This past june, Canada blocked the addition of asbestos to the Annex III at the Rotterdam Convention. The Annex III is a list where the names of hazardous chemicals are listed. If Prime Minister Harper had allowed the listing of asbestos, it would have raised the awerness of its dangers. Despite recent warnings that asbestos was the cause of 500,000 cancer victims in Western Europe alone, Canadian asbestos producers continue to promote and sell their fiber worldwide - especially to developing nations.

On February 16th, 2011, my dad was diagnosed with mesothelioma. Mesothelioma is a form of cancer that is caused by asbestos. You breathe the fibers in and it gets lodged in your lungs. There, it starts to create cancer cells. It can be 20 years before you start showing signs of mesothelioma. By then, it’s usually to late. My dad was very lucky. On December 23rd 2010, he fell ill to pneumonia. He went in to get an x-ray, and a few days later they told him there was something funny going on. On June 23rd he had his right lung removed. Now, almost a year since February 16th, my dad has just started a three-week cycle of chemotherapy. He is throwing up a lot, and doesn’t have any appetite. But that isn’t even close to what he had to go through after his operation. He couldn’t work because he was almost always in the hospital. When we went for walks, he could barely make it to the corner. He is steadily improving. He can now walk to my school and back.

Please, I really don’t want anything like that to happen to anyone else. Especially those poor workers in those countries, tossing bucketfuls of asbestos wearing nothing but bandana’s for protection.