Sen. Patty Murray, the leader in the fight to ban asbestos, says her bill to outlaw the dangerous mineral will get a reading later this month in the Environment and Public Works Committee. She says this is the first time the bill has reached the markup stage.
According to an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Senator Murray described the bill, which calls for spending $50 million for research and launching a public education campaign, at a conference at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle last week. She noted that Washington has the eighth-highest incidence of asbestos-related diseases of the fifty states.
Specifically, Murray’s bill would establish a new research and treatment network. It also would require stepped-up public education about dangers from asbestos for people working with brakes or remodeling homes, where insulation and other products may be contaminated, the article points out.
Judy Clauson, a 44-year-old Aberdeen (WA) mother who suffers an asbestos-linked case of mesothelioma, told a Murray news conference she is very angry that “something as dangerous as asbestos is still legal in this country.”
More than 40 countries have banned the use of asbestos. Many people mistakenly believe that the material is also banned in the U.S. Though warnings about its use and misuse have been issued since the mid-1970s, asbestos has never officially been banned in this country.
