Although the manufacture and use of asbestos was banned in Spain more than 20 years ago, the problem linked to the waste of this material throughout the national territory, and more particularly in Toledo, is still relevant. . This is why the Association of the “El Tajo” neighborhood of the capital of Castile-La Mancha took up the challenge and organized this year the National Congress on Asbestos, with a series of speakers, who presented the need responses and solutions to asbestos-related risks. health caused by asbestos fibers.
Gema Ruiz Azaña, coordinator of the Toledo neighborhood association which will be 50 years old in 2025, recalled during the inauguration that the asbestos problem is not only in Toledo, due to the amount of accumulated waste , but that it is a national problem. But he also warned, taking advantage of the presence of the city mayor, Carlos Velázquez, that it was his “obligation” to demand from the Community Council a plan to solve the waste problem and he regretted that no one from the government regional did not want to do so. attend the meeting. “You have to ask for it,” he said.
For his part, Velázquez announced that a “significant” financial amount will be incorporated into the 2025 budgets to map asbestos in the capital and assured that even if it is not his responsibility, it is his “duty” . The councilor assured that “we do not want to limit ourselves to demanding that other administrations” remove the remains, but that they will fulfill “their obligation” as a local administration. “No one will make this map for us. It is our duty,” he stressed.
“All forms of asbestos” are carcinogenic
At the first table of the congress, Dr. Antonio Agudo, doctor specializing in preventive medicine and public health, emphasized that “all forms of asbestos” are carcinogenic to humans and are the “sole” cause of mesothelioma, a cancer of the lung. It affects the pleura, the layer that covers the lungs. “There is no other cause than asbestos,” Agudo said.
The specialist also warned that the number of mesotheliomas that will be detected in the years to come will increase by “50%”. “It hasn’t been a work problem for a long time. It is now a public health problem, within everyone’s reach.”
Pulmonologist Carmen Diego, section head of the Central University Hospital of Asturias, recalled that a hundred years ago medical literature warned of the dangers of asbestos for workers who handled it. “Already in the 1960s, it was noted that asbestos caused cancer of the pleura,” underlines the expert, referring to cases that occurred in the last century in the United Kingdom.
“Mesothelioma is a cancer that would not exist if there were no asbestos”
“Mesothelioma is a cancer that would not exist if there were no asbestos,” says Juan Ruiz Martín, pathologist at the University Hospital of Toledo and professor at the University of Castile-La Mancha (UCLM ), one of the experts who participated in the meeting. .
Since 2000, a total of 35 cases of mesothelioma have been detected in Toledo. “It’s an incurable cancer. “It kills you within one to two years,” he explains about this disease which not only directly affected the workers of Ibertubo, the defunct company which deposited around 90 thousand tons of this fiber cement component in different parts of Toledo. neighborhood. of the Polygon.
“We understand that the asbestos problem has a very important scientific, health and social basis. All these aspects of the problem must be addressed in the same way”, explains Ruiz Martín in statements prior to the celebration of an event that brings together “high-level professionals” and with whom they want to “propose an approach with which the citizen is able to understand that you have a problem at the doors of your house.
The pathologist and university professor emphasizes that the condition of asbestos among Ibertubo workers is “very well studied”, but “what we do not know is how it affects the population in general, nor the partners , relatives or neighbors of workers. “Thanks to the work carried out by Dr. Josep Tarrés – who is also present at the health table of Congress – we know that there is an environmental impact and that it causes different types of cancer.”
Asbestos in the human body is also a waste
The industrial engineer and sociologist Miguel Ángel Figueroa, recently awarded a doctorate from the University of La Laguna with his work “Safety and health culture at work and risk of exposure to asbestos”, also participated in the technical table of the congress. “Asbestos in a man’s body is also waste,” explains the expert, who emphasizes that this situation is not an accident at work, but rather an “occupational disease linked to waste”.
“Asbestos has a long latency period of 10, 20 or even 40 years,” says Figueroa, and it can affect workers, the people they live with as well as neighbors where the waste was installed.
For example, he cites waste from the Uralita factory in Cerdanyola, which was ordered to pay 3.5 million euros to neighbors for exposure to this material. Exposure, he describes, can cause a range of illnesses, from laryngeal cancer to pulmonary fibrosis.
Figueroa focuses particularly on the treatment of waste left by asbestos work and explains situations in which the cleaning of buildings with traces of asbestos was carried out “wildly”, without taking the necessary precautions, as in the case of a property in Arona, in 2016, a situation that he himself studied.
The sociologist also applied the treatment of asbestos waste to Ulrich Beck’s theory of risk society, which “fundamentally” talks about the distribution of wealth created through industrial development. “This is an inversely proportional distribution of risks, which affects workers more,” he says.
“In Spain there is a handicap, because it is not one of the most developed countries in Europe, it arrived late in industrial development and it also arrived late in the analysis of the risks of the ‘asbestos’, he explains and recalls that it was not until the end of 2001 when its use and manufacture were banned.
Because of this delay, “a lot of asbestos is still installed” and that is why it must be removed “as God commands,” he says. “And of course that’s the problem now, it’s about removing it,” he emphasizes. Figueroa recalls that there is a regulation that sets the year 2032 as the limit for eliminating all asbestos from the continent. “It’s just around the corner.”
