The International Labour Organization has adopted a resolution to pursue a ban on asbestos, a substance the organization says is responsible for an estimated 100,000 fatalities a year.

The resolution, passed at ILO’s June meeting in Geneva, says the elimination of future use of all forms of asbestos and asbestos-containing materials and identification and proper management of all forms of asbestos currently in place are the most effective means to protect workers from asbestos exposure and to prevent future asbestos-related diseases and deaths.

The resolution also expressly blocks the asbestos industry and exporters from claiming existing ILO measures support their “safe use” argument for continued asbestos trade, saying a long-standing ILO asbestos convention “should not be used to provide a justification for, or endorsement of, the continued use of asbestos.”

The resolution is a victory for international trade unions that have long campaigned for a ban.

“This momentous decision should hasten the demise of a dying industry,” said Anita Normark, general secretary of Building and Wood Workers’ International.

Employers’ delegates and representatives of the Canadian and Zimbabwe governments — two major asbestos exporters — spoke against the ILO resolution, but in the face of strong support for the resolution from worker delegates and many government delegates, did not press for a vote, allowing the resolution to become formal ILO policy.

“Today’s exposures guarantee an epidemic lasting at least another generation. Continued asbestos trade would see the cancer graveyards shift from the developed to the developing world. The employers’ organizations must now recognize defending asbestos is a lost cause — it is time for employers to end their courtship with this mass killer,” Normark said.

In addition, “national governments should be helped by ILO to develop plans to move from asbestos dependency to socially-useful production, with good, safe jobs and support for displaced workers.”

CAUT president Greg Allain said the ILO resolution is a positive step forward for health and safety for workers.

“Asbestos poses a terminal health risk to university and college faculty, staff and students across Canada because most campus buildings built before the mid-1970s contain asbestos,” he pointed out.

In 2004 CAUT launched a national asbestos awareness campaign following news that two professors at the University of Manitoba died of mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer caused almost exclusively by exposure to asbestos.

CAUT also pressed the Canadian government to stop the export of asbestos, withdraw its funding from the Asbestos Institute (now called the Chrysotile Institute), and support a worldwide drive to eliminate all use of asbestos.

The Canadian government, however, continues to claim that chrysotile can be used safely, and still allows asbestos mining in Canada and exports of raw asbestos to countries like India, Peru, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Brazil. It has also taken the lead internationally in blocking the classification of chrysotile (white asbestos) alongside other forms of asbestos under the Rotterdam Convention’s prior informed consent provisions.

While current funding details are unavailable, between 1984 and 2001 the Chrysotile Institute received a total of $54 million from the federal government, the Quebec government and the asbestos industry. In April 2004 the federal government approved $775,000 in new funding over three years for the Institute.