The asbestos-disease epidemic is one of the longest-running public health epidemics. In fact, asbestos is still legal in the United States and kills at least 10,000 Americans every year. It is estimated that asbestos will have killed 432,465 Americans by 2029. Asbestos was known to be deadly by 1900. Asbestos corporate executives callously covered up this fact. Millions have been exposed and are at risk.
Now the asbestos industry is asking the U.S. Senate to help it evade accountability. Yesterday, Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) introduced S. 2319, the Senate companion piece to H.R. 982, the so-called, “Furthering Asbestos Claim Transparency (FACT) Act.” As you may recall this is the bill that passed in the House last November (largely supported the Republican party) at the behest of the asbestos industry and purports to improve transparency in the asbestos trusts. The bill favors the asbestos industry, at the expense of asbestos victims, by imposing new and costly burdens on the trusts. The real intent of this bill is to delay recovery and deny compensation to victims who are dying from asbestos-related disease.
The proposed bill requires asbestos bankruptcy trusts to PUBLICLY disclose “each demand the trust received from, including the name and exposure history of a claimant and the basis for any payment from the trust made to such claimant.” The obvious intent of this public disclosure requirement is to deter injured workers from making claims for fear of losing their right to privacy.
Congress should focus on keeping Americans safe from deadly products, not protecting corporations that deliberately put workers and consumers in danger. The Senate should force the corporations that knowingly sold, distributed, and used asbestos-containing products for decades after its hazards were well known to publicly acknowledge their crimes – not force the individuals who were poisoned by their actions to publicly disclose personal information.