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Asbestos Podcast EP44 Transcript

From WikiMesothelioma — Mesothelioma Knowledge Base


Episode 44: A Tale of Two Cities Called Asbestos

Full transcript from Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making — a 52-episode documentary podcast produced by Danziger & De Llano, LLP.

Episode Information
Series Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making
Season 1
Episode 44
Title A Tale of Two Cities Called Asbestos
Arc Arc 9 — The Ongoing Cover-Up (episode 2)
Era Covered Present day, with history from 1879 through May 2025
Produced by Charles Fletcher
Research and writing Charles Fletcher with Claude AI
Listen Apple Podcasts · Spotify
Episode page Episode 44 on Mesothelioma Lawyers Near Me

Episode Summary

Episode 44 delivers the promise made in Episode 43's closing teaser: the two cities on earth named for asbestos. In the Ural Mountains sits Asbest, Russia — a town of 55,518 by the 2025 estimate, down from 68,893 at the 2010 census.[1] It is built beside one of the largest open-pit chrysotile mines still operating.[2] The pit is about seven miles long, up to a mile and a half wide and more than a thousand feet deep — "nearly half the size of Manhattan."[1] Its operator, Uralasbest, employs more than 6,000 workers.[3] The town's attachment to the mineral is official: a municipal anthem called "Asbestos, my city and my fate," a 2002 flag of white asbestos fibers passing through a ring of flame, a Uralasbest billboard proclaiming "Asbestos is our Future," and a memorial to residents who died, carved from a block of asbestos ore and inscribed "Live and Remember."[4] The welcome sign reads "Asbest is my town and destiny,"[1] and the town's state youth hockey school is named Khrizotil — Chrysotile.[5]

The science is now local. A population comparison covering 1997 to 2010 found cancer mortality 18% higher for men and 21% higher for women in Asbest than in the rest of the Sverdlovsk region.[2] In January 2024 the International Agency for Research on Cancer published the main results of the Asbest Chrysotile Cohort Study, which followed 30,445 mine and mill workers to the end of 2015.[6] It found mesothelioma mortality increased at the highest fiber exposure (RR 7.64, based on 13 deaths) and an exposure-response between cumulative dust and lung-cancer mortality in men — while in women there was no clear association with dust, only a modest increase at the highest fiber category.[7] The official answer is "safe use," and Russia exports it: chrysotile has been kept off the Rotterdam Convention's prior-informed-consent list at every Conference of the Parties since 2006, most recently at COP-12 in May 2025, when seven countries representing 4% of the 162 delegations present blocked it.[8] Russian domestic consumption fell from about 650,000 tonnes in 1995 to about 110,000 in 2023 (−83%), and Russia's share of world output fell from 65% in 2020 to 48% in 2023; most of what remains is exported to Asia, Latin America and Africa.[9] In 2018, after the EPA under Scott Pruitt announced new-use rules for asbestos, Uralasbest posted photographs of pallets bearing a seal with President Trump's face and the words "Approved by Donald Trump, 45th president of the United States," captioned "Donald is on our side!"[10][11] (The episode describes the pallets as stamped; The New York Times later reported the photo was a public-relations stunt and that none of the asbestos Uralasbest sold was ever actually stamped with the seal.)[11] Uralasbest's production rose from 279,200 tons to 315,000 tons the following year, 80% of it sold abroad.[11]

The other city is Asbestos, Quebec — 7,088 people at the 2021 census — built around the Jeffrey Mine.[12] The deposit was discovered in 1879, mining began in 1881, and from the First World War until its 1983 bankruptcy Johns-Manville ran it; at 350 metres deep and 6 square kilometres it was the largest open-face asbestos mine in the world.[13] On February 14, 1949, 5,000 miners in Asbestos and Thetford Mines struck for almost five months, a turning point that helped lay the groundwork for Quebec's Quiet Revolution.[13] The mine closed for good in 2012 after Quebec's incoming government cancelled a $58 million loan.[14][13] Several businesses had balked at investing in a town called Asbestos — on one trip to Ohio, investors would not even take the envoy's business card.[15] In October 2020, in a drive-in referendum open to residents 14 and older, nearly 2,800 people voted and Val-des-Sources won with 51.5%;[16] the change took effect on December 15, 2020.[12] One city put the name in its anthem. The other voted it off the welcome sign.

