 mesothelioma cases (2012-2023), while the National Cancer Registry recorded just 54 cases. “The statistics policymakers rely on are orders of magnitude too low,” he said.

Prof Prashant Mathur, director, National Centre for Disease Informatics and Research, said cancer registries were essential to collect, collate, analyse and disseminate cancer statistics for informing public health actions. “Patients consult several doctors and hospitals. To ascertain that the data being analysed belongs to the same patient collected across several contact points, patient identifiers are needed to handle duplicate datasets,” he said.

 

Asbestos causes cancer anywhere in your body. Microscopic fibres burrow into lung tissue and never leave, creating chronic inflammation that affects multiple organs. They travel through bloodstream and lymph system everywhere. They even cross the placenta, potentially harming unborn children.

 

The most chilling fact? There’s no safe amount. Not one fibre.

 

You don’t need to work in an asbestos factory to be in danger. Workers in cement manufacturing, construction and shipbuilding face the highest risk, especially if they do not use adequate protective gear.

 

Over time, asbestos materials naturally crumble, releasing fibres into poorly ventilated spaces. They reach people who’ve never worked with asbestos: farmers exposed through contaminated soil, residents near marble mines where asbestos-containing rocks sit adjacent to marble.

 

Dr Arthur Frank has spent 50 years fighting asbestos worldwide. The Drexel University’s School of Public Health (Philadelphia, US) professor is blunt: “As little as one day of exposure has given both animals and humans mesotheliomas. A week’s exposure doubles lung cancer risk.”

 

This makes asbestos far more dangerous than cigarettes.

 

Awareness began in 1898 with Britain’s first asbestos hazard reports. By 1924, ‘asbestosis’ was coined. Lung cancer links emerged in the 1930s, with solid proof by 1949. A 1960 South African study definitively linked asbestos to mesothelioma. Countries started banning it by 1983.

 

Qamar Rahman, a pioneering toxicologist at the Institute of Toxicology Research in Lucknow, found government emission standards routinely breached. She documented asbestosis in workers as young as 25.

 

Worse: asbestos absorbs other cancer-causing chemicals and carries them throughout the body. “There’s acceleration of asbestosis in populations exposed to cigarette smoke, kerosene vapours, soot and cooking smoke,” said Rahman.

 

And using asbestos roofing in India’s climate makes no sense. Nirmita Chandrashekhar of the SELCO Foundation (which works on sustainable energy) says that asbestos becomes a heat trap, raising indoor temperatures by 10 degrees Celsius.

 

India is the world’s largest asbestos importer. Despite studies worldwide and WHO findings that asbestos causes serious health problems, India’s response has been contradictory at best.

 

In 2011, the ministry of health stated that health risks associated with white asbestos were ‘yet to be proved’. In 2022, when asked whether the government would ban asbestos, the ministry of forest, environment and climate change said ‘No’—arguing that usage was subject to environmental safeguards like personal protective equipment and regular health checkups.

 

The same year, Minister for Chemicals and Fertilisers Mansukh Mandaviya, who was also health minister, told Parliament: “Government of India has not banned the use of any type of asbestos in the country.”

 

This contradicts the government’s own notification under the Mines Act, 1952, which recognises diseases caused by asbestos. It also flies in the face of the Supreme Court of India’s 1995 directions that asbestos be phased out and eliminated.

 

Even government studies contradict each other. The National Institute of Occupational Health found that most organisations met safety standards and only three of 1,248 subjects showed lung problems.

 

In 2014, a study by the same body was quoted in the Lok Sabha: ‘…workers exposed to higher workplace concentrations of asbestos fibre have higher incidence of lung disease.’

 

“Some manufacturers produce two kinds of products—asbestos-based and asbestos-free. The asbestos-free products go to external markets, while the asbestos-based ones stay in India for domestic use,” said Gopal Krishna, an occupational health researcher and founder of the Ban Asbestos Network of India.

 

The industry dismisses critics like Krishna as “manipulated litigants”. A spokesperson for The Fibre Cement Products Manufacturers Association claimed their products contain just 7-9 per cent chrysotile fibre, tightly bound in cement, making fibre release unlikely.

 

Bary Castleman, a chemical engineer who has fought asbestos since the mid-seventies, notes that the US still has only a partial ban. What sometimes worked there was legal liability—companies faced multi-million dollar lawsuits when workers developed cancer decades after exposure.

 

“If a company was using asbestos to manufacture brake linings, by 2000 it was apparent that if some mechanic who’d been doing brake servicing for 30-40 years got cancer, the doctor testifying in that case wouldn’t be able to rule out the last exposure as contributing to the disease,” says Castleman.

 

Those kinds of massive financial penalties are unheard of in India. Here, the only way forward is a complete ban.

 

The National Green Tribunal is currently examining a comprehensive petition on asbestos. The judgment is reserved, but the industry claims acknowledgment that current use is “safe, adequately regulated, and poses minimal risk”.

 

Meanwhile, the silent killer continues its work, fibre by fibre, life by life. India’s children sit in classrooms under asbestos roofs, workers breathe it in factories, and families live beneath it in their homes.

The Week