Canada's Ugly Secret: Asbestos

CBS News/

A major 40-year study on asbestos safety completed by a group of scientists at McGill University is flawed, lacks transparency and contains manipulated data says Dr. David Egilman, a professor at Brown University, health activist and longtime industry critic.

The study, which followed the health of 11,000 miners and mill workers in Quebec between 1966 and the late 1990s, is used by the Chrysotile Institute — a lobby arm funded by, overseen and closely associated with both Liberal and Conservative governments — to promote the use of asbestos overseas.

Chrysotile Institute

The Quebec Asbestos Mining Association, which later changed its name to The Asbestos Institute and then to the Chrysotile Institute, received approximately $20M in direct funding from the Canadian government since the 1980s.

According to Egilman, as the dangers of asbestos became better known in the 1960s, the industry decided to do its own research and hired Dr. John Corbett McDonald at McGill University's School of Occupational Health. Industry documents obtained by CBC News showed it wanted to conduct research similar to that in the tobacco industry, which stated that "Industry is always well advised to look after its own problems."

 

Dr. David Egliman visits Thetford Mines, Que., on Oct. 22, 2011. (Alex Shprintsen/CBC)

“Doubt is their product. They just need to have a little doubt in the dialogue. OK? And doubt allows you to go in and say, OK, maybe they’re right, maybe we’re right, but nobody’s sure,” says Egilman, who has been investigating the dangers of asbestos for over two decades.

Starting in the mid-1960s, McDonald headed the McGill study. The CBC has documents that show payments from the Quebec Asbestos Mining Association to McDonald and other researchers at the McGill School of Occupational Health totalling almost a million dollars from 1966 to 1972.

Tremolite versus asbestos

Tremolite, an even more dangerous contaminant than chrysotile, is sometimes found alongside white asbestos or chrysotile.

The McGill researchers would suggest in a 1997 study that cases of mesothelioma — cancer of the lining of the lung — occurred in "most, if not all," miners who had a greater exposure to tremolite and that the mines close to the centre of the town of Thetford, Que., were the ones most contaminated with tremolite.

 

Dr. John Corbett MacDonald was a scientist at McGill University who offered to conduct research for the asbestos industry. (McGill University Archives)

McDonald suggested that chrysotile was "essentially innocuous" at certain levels and advocated for its export to the Third World.

Egilman, who has been a longtime critic of the study, argues that chrysotile causes mesothelioma and has called for the release of the McGill study data.

“The whole argument is based on contaminated and uncontaminated mines. And nobody knows which is which? That’s crazy,” says Egilman.

Asbestos shipped across Canada

Asbestos was shipped all over Canada where it was used in many different industries. Forty per cent of Canada’s petrochemical industry is in Sarnia, Ont., and the pipes in the plants were wrapped in asbestos insulation. The overall cancer rate in the Sarnia area from 2003 to 2007 was about 10 per cent higher than the provincial average, the lung cancer rate 21 per cent higher and the mesothelioma rate six times higher. In Canada, there were 404 deaths in 2008 from mesothelioma.

Egilman is not the only expert asking to see the McGill University study data.

John Dement, an asbestos specialist at Duke University and Dr. Richard Lemen, a former assistant surgeon general in the U.S., both told CBC News that they would also like to see the information.

Lemen said the researchers are "either hiding something or … afraid the results will be interpreted differently." 

A recent analysis sponsored by the Dutch government tried to assess the risk from asbestos for lung cancer. It looked only at “higher quality studies” and excluded the Quebec mine study “because a variety of limitations, notably insufficient job history information.” 

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