Key Takeaways

  • Pride in the poison is official in Asbest. A municipal anthem ("Asbestos, my city and my fate"), a 2002 fiber-and-flame flag, an "Asbestos is our Future" billboard, and a memorial to the dead carved from asbestos ore.[4]
  • The excess is measured against a heavy-industry baseline. Cancer mortality ran 18% higher for men and 21% higher for women in Asbest than in the rest of the Sverdlovsk region, 1997–2010.[2]
  • The town's own workers confirmed the mechanism. IARC's cohort of 30,445 Asbest workers[6] found mesothelioma mortality raised at the highest fiber exposure (RR 7.64) and a dust–lung-cancer exposure-response in men; in women, only a modest increase at the highest fiber category.[7]
  • A 4% bloc keeps the hazard label off. Seven countries, led by Russia, blocked chrysotile's Rotterdam listing at COP-12 in May 2025 — the same outcome at every COP since 2006.[8]
  • The market moved to the countries least able to say no. Russian domestic use fell 83% from 1995 to 2023; most Russian asbestos is now exported to Asia, Latin America and Africa.[9]
  • "Donald is on our side." In 2018 Uralasbest posted a pallet photo with a Trump "approval" seal — a stunt, the NYT later reported — and its output rose from 279,200 to 315,000 tons, 80% exported.[10][11]
  • Quebec chose the opposite ending. A 1949 strike of 5,000 miners, a 2012 mine closure, and a 2020 vote — 51.5% for Val-des-Sources.[13][16]
  • Economics, not shame, killed the name. In French the mineral is amiante; the town's problem was investors who would not take its business card.[17][15]

Key Concepts

Pride in the Poison: In Asbest, denial is civic identity rather than a memo — the anthem, the flag, the billboard, the memorial.[4] The episode's claim is that this is structure, not stupidity: when the thing poisoning you is also the only thing feeding you, the incentive isn't to investigate — it's to believe.

Hostages of the Paycheck: The workers of Asbest are not the conspiracy. They are the same people as the workers of Libby, the shipyards and the textile mills — the ones who get the disease while someone else makes the decision.

The Opposite Choice: Asbestos, Quebec had the same trap and eventually escaped it: a strike that helped remake a province, a government that stopped financing the mine, and a town that voted the name off the sign.[13][16] The difference between the two cities is not character; it is that one of them got a choice.

The Amiante Nuance: In French the mineral is amiante, so many francophone residents did not hear the town's name as a warning.[17] What ended it was the English-speaking investor on the other side of the table.[15]

The Export of Belief: With domestic use collapsing, what Russia mines it sells abroad[9] — while a small bloc keeps chrysotile off the Rotterdam list so that no hazard disclosure travels with it.[8]

Denial With Bigger Letterhead: The Arc 9 thesis in one image: the cover-up began as private letters ("the less said"), became government press releases ("safe to breathe"), and in 2018 became a marketing seal on a pallet photo — "approved," "on our side."[11]

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there really a city named after asbestos?
Two. Asbest, in Russia's Sverdlovsk Oblast, had an estimated 55,518 residents in 2025 and was renamed from Kudelka in 1928; its welcome sign reads "Asbest is my town and destiny."[1] Its municipal anthem is "Asbestos, my city and my fate."[4] The other, Asbestos, Quebec, home of the Jeffrey Mine, voted in October 2020 to rename itself Val-des-Sources ("Valley of the Springs"),[16] effective December 15, 2020.[12]
What do the health studies from Asbest, Russia show?
A 2016 comparison (Kovalevskiy et al., Environmental Health) of deaths from 1997 to 2010 found cancer mortality 18% higher for men and 21% higher for women in Asbest than in the rest of the Sverdlovsk region.[2] In January 2024, IARC published the main results of the Asbest Chrysotile Cohort Study (JNCI 116(6):866–875): among 30,445 workers followed to 2015,[6] mesothelioma mortality was increased at the highest fiber exposure (RR 7.64, in an analysis based on 13 mesothelioma deaths), and lung-cancer mortality rose with cumulative dust in men; in women there was no clear dust association, only a modest increase at the highest fiber category.[7]
Did a Russian asbestos company really put Donald Trump's name on its product?
On a photograph of it. In July 2018, after the EPA under Scott Pruitt announced new-use rules for asbestos, Uralasbest posted pictures on Facebook of pallets bearing a seal with Trump's face and the words "Approved by Donald Trump, 45th president of the United States," and wrote "Donald is on our side!"[10] The New York Times later reported the photo was a public-relations stunt and that none of the asbestos Uralasbest sold was ever actually stamped with the seal. Chairman Vladimir V. Kochelayev told the Times, "Trump is on our side." Production rose from 279,200 tons to 315,000 tons, 80% of it sold abroad.[11]
Why hasn't chrysotile asbestos been listed under the Rotterdam Convention?
Because listing requires consensus. Chrysotile was recommended by the Convention's Chemical Review Committee and has been debated since COP3 in 2006; at COP-12 (April 28–May 9, 2025), delegates from seven countries — Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, India, Zimbabwe, Laos and Belarus — vetoed it, a bloc representing 4% of the 162 delegations present.[8] Listing would not ban chrysotile; it would require exporters to disclose its hazards and obtain importing countries' prior informed consent.
Why did Asbestos, Quebec change its name?
Economics more than shame. In French the mineral is amiante, and some residents did not associate the town's name with it.[17] But several businesses had balked at investing in a town called Asbestos, and on a business trip to Ohio investors would not even take the envoy's card, Mayor Hugues Grimard said.[15] In October 2020, in a drive-in vote in a parking lot, residents 14 and older cast nearly 2,800 ballots and Val-des-Sources won 51.5%.[16] The Jeffrey Mine had closed in 2012 after Quebec cancelled a $58 million loan.[14]
Is chrysotile ("white asbestos") safer than other forms of asbestos?
No — and that is the subject of the next episode. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies all forms of asbestos, chrysotile included, as Group 1 carcinogens.[18] The 2024 Asbest cohort study confirmed increased mesothelioma risk with high fiber exposure in the chrysotile miners and millers themselves.[7] Episode 45, The Chrysotile Lie, takes the "safe use" claim apart.
I was exposed to asbestos in the U.S. Can I still file a claim?
Often, yes. Mesothelioma can appear decades after exposure, and a diagnosed person may qualify both for asbestos bankruptcy trust claims and for a lawsuit — qualifying for one does not cancel the other.[19] Danziger & De Llano, the firm featured in this episode, pursues both trust fund claims and lawsuits.[20] Consultations are free, seven days a week, at dandell.com.

