Dr Sarath Obeysekera

Russians make Asbestos and used in many industries .I am sure that the warship we plan to buy has asbestors in lagging of their boilers ??

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ASBEST, Russia — This city of about 70,000 people on the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains is a pleasant enough place to live except for one big drawback: when the wind picks up, clouds of carcinogenic dust blow through.

Asbest means asbestos in Russian, and it is everywhere here. Residents describe layers of it collecting on living room floors. Before they take in the laundry from backyard lines, they first shake out the asbestos. When I work in the garden, I notice asbestos dust on my raspberries,” said Tamara A. Biserova, a retiree. So much dust blows against her windows, she said, that before I leave in the morning, I have to sweep it out.”

The town is one center of Russia’s asbestos industry, which is stubbornly resistant to shutting asbestos companies and phasing in substitutes for the cancer-causing fireproofing product.

I had to demolish a old Garage in my land in London and it took ne 4 months to get rid of Asbestos .The operation looked like a  Post Nuclear attack to City of London !”

In the United States .UK and most developed economies, asbestos is handled with extraordinary care. Until the 1970s, the fibrous, silicate mineral was used extensively in fireproofing and insulating buildings in America, among other uses, but growing evidence of respiratory ailments due to asbestos exposure led to limits. Laws proscribe its use and its disposal and workers who get near it wear ventilators and protective clothes. The European Union and Japan have also banned asbestos. (A town called Asbestos in Quebec, Canada, has stopped mining asbestos, though it hasn’t changed its name.)

But not here, where every weekday afternoon miners set explosions in a strip mine owned by the Russian mining company Uralasbest. The blasts send huge plumes of asbestos fiber and dust into the air. Asbest is one of the more extreme examples of the environmental costs of modern Russia’s deep reliance on mining.

So entwined is the life of the town with this pit that many newlyweds pose on a viewing platform on the rim to have their pictures taken. The city has a municipal anthem called Asbestos, my city and my fate.” In 2002, the City Council adopted a new flag: white lines, symbolizing asbestos fibers, passing through a ring of flame. A billboard put up by Uralasbest in Asbest proclaims Asbestos is our Future.”

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We sri Lankans have worse problems to tackle .People inhale various carcinogenic substances in Coconut Shell and Fibre Processing Plants and in large rice mills in Pollonnaruwa .People inhale dust in hinterland and we start inhaling vehicle smoke in Colombo ‘

I myself living near the port  with other poor masses in Kotahena inhaled a cocktail” of ducts emanating from Cement Plant,Flour Mill and Dust from Dockyard .I and my wife have a permanent Asthma due to this cocktail”

In Moratuwa many people have Asthma due to timber dust .Norrocholai and Puttalam Insee Cement also creating similar cocktails

Why do we bother to stop Asbestos .That is because we are trying to pretend that we are Developed and listen to Western countries .If Russia still produces Asbestos .I am sure they want a market elsewhere ?

Russia is member of UN .Any embargo should be ratified by UN as a Global Watchdog when they stop our Tea import.

If I am not mistaken even today Russia produces Vodka synthetically using hydro carbons .

When European small  Vineyards make wines people crush grapes  by standing an dtrampling grapes in a the big VAT .I am sure many insects are fermented in the Saint-Emilion vinery

There were   snakes and poisonous insects in Bananas imported from Brazil to UK

I have seen many workers tea factories in Sri Lanka where people do not even wear head gear except in large known packing plants

Workers who pluck tea have no proper hygienic facilities, they discharge their excreta in the bushes and those unwashed slender hands pluck the tea manually.

Do we complain??

If these big countries try to throttle us by using such tactics we should do the same

Globalization has a price to pay .China has Globalized in a somewhat closed society with minimum respect to international protocols.

I read that a whole entourage is going to Russia and visit warehouses with Asbestos Roofs

Most probably they will drink that Vodkaof questionable origin , I mentioned above and eat a Savoury made from small tender ( gerkin)  cucumber ,marinated in villages in barrels infested with lizards ?

If we are not perfect why do we try to show the world that we follow protocols such as  C162 – Asbestos Convention, 1986 (No. 162) ??

Is this prohibition of Asbestos by our government instigated by companies who sell Color Coded Zink Aluminimum sheets? Or is it a capitalist maneuvering by Big time manufactures like Mascons and Rhyno ???

One day one might say that the oxide formed in Zink Alu ( Amano) are also poisonous and clothes made form fiber course cancer?

Very soon we will go back to stone ages .We may live naked in rock caves to avoid smog and dust from clothes , eating Beetles as they are full of vitamins  ??

Dr Sarath Obeysekera