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Modern Laws Taking on Asbestos in the Workplace

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Around 1985, the Environmental Protection Agency (the EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) were empowered with tough new laws that enabled them to crack down on the impact of asbestos on the health of the population.  It was during this time frame that the use of asbestos in construction and in just about any time of production came to a complete halt.  However, both agencies continue to seek more specific laws to restrict the use of asbestos so the possibility of more asbestos related lung diseases can be eliminated.


While the mid eighties when these governmental agencies finally got serious about limiting asbestos exposure to the public seems like quite some time to us, the legal system was actually quite late in getting involved.  It was not as though suddenly in 1980, the dangers of exposure to asbestos became known.  Asbestos had been in wide use in industry and product development for decades before regulations finally gave the EPA and OSHA some teeth to deal with the problem.


History tells us that in fact, asbestos was popular as a component in building materials as far back as the ancient Greeks.  But the health impact of asbestos also became known that far back.  So when American industry began to use asbestos at a vastly increased level in the early 20th century, the dangers were part of the risk of using this efficient and plentiful building material.  

We can fault industry and American business for not being mindful of the health of their workers when it was well known that exposure to airborne asbestos fibers would result in serious and often fatal lung disease.  The fact that the business community conveniently chose not to regard that danger in favor of using asbestos for busiess profits is one of the dark stories of the development of industry and business in this country.  It is also shameful that government turned a blind eye to a widening public health crisis until the tide of new asbestos related lung disease cases became so compelling that action had to be taken at a governmental level.

However, since effective laws were put in place, OSHA in particular has been able to crack down tremendously on the use of asbestos and how the safety of workers and the general public is safeguarded at all time.  Along with OSHA, the EPA takes a dim view of the environmental risks that allowing asbestos to spill large amounts of fibers into the air will cause.  The laws about how asbestos can be used and the strict measures that must be followed if asbestos is to be used in a construction project have driven many construction companies to go to less difficult building materials to use.  This is just as well because the move in the legal community to ban asbestos from all commercial or building uses gets more aggressive with each passing year.

The less talked about side of the intense regulation that has been put in place to protect the public from asbestos exposure is that these new legal resources has given victims of asbestos related lung diseases have a recourse.  If you can trace the nature of your lung problems directly to an occupational situation where the use of asbestos violated codes in place at the time, not only will that employer face some tough scrutiny from the EPA and OSHA, you will be enabled to seek damages which can help out with medical bills.  While this is faint condolences when you have lost your health, at least it means that our legal system has introduced some fairness in how asbestos victims are being treated and that they are doing what they can to eliminate the plague of asbestos illnesses from society forever.

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