Full Transcript

Host 1: There is a city in the Ural Mountains of Russia. About fifty-five thousand people, and shrinking every year. It has apartment blocks, schools, a war memorial. It has a youth hockey club — and I checked this three times before I believed it — the club is named Chrysotile.

Host 2: Named after the—

Host 1: After the mineral. Because the city itself is named after the mineral. Asbest. That's the Russian word for asbestos.

Host 2: People live in a place called Asbestos. On purpose. With a welcome sign.

Host 1: The welcome sign says — and these are the town's own words — "Asbest is my town and destiny." And that is not even the half of it. The city has an official municipal anthem. The anthem is called "Asbestos, my city and my fate."

Host 2: "My town and my fate." That's either the bravest or the most tragic municipal motto ever written, and I genuinely can't tell which.

Host 1: On the edge of town there's an open pit. Seven miles long, more than a mile wide, a thousand feet down — nearly half the size of Manhattan. It's one of the largest chrysotile asbestos deposits on earth — the Bazhenovskoye deposit — and the company that mines it, Uralasbest, employs something like six thousand people. In a city of fifty-five thousand. Do that math.

Host 2: One in ten works the mine. Which means the rest sell them groceries and teach their kids.

Host 1: A near-total company town. Built on the one product this entire series has been about.

Host 2: Today on Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making—

Host 1: Episode 44: A Tale of Two Cities Called Asbestos.

Host 2: Because there are two of them. And they chose opposite endings.

Host 2: Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making is brought to you by Danziger and De Llano, thirty years finding what companies hid — because the record outlives the cover-up. dandell.com. That's D-A-N-D-E-L-L dot com.

Host 1: We've spent forty-three episodes inside America and Britain and Canada. Last time we ended with the eighty-nine-year clock — a fund taking claims until 2090. But the cover-up was never only Western, and it never ended. It just moved. And there are exactly two cities on this earth named for the mineral. The one in the Urals put the name in its anthem. The other one — in Quebec, in the town where our industrial story began back in Episode Ten — voted the name off the welcome sign. Same mineral. Opposite choices. Today, both.

Host 2: Start with the pit. How big are we actually talking?

Host 1: You can see it from space. It dominates the city — locals will tell you the dust settles on everything when the wind comes off the mine. Residents describe shaking asbestos out of the laundry before they bring it in. A retiree told a reporter she finds the dust on her raspberries. Another said she sweeps it off her windows before she leaves in the morning. The workers have a name for the fibers. They call them the white needles.

Host 2: The white needles.

Host 1: And the town's pride in it is official. The flag, adopted in 2002, is white lines — asbestos fibers — passing through a ring of flame. Uralasbest put up a billboard in town that reads "Asbestos is our Future." And there is a monument, and I want to describe it carefully, because it is not a celebration. It's a memorial to residents who died. It is carved from a block of asbestos ore. The inscription reads, "Live and Remember."

Host 2: A memorial to the dead. Made of the thing that killed them.

