Problems that asbestos causes to health are highly important for the USA. The number of asbestos-related diagnosis grows every year, while the use of asbestos decreases. However, there is still no well-formed national legislation regarding the issues arising between the victims of asbestos hazard. The current asbestos law is different from state to state, there are no general regulation about resolving these issues. Each state has its own rules and solutions for processing claims from the victims of asbestos exposure.
In the early 20th century this mineral was used in many industries as a highly efficient material with great thermostability. It was used in construction industry, ship building, power industry and a lot of other areas. In the USA the volumes of mined asbestos were bigger than in the rest of the world. It was highly profitable business. In 1930s the manufacturers were already aware about the connection between asbestos exposure and a range of fatal diseases. However, not to lose their profits many of them did not inform employees about possible risks to health. This is the core reason of today’s asbestos-related lawsuits. Why such a long time has passed? The most of diseases of this class have big latency period (up to 50 years), and they are revealed during the last two decades more and more often.
The first wave of patients struggling from asbestos-related conditions appeared in the beginning of 1970s. At this time the problem was raised to public, and the country could not stay indifferent to it. The first laws of that time included the limitation of asbestos production and substituting products reach in this mineral to asbestos-free analogues. Again, no clear asbestos law regarding processing victim lawsuits was adopted.
In the first laws asbestos was recognized as a toxic pollutant, and a lot of its uses were banned, while others – limited. The Asbestos Hasard Emergency Response Act of 1986 implied protecting schools from the sources of asbestos exposure. It required full inspection in each school for facilities that contained asbestos with further removal. This law was ordered by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that also helped to clean school districts from dangerous asbestos products.
A lot of big industrial companies that connected their business with asbestos faced to enormous number of lawsuits filed by the victims of exposure. Paying off numerous compensations, they became bankrupt. This process was mass, and the country reacted by the Bankruptcy Reform Act in 1994. This law implied creating bankruptcy trust funds for settling future claims. The amount of settlement was defined by a grid, depending on the age of the compliant and his diagnosis.
One of the latest attempts for regulating asbestos-related issues is Fairness in Asbestos Injury Resolution Act of 2006. It is also called FAIR Act. It never became a law, but was represented in the Senate and the House but was not approved. It offered creating an office for processing the claims of asbestos injury, within the Department of Labor, paying fair compensations, define their size according to the severity of injuries. Unfortunately, the law was not approved.
There was another act that hasn’t become a law till today. This act proposed to ban the use and mining of asbestos, begin numerous studies to get more information about connection of asbestos to health problems, inventing new remedies, etc. There were a lot of suggestions for improving the human protection from the exposure of asbestos. But this Ban Act of 2007 never became a law.
There are a lot of problems in legislation regarding asbestos. It is very difficult to invent a compromising law that will satisfy all the parties – injured individuals, big asbestos companies, healthcare institutions. However, the asbestos law evolves, and perhaps in the near future all uncertain and unregulated issues will get worthy solution.