Delay, Distort, Deny: Asbestos

This blog post starts a new sometime series on how industries and products facing possible regulation by governments use the same playbook to avoid or delay regulation. “Delay, Distort and Deny” are the three key tactics. That playbook trades short term corporate profits for thousands, sometimes millions, of lives. This series will look at specific instances where that playbook has been used. And we’ll start with asbestos.

Asbestos is a naturally occurring class of minerals; it’s fibrous, resistant to heat and flame and useful in a wide number of applications.¹ But, since at least 1898 we’ve known that it is highly dangerous to the health of persons exposed to it. In 1927, science described asbestosis, a devastating lung disease occurring only in persons exposed to asbestos. By 1960, the link between asbestos and an otherwise obscure cancer, mesothelioma, was very clear. Mesothelioma is a rare form of cancer seen only persons exposed to asbestos. By 1964, medical science had established that the only way to prevent asbestosis and mesothelioma was to eliminate exposure to asbestos. In response, starting in 1965, countries began to ban the use of asbestos. As of 2020, at least 67 countries have banned the importation of and all uses of asbestos.

But not the United States.

In 1989, the EPA tried to phase out and eventually ban asbestos under authority of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TOSCA). TOSCA was a seriously flawed statute, drafted in considerable part by the industries it tried to regulate. Asbestos trade associations successfully argued that the ban exceeded EPA’s authority under TOSCA, and that the proposed ban would only save three lives over the course of 13 years and cost $128 – $277 million. The argument was patently untrue, but the U.S. Supreme Court in 1990 ruled EPA had indeed exceeded its authority under TOSCA and rejected the proposed rule.

Following up on that victory, the asbestos industry engaged in a thirty year long pattern of delay, distortion and denial. Among the claims it made were assertions that only certain mineralogical asbestos were dangerous, a claim with exactly no scientific evidence to support it. The industry also personally attacked researchers whose work had demonstrated the health risks of asbestos. And claimed that asbestos was indispensable to vital American manufacturing. While the use of asbestos in the U.S. declined slowly from 1989 to 2023, the decline was slow and the carcinogen continued to be used in filters used for the manufacture of chlorine gas, sodium hydroxide and in auto brake pads. Occidental Petroleum, which owns OxyChem, the largest manufacturer of chemicals that use asbestos in their manufacturing process, is a force on Capitol Hill, with lobbyists that spent millions influencing policy and a political action committee that pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into campaigns each election cycle. 

In 2016, Congress adopted an amendment to TOSCA that made it easier – well, less difficult – for the EPA to regulate dangerous chemicals like asbestos. The industry still fought against regulation. It took until October 2022 for the EPA to finally propose a ban on asbestos. Over the intervening 30 years, an annual average of 40,000 people died in the U.S. from asbestos-related diseases. The rule became final in March 2024. For a given definition of “final.” The new “ban” provides for a five year phase-out of the use of asbestos in the U.S. In a few cases, a 12 year phaseout. It does immediately ban the import of asbestos into the U.S.

Of course, a new Trump Administration could undo the ban. Trump has in the past directly, specifically supported the asbestos industry.²

The chemical industry, through the use of delay, distortion and denial, successfully kept a known carcinogen in use for decades, killing tens of thousands of Americans and enriching themselves. And this isn’t the worst instance of America business profiteering by delay, distortion and denial.

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¹ Asbestos include six fiber-like minerals: actinolite, amosite, anthophyllite, chrysotile, crocidolite, and tremolite. In the U.S.. only “white” asbestos, chrysotile, is used.

² Trump wrote in his 1997 book The Art of the Comeback that asbestos is “100% safe, once applied.” He blamed the mob for efforts to discontinue its use: “I believe that the movement against asbestos was led by the mob, because it was often mob-related companies that would do the asbestos removal.”