Host 1: In Asbest they'd tell you that's not irony — it's just the truth. The mine is the paycheck. And that's the trap this episode turns on: when the thing poisoning you is also the only thing feeding you, the incentive isn't to investigate. It's to believe.

Host 2: So what does the science actually say about living there? Not the civic pride — the mortality.

Host 1: There's a peer-reviewed comparison of deaths in Asbest against the rest of the Sverdlovsk region, covering 1997 to 2010. Cancer mortality ran about eighteen percent higher for men and twenty-one percent higher for women in Asbest than in the wider region. Significantly elevated lung, stomach, and colon cancers — and for women, lung cancer ran seventy-six percent higher.

Host 2: Higher than the region that also has Russian heavy industry in it. So that's the excess on top of an already-dirty baseline.

Host 1: And then the big one. January 2024 — the IARC, the World Health Organization's cancer agency, published a cohort study of more than thirty thousand Asbest workers, followed until 2015. It confirmed the dose-dependence. More fiber exposure, more mesothelioma — at the highest exposures, mesothelioma mortality ran more than seven times higher. More dust, more lung cancer death — that relationship was clear in the men. In the women, the signal showed up only at the very highest fiber exposures. But the direction was the same. Not a Western estimate. A study of the actual workers, in the actual city, confirming the actual mechanism this series has documented since Episode Fourteen.

Host 2: So the evidence is now local and undeniable. What's the official response?

Host 1: "Safe use." That's the doctrine. The Russian position — echoed by an industry group called the International Chrysotile Association — is that chrysotile is different from the deadly amphiboles, that modern extraction is acceptably safe, and that it was historical exposure levels, not the mineral itself, that caused disease.

Host 2: We did an episode on "chrysotile is the safe one." It's next week's episode, actually. Hold that thought — but for the record, the mice in Episode Twenty-three didn't get a vote on which fiber was polite.

Host 1: And here's the geopolitical hinge. Russia doesn't just believe this domestically — it exports the belief. There's an international treaty, the Rotterdam Convention, that would require exporters to disclose chrysotile's hazards and get prior informed consent from buyers. Listing is scientific and non-binding. And Russia and its allies have blocked chrysotile from that list at every single Conference of the Parties for twenty years. Most recently this past May — seven countries, led by Russia, blocked it again.

Host 2: Twenty years. Because a hazard label is bad for a monotown's only export.

Host 1: Russian domestic use has actually collapsed — down eighty-three percent since the mid-nineties. And Russia's share of world production was sixty-five percent as recently as 2020; by 2023 it was under half. Russians are using far less of it, and the world is buying less of it. What's left is mined to sell to Asia, Latin America, Africa. The market moved to the countries with the least ability to say no.

Host 2: The record is what wins these fights — the documents that prove what was known. That's the work Danziger and De Llano has done for thirty years: finding the paper trail so a family's claim gets paid, and filing every trust at once so the answer comes in months. dandell.com.

Host 2: Okay. The other city.

Host 1: The other city is — was — Asbestos, Quebec. About a hundred kilometers east of Montreal. Seven thousand people. The town grew up around the Jeffrey Mine — the deposit was found in 1879, mining started in 1881, and by the First World War it was under Johns-Manville, and it was the largest open-pit asbestos mine in the world. Three hundred fifty meters deep. Six square kilometers. Two thousand workers at its peak.

Host 2: Johns-Manville. There's a name from the vault. They ran it until the bankruptcy?

Host 1: Until 1983, yes. But here's where the two cities diverge — and the year is 1949. Five thousand asbestos miners, in Asbestos and Thetford Mines, walked out. The strike lasted almost five months. The Catholic Church sided with the miners against the company and the provincial government. Quebecers mark it as one of the turning points in their history — the beginning of the end of the old order. The road to the Quiet Revolution runs through an asbestos strike.

Host 2: The asbestos strike helped invent modern Quebec.

Host 1: It planted something. A suspicion of the people selling the mineral. Fast forward. The mine dwindled for decades under the weight of everything we covered in Arcs Five through Eight. And in 2012, the Quebec government cancelled a fifty-eight-million-dollar loan that would have kept the Jeffrey Mine alive. That was the end. The pit is full of blue water now.

Host 2: And then the name itself.

Host 1: November 2019, the town council voted to rename the town. October 2020 — middle of the pandemic — they held the referendum in a parking lot. People voted from their cars. Anyone fourteen and older. Nearly twenty-eight hundred ballots, about half the town that was eligible. Six names on the ballot. It took three rounds of ranked voting, and the winner, with fifty-one and a half percent: Val-des-Sources. The Valley of the Springs. It became official on December 15, 2020.

Host 2: They voted it off the welcome sign.

