Asbestos Industry Being Criticized for Using Big Tobacco's Marketing Strategy

Some stakeholders in the asbestos industry are being accused of using the same marketing approach that was used by lobbying groups for large tobacco companies decades earlier. The International Chrysotile Association, a global asbestos lobbying group, was recently criticized for supposedly hiring APCO Worldwide, a Washington D.C.-based public relations firm, to lobby the government of Malaysia to exclude chrysotile asbestos from its proposed ban list of asbestos types. According to critics, this move by the association to hire a lobbying group is very reminiscent of efforts made by another controversial industry some years back. Philip Morris, one of the largest tobacco manufacturers in the United States, hired APCO Worldwide in the 1990s to assist in the battle against public health efforts that attempted to limit and ban smoking. Asbestos is a mineral that is known to cause mesothelioma, a rare cancer that results in 2,000 to 3,000 deaths per year in the United States. Anti-asbestos advocates and critics have weighed in on the issue with harsh criticism for groups like the International Chrysotile Association. What the Critics are Saying "The asbestos industry is the tobacco industry's evil twin," said Patrick Martin, a member of Canada's Parliament and a potential leadership candidate for the New Democratic Party in Canada. As a person who was exposed to asbestos in his younger years, Martin has become a verbal critic of his country's participation in the asbestos industry...
Source: Asbestos and Mesothelioma News - Category: Environmental Health Authors: Tags: Asbestos Exposure & Bans Source Type: news