Asbestos: Strict Liability Imposed Against Product Manufacturers for Ordinary Product Life

The NJ Supreme Court decided an asbestos product liability case that mandates strict liability against manufacturers or distributors of products that contain asbestos-fiber. The court in granting strict liability for failure to adequately warn ultimate users during the ordinary life of the product of the dangers. The Court aligned NJ common law with the US Supreme Court, the NY Court of appeals and the Maryland Court of Appeals.

Fourteen Attorney Generals Criticizes EPA for Failing to Protect Americans from Asbestos, a Long-Known Dangerous Carcinogen

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, leading a coalition of 14 attorneys general, including New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal, submitted comments criticizing the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) finding that certain uses of asbestos present no unreasonable risk to human health. In the comment letter, the coalition argues that the EPA’s draft risk evaluation for asbestos violates the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and Congress' intent that the EPA consider all uses of asbestos in its evaluation. The coalition notes the finding is unsupported by the EPA's own assessment and urges the agency to obtain the information it has admitted it needs to conduct the necessary, thorough evaluations of the risks presented by this chemical.

NJ Gov Murphy Announces Legislation to Overhaul New Jersey’s Anti-Workplace Harassment Laws for Public and Private Employers

Division on Civil Rights (DCR) Releases Corresponding Report Following Three Public Hearings Held by DCR and the New Jersey Coalition Against Sexual Assault (NJCASA) in September 2019

Law Enacted to Phase-Out Use of Military Burn Pits

Recent legislation passed Congress and signed by the President last week mandates the  phase-out burn pits used by the United States military. The law provides for medical monitoring and health assessments of military members who have been exposed to toxic chemicals or airborne contaminants from burn pits. This legislation follows the dismissal, almost a year ago, of litigation against third-party contractors by service members, and their dependents, who became ill after alleged exposure to  the toxic fumes where burn pits were utilized in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

PFAS Contamination Legislation Advances

Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr. (NJ-06) updated the public on legislation to address PFAS contamination and exposure. Last week, Pallone’s Energy and Commerce Committee passed comprehensive legislation to protect Americans from PFAS and clean up waste sites. The legislation is critical to stopping the flow of these harmful chemicals into our environment, drinking water, cooking products and more. It also ensures that polluters pay for the cleanup of these sites. According to a report, there are 517 water systems in New Jersey that are contaminated with PFAS.

Efforts to Protect the Public From Asbestos Exposure

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey today released a new report highlighting her office’s ongoing efforts to protect children, families, and workers from the health risks posed by exposure to asbestos.

White House Contamination Highlights Asbestos Controversy

Ivanka Trump, Kellyanne Conway and other senior White House aides have vacated their West Wing offices while asbestos is removed – even as the Trump administration is manipulating a federal chemical safety law to keep asbestos legal.

OSHA Cites NJ Landscaper After Two Employees Succumb to Carbon Monoxide Exposure

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has cited AJR Landscaping Inc. – based in Cresskill, New Jersey – for exposing employees to carbon monoxide (CO) after two workers succumbed to the toxic gas.

Limits for Toxic Plastics – No Asbestos Ban

Today, the Basel, Rotterdam, and Stockholm United Nations Conventions concluded, with some major steps taken by parties to control the trade and management of certain toxic chemicals: 

Basel Convention: Countries Take Major Step to Control Plastic Waste Dumping, Stop Major Loophole for Electronic Waste
Today, 187 countries took a major step forward in curbing the plastic waste crisis by adding plastic to the Basel Convention, a treaty that controls the movement of hazardous waste from one country to another. The amendments, originally proposed by Norway, require exporters to obtain the consent of receiving countries before shipping most contaminated, mixed, or unrecyclable plastic waste, providing an important tool for countries in the Global South to stop the dumping of unwanted plastic waste into their country. The decision reflects a growing recognition around the world of the toxic impacts of plastic and the plastic waste trade.

Because the US is not a party to the Convention, the amendments adopted today also act as an export ban on unsorted, unclean, or contaminated plastic waste for the US towards developing countries who are parties to the Convention and not part of the OECD. The amendment will have a similar effect for the EU, a party to the Convention, whose own internal legislation bans exports of waste included under the Convention to developing countries.