Host 1: And here's the detail I can't stop thinking about. In French, the mineral isn't "asbestos" — it's amiante. The name never stung in French the way it does in English. What killed the name wasn't shame. It was economics. The mayor watched investors refuse to even take a business card from a town called Asbestos. At least four businesses walked away over the name.

Host 2: So the town that struck its way into the Quiet Revolution looked at the balance sheet, and the name lost. Honestly? Same fight as Asbest — the paycheck — but this time the paycheck voted the other way.

Host 1: Two cities. One mineral. In Asbest, the name is the anthem and the pit is the horizon. In Quebec, the same mineral built a town, broke a government, and finally got voted off the sign.

Host 2: One city doubled down. The other one walked.

Host 2: Okay. I've been holding this since the top of the episode. The Trump thing. Tell me I misremembered it.

Host 1: You didn't. 2018. The Trump administration, under EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, signaled it might loosen asbestos regulation. And Uralasbest — the Asbest mining company — responded by stamping its product pallets with a seal. The seal read: "Approved by Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States." On social media the company posted: "Donald is on our side."

Host 2: A Russian asbestos company put an American president's face on a pallet of carcinogen like a kosher certification.

Host 1: Production rose after the deregulatory signals — from two hundred seventy-nine thousand tonnes in 2017 to three hundred fifteen thousand in 2018, eighty percent of it sold abroad. The company chairman said he hoped it could restore asbestos's reputation.

Host 2: Restore its reputation. The reputation is four thousand five hundred years of dead workers. That's not a PR problem. That's the product working as designed.

Host 1: That's the arc-nine thesis in one image. The cover-up started as private letters — the less said. It became government press releases — safe to breathe. And now it's a marketing stamp on an export pallet — approved, endorsed, on our side. Same denial. It just kept finding bigger, bolder letterhead.

Host 2: And the people of Asbest are stuck inside it. Not villains. Hostages of the paycheck.

Host 1: That's the part I won't let us lose. The workers in Asbest aren't the conspiracy. They're the same people as the workers in Libby, in the shipyards, in the textile mills — the ones who get the disease while someone else makes the decision. And the people of Asbestos, Quebec weren't villains either. They just eventually got a choice. That's the whole difference between the two cities. Asbest never got one.

Host 2: Nobody understands the paycheck trap better than the families we work with. Yvette Abrego is a case manager at Danziger and De Llano. Her father was a welder — breathed asbestos every shift, came home with it on his clothes, because that job was how the family lived. For nearly twenty years, Yvette has helped working families understand that what happened to them wasn't their fault and wasn't their failure. If that's your family, call Danziger and De Llano. dandell.com — D-A-N-D-E-L-L dot com.

Host 1: Paul Danziger and Rod De Llano founded the firm in 1995. Nearly two billion dollars recovered. Over a thousand families. Cases in all fifty states.

Host 2: The consultation is free, seven days a week. dandell.com.

Host 1: You've been listening to Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making. Episode 44: A Tale of Two Cities Called Asbestos.

Host 2: Research, writing, and production for this series is supported by Danziger and De Llano, a national mesothelioma law firm with over 30 years of experience and nearly two billion dollars recovered for victims and their families.

Host 1: Next time: the argument Asbest is built on. The single most successful piece of industry science in a century — the claim that chrysotile, white asbestos, is the safe kind. The one that washes out. The one that's different. It is the reason asbestos is still legal in most of the world. And it is a lie with a body count.

Host 2: The safe asbestos. There is no safe asbestos. But there's a very profitable sentence that says otherwise.

Host 1: Episode 45: The Chrysotile Lie. On Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making.

Host 2: One town carved the name into an anthem. The other crossed it off the sign.

Host 1: Same mineral. Same paycheck. Only one of them ever got the vote.

