HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, April 6, 2022 (HealthDay News) — A proposed rule to ban ongoing uses of the most productive known sort of asbestos imported into the United States has been presented by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The ban would observe to chrysotile asbestos, which is believed to trigger cancer and is found in merchandise admire asbestos diaphragms, sheet gaskets, brake blocks, aftermarket automobile brakes/linings, other automobile friction merchandise, and other gaskets imported into the United States
The proposed rule would rectify a 1991 court docket choice that largely overturned the EPA’s 1989 ban on asbestos and tremendously weakened the agency’s authority to diminish risks to human health from asbestos or other reward chemical compounds, the EPA acknowledged.
“This day, we’re taking a wanted step forward to present protection to public health and at final build an discontinuance to the usage of unhealthy asbestos within the United States,” EPA administrator Michael Regan acknowledged in an agency news initiate. “This historical proposed ban would give protection to the American other folks from exposure to chrysotile asbestos, a known carcinogen.”
Asbestos is banned in bigger than 50 international locations and its exercise within the United States has been declining for years. Most person merchandise that historically contained chrysotile asbestos occupy been discontinued within the United States, and raw chrysotile asbestos currently imported into the United States is aged exclusively by the chlor-alkali chemical commerce.
Chlor-alkali chemical compounds are aged in a alternative of sectors of the U.S. financial system and in drinking water remedy, which uses chlorine manufactured thru the chlor-alkali course of.
There are decisions to asbestos-containing diaphragms for chlor-alkali vegetation. The exercise of choices, namely membrane cells, accounts for nearly half of the nation’s chlor-alkali production, in accordance to the EPA.
The agency is additionally evaluating other forms and uses of asbestos, including its exercise in talc and talc-containing merchandise.
Extra records
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has worthy extra on asbestos.
SOURCE: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, news initiate, April 5, 2022