“Today’s decision demonstrates that countries are finally catching up with the urgency and magnitude of the plastic pollution issue and shows what ambitious international leadership looks like,” says David Azoulay, Environmental Health Director at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). “Plastic pollution in general and plastic waste in particular remain a major threat to people and the planet, but we are encouraged by the decision of the Basel Convention as we look to the future bold decisions that will be needed to tackle plastic pollution at its roots, starting with reducing production.”
 
Countries halted a major loophole that would have allowed the continued export of electronic waste (e-waste), without proper controls. The proposed guidelines describing how e-waste is treated under the Basel Convention would have allowed countries to send equipment for repair without the prior informed consent procedure. The guidelines were ready for adoption, with wide support. The African region, India, and other countries, supported by civil society, raised a red flag about the inclusion of this loophole, and countries chose to continue negotiating the guidelines at the next COP, instead of adopting ineffective guidelines.
 
Countries established Low POPs Content Levels (LPCLs), which define the amount of POPs at which waste is considered hazardous waste. Under this designation, the waste must be disposed of in a way that destroys or irreversibly transforms its POPs content. LPCLs are key: Higher values mean that dangerous materials can, in practice, be recycled into everyday products, triggering further exposure to very toxic POPs. Mobilizing against very high values proposed by the EU, African countries and other recipient countries of waste managed to resist the extreme pressure from the EU and other developed countries, and obtained the inclusion of lower values together with the higher values proposed by the EU, opening the way for future work to lower the levels of POPs allowed in waste even further.
 
Parties considered a report on the role of the Basel Convention to regulate waste containing nanomaterials. It recommended the inclusion of certain nano-containing waste under the Basel Convention, and invited further work to identify those wastes that should be covered by the Convention. In a disappointing move, parties adopted a weak decision only requiring the collection of information on national initiatives to address nano-containing waste.

Stockholm Convention: Countries Pass Global Ban on Toxic PFOA
Parties to the Stockholm Convention passed a global ban of PFOA — a suspected carcinogen and endocrine disruptor that has contaminated drinking water in many parts of the world. The Stockholm Convention regulates persistent organic pollutants (POPs), some of the world’s worst chemicals that harm human health and build up in the environment and the body over time.

“While the global ban on PFOA marks an important step forward in protecting the environment and people’s health, we regret that countries undermined the scientific process of the Convention to include unjustified exemptions to the ban,” said Giulia Carlini, Staff Attorney at CIEL.

A number of wide-ranging five-year exemptions were included in the PFOA ban for firefighting foams, medical devices, and fluorinated polymers, among other uses. Though China, the European Union, and Iran participated in the scientific review process, they proposed exemptions that had not undergone scientific review or were reviewed and disqualified by the scientific committee.

“PFOA is one of the world’s worst chemicals, and yet countries have found ways to continue human exposure to its toxic harms. Tellingly, even some industry groups disagreed with some of the exemptions, as there are widely available alternatives to these chemicals,” says Carlini. “Countries’ insistence on including these exemptions — in spite of readily available alternatives and a lack of evidence — reveals a disrespect for the scientific review process at the heart of the Stockholm Convention.”

Rotterdam Convention: Countries Break 15 Years of Gridlock Using Voting Procedure for First Time Ever
In the first-ever vote taken under the Rotterdam Convention, 120 parties to the Stockholm Convention broke through gridlock and disagreement to establish a compliance mechanism for the Convention. The compliance mechanism will allow countries to be held accountable for not respecting their commitments under the Convention. After nearly 15 years of negotiations with little forward movement, countries decided that “all efforts to reach consensus had been exhausted” and opted instead to vote, for the first time in the history of the Convention. The adoption of the new mechanism through a vote means that only those parties in agreement to the provisions will be be subject to this mechanism. A total of 126 Parties voted, of which 120 agreed to the compliance mechanism and only six opposed.
 
Countries listed hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD), a toxic chemical used as a flame retardant, and phorate, a pesticide that is extremely toxic to humans, under the Rotterdam Convention’s Annex III, meaning that countries must get the prior informed consent of receiving countries in order to export these chemicals.
 
Unfortunately, countries failed to take action on the five other chemicals up for listing under Annex III of the Convention. In particular, chrysotile asbestos and paraquat, which have been reviewed and identified as chemicals of concerns by the Scientific Chemical Review Committee of the Convention, and have been on the agenda for years. A handful of countries repeatedly blocked the consensus required to list these chemicals under the Convention, undermining the scientific process underlying the Convention.