Named Entities

Name Role / Significance
Asbest, Russia Town in Sverdlovsk Oblast, founded 1889 and known as Kudelka until 1928. Population 68,893 (2010 census); 55,518 (2025 estimate). Welcome sign: "Asbest is my town and destiny."[1] Municipal anthem: "Asbestos, my city and my fate"; 2002 flag of white fiber-lines through a ring of flame.[4]
Uralasbest Operator of the open-pit chrysotile mine at Asbest; employs more than 6,000 workers.[3] Accounted for 19% of global chrysotile output in 2023.[9] Put up the town billboard "Asbestos is our Future."[4]
Khrizotil (Хризотил) Asbest's state youth ice-hockey sports school, named "Chrysotile," registered with the Russian Hockey Federation's Ekaterinburg branch.[5]
Vladimir V. Kochelayev Chairman of the board of Uralasbest in the 2018–2019 period; told The New York Times, "Trump is on our side."[11]
Kovalevskiy et al. 2016 "Comparison of mortality in Asbest city and the Sverdlovsk region in the Russian Federation: 1997–2010," Environmental Health 15:42. Cancer mortality 18% higher in men and 21% higher in women in Asbest than in the rest of the region.[2]
Asbest Chrysotile Cohort Study (Schüz et al. 2024) IARC-led historical cohort of 30,445 mine and mill workers (32% women), followed to 2015.[6] Published in JNCI 116(6):866–875. Mesothelioma RR 7.64 at 80 or more fiber/cm³-years, in an analysis based on 13 mesothelioma deaths in all.[7]
International Chrysotile Association Industry group promoting the "safe use" doctrine for chrysotile; named on air as the voice of the Russian position.
Rotterdam Convention UN treaty on prior informed consent in hazardous-chemical trade. Chrysotile's listing has been debated since COP3 (2006) and was blocked again at COP-12 (2025) by Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, India, Zimbabwe, Laos and Belarus.[8]
Asbestos, Quebec → Val-des-Sources Town in the Eastern Townships; population 7,088 (2021). Renamed effective December 15, 2020, after Minister Andrée Laforest rejected a counter-petition.[12]
Jeffrey Mine Deposit discovered 1879 by Evan Williams on Charles Webb's land; mined from 1881; run by Johns-Manville from the First World War to its 1983 bankruptcy; 350 m deep and 6 km², the largest open-face asbestos mine in the world; closed 2012.[13]
1949 Asbestos Strike Began February 14, 1949: 5,000 miners in Asbestos and Thetford Mines, almost five months; a turning point toward the Quiet Revolution.[13]
Hugues Grimard Mayor of Asbestos through the rename; described investors balking at the town's name.[15]
Yvette Abrego Senior Client Manager at Danziger & De Llano, featured in this episode's sponsor spotlight.
Danziger & De Llano, LLP National mesothelioma law firm; over $2 billion recovered for families nationwide.[21] Featured sponsor.
  • Rotterdam Convention, Annex III — Chrysotile debated since COP3 (October 2006) and vetoed at COP-12 (April 28–May 9, 2025) by 7 countries representing 4% of the 162 delegations.[8]
  • IARC Group 1 classification — All forms of asbestos, including chrysotile, are classified as carcinogenic to humans (IARC Monographs Volume 100C).[18]
  • EPA "new use" rules, 2018 — Announced under Administrator Scott Pruitt; the trigger for Uralasbest's Trump-seal publicity.[11]
  • Quebec's 2012 loan cancellation — The $58 million loan that would have reopened the Jeffrey Mine was cancelled, ending Canadian asbestos mining.[14]
  • Val-des-Sources referendum, October 2020 — Drive-in vote, ages 14 and up, nearly 2,800 ballots; 51.5% for Val-des-Sources.[16]

Key Facts and Statistics

  • 55,518 / 68,893 — Asbest's 2025 population estimate and 2010 census count.[1]
  • 7 miles long, 1–1.5 miles wide, 1,000+ feet deep — the Asbest open pit, "nearly half the size of Manhattan."[1]
  • 6,000+ — Uralasbest workers.[3]
  • +18% / +21% — cancer mortality in Asbest vs. the rest of the Sverdlovsk region, men and women, 1997–2010.[2]
  • 30,445 — workers in the IARC Asbest Chrysotile Cohort, followed to 2015.[6]
  • RR 7.64 — the mesothelioma rate ratio at the highest fiber exposure (13 mesothelioma deaths in the analysis overall).[7]
  • 7 countries, 4% of 162 delegations — the COP-12 bloc that blocked chrysotile's Rotterdam listing in May 2025.[8]
  • −83% — Russian domestic asbestos consumption, ~650,000 t (1995) to ~110,000 t (2023).[9]
  • 65% → 48% — Russia's share of global asbestos output, 2020 to 2023.[9]
  • 279,200 → 315,000 tons, 80% exported — Uralasbest output before and after the 2018 publicity.[11]
  • 1879 / 1881 / 1983 / 2012 — Jeffrey Mine: discovery, first mining, end of the Johns-Manville era, closure.[13]
  • 5,000 miners, almost five months — the 1949 Asbestos Strike.[13]
  • ~2,800 ballots / 51.5% — the October 2020 Val-des-Sources vote.[16]

