Campus

Most schools still use asbestos in labs -- group

Dennis Carcamo - The Philippine Star

June 18, 2013 | 12:56pm

MANILA, Philippines - Most public and private schools still use asbestos, a toxic substance, in their laboratories despite the pledge of the Department of Education in November 2011 that asbestos would be removed from campuses, a labor group said on Tuesday.

Allan Tanjusay, advocacy officer of the Associated Labor Unions-Trade Union Congress of the Philippines, said their team visitsed four public and four private schools in Metro Manila last June 3 and June 10 and discovered that these schools still employ asbestos in Chemistry and Biology classes.

"The ban campaign urges the DepEd, Commission on Higher Education and private school officials to ensure that the directive and the memorandum they issued in removing these wire gauzes from campuses are enforced to the letter.

"We should not sacrifice the health of our future citizens and that of our teachers and non-teaching school personnel," Tanjusay said.

The ALU-TUCP partners with the Building and Wood Workers International in pushing for the ban of asbestos in the country.

Tanjusay said that asbestos wire gauzes function as heat insulator and regulator of beakers from direct heat.

"Kapag tumigas na 'yan after heating experiment tapos hinawakan at ipagpag, and dust nito ay malanghap ng mga estudyante at titser," Tanjusay said, noting that an asbestos fiber is 5,000 times smaller than a strand of hair.

He also cited that the World Health Organization and International Agency for Research on Cancer have both affirmed that exposure to asbestos causes diseases and cancers in the lungs, larynx, and the ovaries.

The WHO also said that all types of asbestos cause lung cancer, mesotheliama (deterioration of lining of internal organs), cancer of the larynx and ovary, and asbestosis (fibrosis of the lungs).

At the time, there is no law to ban, but only to regulate, the use of asbestos in the country, Tanjusay said.