P.1.23 Gaps between international conventions and national asbestos ban policies: a global perspective

A call for an international ban on asbestos.

The Case for a Global Ban on Asbestos

BACKGROUND All forms of asbestos are now banned in 52 countries. Safer products have replaced many materials that once were made with it. Nonetheless, many countries still use, import, and export asbestos and asbestos-containing products, and in those that have banned other forms of asbestos, the so-called "controlled use" of chrysotile asbestos is often exempted from the ban. In fact, chrysoti...

Macroprudential Policies in a Global Perspective

I enjoyed reading this paper. The models are simple and focus on important issues. The approach assumes the existence of externalities and discusses Pareto-improving policies along Pigouvian lines. A basic assumption is that, beyond a certain point, credit expansion carries with it the virus of financial crisis which, however, is not internalized by individual agents. Then, it proceeds to discu...

The Asbestos Ban in Korea from a Grassroots Perspective: Why Did It Occur?

In 2009, asbestos was finally banned in Korea, about 70 years after the first opening of asbestos mines under Japanese control. After having presented the history of asbestos industry, together with its regulations and health effects over time, we constructed narrative analyses of how the asbestos issue under the prevailing risk system was managed by whom and for what purpose, to provide contex...

History of Asbestos Ban in Hong Kong

As millions of immigrants moved to Hong Kong (HK) from China in the recent decades, large amount of residential housings were built in the early years and a substantial proportion of those buildings used asbestos-containing materials (ACMs). Since the number of new cases of ARDs diagnosed has increased year by year since 1990's, the remarkable increase of incidences had drawn the attention of t...