Timeline

Date Event
1879 Evan Williams discovers the asbestos deposit on Charles Webb's land in Quebec's Eastern Townships[13]
1881 Webb and William Jeffrey begin mining — the Jeffrey Mine[13]
1889 The settlement that becomes Asbest is founded[1]
1914–1918 The Jeffrey Mine comes under Johns-Manville control during the First World War[13]
1928 Kudelka is renamed Asbest[1]
February 14, 1949 5,000 miners strike in Asbestos and Thetford Mines — almost five months[13]
1983 Johns-Manville's bankruptcy ends its era at the Jeffrey Mine[13]
1997–2010 Asbest cancer mortality runs 18% (men) and 21% (women) above the rest of the Sverdlovsk region[2]
2002 Asbest adopts its fiber-and-flame flag[4]
October 2006 COP3: chrysotile's Rotterdam listing first vetoed[8]
2012 Quebec cancels the $58 million loan; the Jeffrey Mine closes[14]
July 2018 Uralasbest posts its "Approved by Donald Trump" pallet photo: "Donald is on our side!"[10]
2017 → 2018 Uralasbest output rises from 279,200 to 315,000 tons, 80% exported[11]
2020 Russia supplies 65% of global asbestos output[9]
October 2020 Drive-in referendum: Val-des-Sources wins 51.5%[16]
December 15, 2020 Asbestos officially becomes Val-des-Sources[12]
2023 Russia's share of world output falls to 48%; domestic use ~110,000 t[9]
January 22, 2024 IARC publishes the Asbest Chrysotile Cohort Study main results[6]
April 28–May 9, 2025 COP-12: seven countries block chrysotile's listing again[8]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Wikipedia, "Asbest," accessed September 2026. Tier-2 source for population (68,893 in 2010; 55,518 estimated in 2025), founding (1889) and the former name Kudelka (to 1928), the welcome sign, and the pit's dimensions as quoted from reporting ("seven miles long… nearly half the size of Manhattan"). Wikipedia — Asbest
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Kovalevskiy EV, Schonfeld SJ, Feletto E, et al. Comparison of mortality in Asbest city and the Sverdlovsk region in the Russian Federation: 1997-2010. Environ Health. 2016;15:42. PMID: 26926835. Cancer mortality 18% higher in men and 21% higher in women in Asbest than in the remaining Sverdlovsk region.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "Russia's Monotown of Asbest: The Town Asbestos Built," Pulitzer Center. Reports Uralasbest "employs over 6,000 workers." Pulitzer Center — Russia's Monotown of Asbest, via Internet Archive
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 Andrew E. Kramer, "City in Russia Unable to Kick Asbestos Habit," The New York Times, July 13, 2013. Source for the municipal anthem ("Asbestos, my city and my fate"), the 2002 flag, the "Asbestos is our Future" billboard, the "Live and Remember" memorial carved from asbestos ore, and residents' accounts of the dust (laundry, raspberries, windows, "the white needles"). The New York Times — City in Russia Unable to Kick Asbestos Habit (July 13, 2013), via Internet Archive
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Russian Hockey Federation, Ekaterinburg branch, arena and club listing for ГАУ СО СШ "Хризотил" (Khrizotil sports school), Asbest. Russian Hockey Federation (Ekaterinburg) — Khrizotil
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 International Agency for Research on Cancer, "Cancer mortality in chrysotile miners and millers, Russian Federation: main results (Asbest Chrysotile Cohort Study)," news release, January 22, 2024. IARC — Asbest Chrysotile Cohort Study main results (Jan. 22, 2024)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 Schüz J, Kovalevskiy E, Olsson A, et al. Cancer mortality in chrysotile miners and millers, Russian Federation: main results (Asbest Chrysotile Cohort-Study). J Natl Cancer Inst. 2024;116(6):866-875. PMID: 38247448. 30,445 workers (32% women) followed to 2015; exposure-response between cumulative dust and lung-cancer mortality in men; in women no clear dust association, a modest increase at the highest fiber category; mesothelioma RR 7.64 (95% CI 1.18–49.5) at 80 or more fibers/cm³-years, based on 13 deaths.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 International Ban Asbestos Secretariat et al., joint amicus curiae statement, September 9, 2025. Records the COP-by-COP vetoes of chrysotile's Rotterdam listing from COP3 (2006) through COP-12 (April 28–May 9, 2025), when Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, India, Zimbabwe, Laos and Belarus — 4% of 162 delegations — blocked it. IBAS — Joint amicus curiae statement (Sept. 9, 2025), PDF
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 9.7 Laurie Kazan-Allen, "Crisis for Russia's Asbestos Producers?," International Ban Asbestos Secretariat, January 14, 2025. Russia's share of global output 65% (2020) to 48% (2023); Russian consumption ~650,000 t (1995) to ~110,000 t (2023), −83%; Uralasbest 19% of 2023 global chrysotile output. IBAS — Crisis for Russia's Asbestos Producers? (Jan. 14, 2025)