See also:

 India reverses stand on asbestos at Rotterdam Convention meet

EPA Asbestos Rule Announced: Still Leaves Deadly Carcinogen Legal

NJ Legislature Bans Asbestos

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Jon L. Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author of NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thomson-Reuters) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thomson-Reuters). For over 4 decades the Law Offices of Jon L Gelman 1.973.696.7900jon@gelmans.com has been representing injured workers and their families who have suffered occupational accidents and illnesses.

Workplace stress linked to heart disease

Today’s post is shared from sciencedaily.com

Work stress and impaired sleep are linked to a threefold higher risk of cardiovascular death in employees with hypertension. That's the finding of research published today in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).

EPA Asbestos Rule Announced: Still Leaves Deadly Carcinogen Legal

Today’s post is shared from ewg.com

The rule announced today by the US Environmental Protection Agency claiming to strengthen the agency’s ability to restrict certain uses of the notorious carcinogen asbestos falls short of what is required to fully protect public health, said The Environmental Working Group [EWG] legislative attorney Melanie Benesh.

A Surge in Groundskeeper/Landscaper Cancer Claims Foreseeable

The second jury verdict that occurred in California against Monsanto/Bayer for cancer arising out of exposure to Roundup that contained glyphosate may foreshadow a surge in workers’ compensation cancer claims for groundskeepers and landscapers.

Workers Who Are Non-Smokers Suffer from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease [COPD]

Approximately 25% of adults with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) have never smoked, and workplace exposures likely contribute to much of their disease. A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] that 24% of workers who suffer from COPD never smoked. Among these persons, 26%–53% of COPD can be attributed to workplace exposures, including dust, fumes, gases, vapors, and secondhand smoke exposure.

BILL INTRODUCED TO BAN ASBESTOS NOW

Oregon’s Senator Jeff Merkley, along with Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR), Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), and Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), today introduced the Alan Reinstein Ban Asbestos Now Act of 2019, legislation that would ban the mining, importation, use, and distribution in commerce of asbestos, a known carcinogen, and any asbestos-containing mixtures in the United States of America.

Dr. Ruiz Announces Progress on Burn Pits Bill

For the first time, the bipartisan Burn Pits Registry Enhancement Act has a bipartisan companion in the Senate and is closer than ever to becoming law.

US EPA Continues to Shield the Asbestos Industry

Trump EPA Moves To Shield Info on Asbestos Imports and Use From Public

The Trump administration has denied a petition by a coalition of environmental groups calling for increased reporting of asbestos importation and use by U.S. manufacturers – despite a sharp rise in asbestos imports into U.S. ports.

US Lawmakers Urged EPA to Investigate Talc Products

Oregon’s Senator Jeff Merkley and Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici today pressed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for answers following an alarming new Reuters report revealing that some everyday consumer products, including baby powders, may contain asbestos—a highly toxic chemical.

SCOTUS Upholds California Supreme Court: Lead Paint Manufacturers Liable for Over $400 Million

The US Supreme Court declined to review a California Supreme Court decision holding multiple lead paint manufacturers responsible for cleanup costs amounting to over $400 million. The longstanding litigation was brought under the theory that lead paint contamination was a public nuisance. Lead paint has been known for decades as toxic.

Virginia Holds Employer Liable for Household Contact Asbestos Exposure

An employer owes a duty of care to an employee’s family member who alleges exposure to asbestos from the work clothes of an employee, where the family member alleges the employer’s negligence allowed asbestos fibers to be regularly transported away from the place of employment to the employee’s home.

A Complete Ban of Asbestos Urged

The following comment was submitted by Linda Reinstein, President/CEO, Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) in response to the US EPA Proposed Rule to permit further use of asbestos in the US. EPA is developing a significant new use rule (SNUR) under section 5(a)(2) of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) for certain uses of asbestos that are no longer in use in the United States. Persons subject to the SNUR would be required to notify the EPA at least 90 days before commencing such manufacture or processing. The required notifications would initiate EPA's evaluation of the intended use within the applicable review period. Manufacture and processing for the significant new use would be unable to commence until EPA has conducted a review of the notice, made an appropriate determination on the notice, and taken such actions as are required in association with that determination.