- bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-07/-slow-poison-chokes-indian-workers-feeding-7-slum-roof-demand.html
- bloomberg.com/video/70286010/
Provide names of other journalists involved.
Marthe Fourcade, Mark Williams and Jason Gale edited. Frederic Tomesco and Ketaki Gokhale helped with the reporting.
List date(s) this work was published or aired.
7-Jun-11
Provide a brief synopsis of the story or stories, including any significant findings.
India’s demand for cheap asbestos roofing sheets has made the country one of the biggest importers of the carcinogenic substance, which causes cancer and lifelong breathing disabilities in factory workers and their families. The story involved reporting from three Indian states and Canada and uncovered how tax breaks, lack of regulatory enforcement and illiteracy among the workers is responsible for the bleak state of affairs. Based on interviews with dozens of workers and their families, the story shed light on the human costs of living with asbestosis and the sharp contrast between Indian and foreign firms when it came to compensating workers.
Explain types of documents, data or Internet resources used. Were FOI or public records act requests required? How did this affect the work?
Scholarly articles in medical journals and occupational health periodicals were studied to understand the current state of awareness when it comes to handling asbestos. We used a United Nations commodity database to find the major players in the international asbestos trade. Medical records going back to more than ten years were examined for dozens of workers. This was to ensure that all the cases had the classic symptoms of asbestosis. Right to Information (Indian equivalent of the FOI) requests filed by some activists were used during the course of the reporting.
Explain types of human sources used.
During the reporting of the story we spoke with more than two dozen factory workers, doctors, state and central government health officials, factory owners, international interest groups, nonprofits, investors in asbestos factories, government ministers and politicians campaigning for a ban to asbestos.
Results:
Plans to build a new asbestos factory coming up in Chainpur village in Bihar were shelved earlier this year. We had visited the site and reported on the protests by the villagers who had opposed the plant on health grounds. India’s National Human Rights Commission issued a directive to all states and central government to furnish records of all victims of asbestos exposure across the country. This would be the first time that this kind of epidemiological data is gathered on a national level. The commission is currently reviewing the case. On June 23, two weeks after our story hit the wires, India reversed its official stand and agreed to the listing of chrysotile asbestos in the Annex III of the Rotterdam Convention. The so-called Prior Informed Consent List will mandate countries exporting the mineral to give prior data to the importing nations to enable them to make informed decisions. Canada still opposes this listing. However, these positives were negated by the fact that there are at least four new factories coming up in Bihar state and asbestos consumption in the country is still rising. Activists, government officials, and public health advocates working at several nonprofits campaigning against asbestos said our story was “very good” and gave much needed exposure to the issue on an international level.
Follow-up (if any). Have you run a correction or clarification on the report or has anyone come forward to challenge its accuracy? If so, please explain.
No clarifications or corrections have been made.
Advice to other journalists planning a similar story or project.
There is a lot of news about asbestos given that it’s a topic that involves players and stakeholders from several different countries. This also makes it an inherently complex subject which can be quite confusing for the reader. What worked for us was to find specific characters and use their specific history to illustrate the problems in the system. A single anecdote or example would just not be enough to shed light on this issue. For instance, it was detailed analysis of court records and municipal health documents of workers from one factory in Gujarat that gave us helped us understand the exact gaps in regulatory oversight. And visiting one village in Bihar state showed how even villagers were using information from elementary school books to protest the construction of a new factory in their backyard.