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 "Russian mining firm puts Trump's face on its asbestos products," The Guardian, July 11, 2018. Reports Uralasbest's Facebook post of its Trump-seal pallets captioned "Donald is on our side!" The Guardian — Russian mining firm puts Trump's face on its asbestos products (July 11, 2018)
  11. ↑ 11.00 11.01 11.02 11.03 11.04 11.05 11.06 11.07 11.08 11.09 Andrew Higgins, "In Asbest, Russia, Making Asbestos Great Again," The New York Times, April 7, 2019. Reports Kochelayev's "Trump is on our side"; the Facebook photo of pallets with a seal reading "Approved by Donald Trump, 45th president of the United States," which the paper reports was a public-relations stunt — none of the asbestos Uralasbest sold was ever stamped with it; the EPA "new use" rules under Scott Pruitt; and output rising from 279,200 tons to 315,000 tons, 80% sold abroad. The New York Times — In Asbest, Russia, Making Asbestos Great Again (Apr. 7, 2019), via Internet Archive
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 Wikipedia, "Val-des-Sources," accessed September 2026. Tier-2 source for the 2021 population (7,088), Minister Andrée Laforest's approval, and the December 15, 2020 effective date. Wikipedia — Val-des-Sources
  13. ↑ 13.00 13.01 13.02 13.03 13.04 13.05 13.06 13.07 13.08 13.09 13.10 13.11 13.12 13.13 The Canadian Encyclopedia, "Val-des-Sources (Asbestos)." Jeffrey Mine chronology (1879 discovery, 1881 mining, Johns-Manville from the First World War to 1983, 350 m deep and 6 km², closure in 2012) and the 1949 strike of 5,000 miners. The Canadian Encyclopedia — Val-des-Sources (Asbestos)
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 "Canada Stops Its Defense Of Asbestos; Quebec's Mines Shut Down," NPR, September 17, 2012. Reports the incoming Quebec government's cancellation of the $58 million loan that would have reopened the Jeffrey Mine. NPR — Canada Stops Its Defense Of Asbestos (Sept. 17, 2012), via Internet Archive
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 15.4 "Asbestos, Quebec, is seeking suggestions for a new town name," Bloomberg via The Seattle Times, 2019. Mayor Hugues Grimard: several businesses balked at investing because of the name; on a trip to Ohio, investors would not take the envoy's business card. The Seattle Times — Asbestos, Quebec, is seeking suggestions for a new town name
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 16.4 16.5 16.6 16.7 "The Town Of Asbestos, Quebec, Chooses A New, Less Hazardous Name," NPR, October 20, 2020. Drive-in vote in a parking lot; residents 14 and older; nearly 2,800 ballots, almost half of those eligible; Val-des-Sources 51.5%. NPR — The Town Of Asbestos, Quebec, Chooses A New Name (Oct. 20, 2020), via Internet Archive
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 "The Town of Asbestos, Quebec, Picks a New Name," The New York Times, October 21, 2020. Reports that some French Canadians do not associate "Asbestos" with the mineral because the French word is amiante. The New York Times (Oct. 21, 2020), via Internet Archive
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 International Agency for Research on Cancer, IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans, Volume 100C: Arsenic, Metals, Fibres, and Dusts (2012). Classifies all forms of asbestos, including chrysotile, as carcinogenic to humans (Group 1). IARC Publications — Monograph Volume 100C
  19. ↑ Public tracker of the U.S. asbestos bankruptcy trust system, documenting each active trust's assets, payment percentage and filing requirements, with each figure's source classified as a filed court document, a secondary source or an estimate; updated weekly. It is built by the team behind this podcast. AsbestosTrusts.org — Trust Directory
  20. ↑ Danziger & De Llano: Mesothelioma and Asbestos Lawyers, Danziger & De Llano
  21. ↑ Danziger & De Llano Company Information, Danziger & De Llano

Primary Sources

Series Navigation

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making — Arc 9: The Ongoing Cover-Up
Previous: Episode 43: The Zadroga Legacy Episode 44: A Tale of Two Cities Called Asbestos Next: Episode 45: The Chrysotile Lie

About This Series

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making is a 52-episode documentary podcast tracing the complete history of asbestos from 4700 BCE to the 2024 EPA ban. The series is produced by Danziger & De Llano, LLP, a nationwide mesothelioma law firm with over 30 years of experience and over $2 billion recovered for asbestos victims.

Episode 44 is the second episode of Arc 9 ("The Ongoing Cover-Up"): two towns named for the same mineral, one that kept the name in its anthem and one that voted it off the sign. Episode 45, The Chrysotile Lie, takes apart the "safe use" argument Asbest is built on.

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