After more than three decades of inadequate protections, the Environmental Protection Agency has announced a historic ban on ongoing uses of asbestos in the United States. This marks the first rule finalized under the nation’s updated chemical safety law to protect public health, advance environmental justice, and end cancer.
This action represents an important step to advance the Biden Cancer Moonshot goal of reducing the cancer death rate by at least half by 2047.
The EPA’s new ban prohibits ongoing uses of chrysotile asbestos, the only known form of asbestos still used or imported in the United States.
EPA is banning the import of asbestos for chlor-alkali use immediately to close the door forever on the use of asbestos by this sector. The eight remaining facilities that use asbestos must transition to either non-asbestos diaphragms or to non-asbestos membrane technology, and the final rule ensures that six of the eight will have completed this transition within five years, with the remaining two to follow.
Exposure to asbestos is known to cause lung cancer, mesothelioma, ovarian cancer, and laryngeal cancer, and it is linked to more than 40,000 deaths in the U.S. each year. Chrysotile asbestos is found in products including asbestos diaphragms, sheet gaskets, brake blocks, aftermarket automotive brakes/linings, other vehicle friction products, and other gaskets. The use of asbestos in the United States has been declining for decades, and its use is already banned in over 50 countries.
Raw chrysotile asbestos was imported into the United States as recently as 2022 for use by the chlor-alkali industry. Most consumer products that historically contained chrysotile asbestos have been discontinued.
The final rule bans the use of asbestos in oilfield brake blocks, aftermarket automotive brakes and linings, other vehicle friction products, and other gaskets, six months after the effective date of the final rule.
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