Eighteen AGs Sent Letter Urging Congress to Pass Asbestos Ban Legislation

JULY 12, 2019

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra led a coalition of 18 attorneys general in sending a letter to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and the Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change calling on Congress to ban the manufacturing, processing, importation and distribution of asbestos in the United States. In their letter, the attorneys general called on Congress to pass the “Alan Reinstein Ban Asbestos Now Act of 2019,” which would reinstate a ban on asbestos put in place by the Environmental Protection Agency 30 years ago and subsequently vacated by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The coalition noted that more than 60 countries have already banned asbestos, and emphasized Congress’s duty to protect the public from the substance, which is a known cause of diseases such as lung cancer and mesothelioma and causes thousands of premature deaths each year and for which there is no safe level of human exposure.