Hazards reported that the UK government was in 1998 “edging nervously” towards an asbestos ban. This process was been driven by plans in the European Union to introduce a cross community ban. However, Hazards obtained and publicised evidence showing that the European Commission scientific committee considering the ban proposal had been heavily influenced by a supposedly independent paper that had infact been placed by asbestos industry interests, via Canada’s embassy in Italy. This led to a delay in UK government plans to approve asbestos prohibition regulations. It was 1999 before the European Commission agreed a ban should be implemented EU wide by January 2005. A UK ban took effect in November 1999.

Do or die time for asbestos trade, Hazards, number 62, April-June 1998 [not online].