Dust storm: 'Crime-fraud' allegations cloud conference
A UK conference of dust exposure experts is attracting unwanted attention, reports Hazards editor Rory O’Neill.
Good, impartial science can help save lives, by identifying life-threatening exposures at work and identifying measures – controls, safer standards, bans on the deadliest substances - to remedy them. Asbestos would be a case in point.Professor Ken Donaldson, the scientific chair of Inhaled Particles XI, has been identified in a potential asbestos cancer 'crime-fraud' controversy and accused of having undeclared links to the industry. For those for whom the science came too late, the ones forming part of the body count, it can mean at least some compensation for a life cut short. US building products giant Georgia-Pacific is accused of “seeding” the scientific literature against the interests of asbestos cancer claimants. If the courts accepted the disputed findings of the GP-funded research, very many asbestos-exposed cancer sufferers could go uncompensated because they were exposed to the wrong kind of “shorter” chrysotile fibres, were not exposed at high enough levels or, if exposed at a high level, not exposed long enough. Global exports of chrysotile increased by 20 per cent in 2012. It is a high stakes business and was at the heart of a New York Supreme Court... |
