WRITTEN QUESTION E-0200/02

by Charles Tannock (PPE-DE), Per-Arne Arvidsson (PPE-DE)and Antonios Trakatellis (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(6 February 2002)

Subject: Asbestos regulations in the European Union

Following studies by Professor Julian Peto of the Institute of Cancer Research in the 1980s which suggested that white asbestos was just as dangerous as blue and brown asbestos (which had been identified in the 1950s by Professor Richard Doll as being extremely hazardous to human health), the European Commission introduced directives lumping the two together.

Is the Commission aware that subsequent reports commissioned by the UK Health and Safety Executive carried-out by Dr Alan Gibbs and Professor F. Pooley suggested that Professor Peto may have misread the data, that further internal Health and Safety Executive studies, including a paper by John Hodgson and Andrew Darnton, concluded in the year 2000 that the risk from white asbestos (which confusingly shares the same name as blue and brown asbestos despite having an entirely different chemical structure) is virtually zero, that in 1992 a senior US court declared that more people are likely to die from inhalation of toothpicks than from white asbestos fibres and that, following the release of 40 tonnes of white asbestos as a result of the collapse of the World Trade Center last September, the US Environmental Protection Agency declared that this posed no danger?

Will the Commission undertake to request information from the US and New York health authorities over the coming months as to the environmental impact of this enormous release of white asbestos into the atmosphere and, without in any way questioning the need for measures to protect humans from the effects of blue and brown asbestos, will the Commission ask its own scientific advisory body to look into the conflicting scientific evidence over white asbestos and produce its own report on the matter to ensure that all asbestos legislation is appropriately targeted and that industry is not required to bear huge and unnecessary costs to protect against non-dangerous substances?

Answer given by Mr Liikanen on behalf of the Commission

(15 March 2002)

Via Commission Directive 1999/77/EC of 26 July 1999 adapting to technical progress for the sixth time Annex I to Council Directive 76/769/EEC on the approximation of the laws, regulations and administrative

provisions of the Member States relating to restrictions on the marketing and use of certain dangerous substances and preparations (asbestos)(1), the Commission has taken the decision to ban all forms of asbestos fibres in the Community, including chrysotile (also called white asbestos), in order to protect human health from exposure to these substances. From the scientific knowledge available, all forms of asbestos have been recognised as proven human carcinogens by numerous scientific bodies. Most of the Member States have already prohibited asbestos.

In conformity with the tenth recital of Directive 1999/77/EC, the Commission will ask the Scientific Committee on Toxicity, Ecotoxicity and the Environment (SCTEE) to undertake a further review of any relevant new scientific data from 1999 on the health risks of chrysotile asbestos and its substitutes, including the studies mentioned by the Honourable Members. On that occasion, the Commission will also draw to the attention of that Committee the purported release of white asbestos resulting from the collapse of the World Trade Center of 11 September 2001 and if, in the light of the mandate to be submitted, any further information is considered necessary by the Committee, arrangements can be made to provide it, if available.

(1) OJ L 207, 6.8.1999.