“Asbestos is still mined and used in the developing world, where the problems that were experienced in America and Europe in the 20th century are now being duplicated in China, Russia, India and other countries in the Far East.”
The world leaders in asbestos production for 2015 and 2016 were Russia, China, Brazil, Kazakhstan and India, according to a 2017 report from the U.S. Geological Survey. Brazil announced a ban of asbestos in 2017.
China, the world’s leading asbestos consumer, used 570,006 metric tons of it in 2013. That’s about 765 times the amount consumed by the U.S. that year. Although China has yet to match the incidence of related diseases experienced in Europe and the U.S., researchers expect the gap to soon close. This is because consumption in China remained low well into the 1970s.
The world’s second largest asbestos consumer is Russia. Although the country banned only the amphibole type of asbestos in 1999, today it supplies 60 to 75 percent of all asbestos used worldwide...
Russia
Russia, which is the largest country in the world in terms of land mass, also leads the planet in asbestos production. In 2000, production reached approximately 700,000 metric tons, much more than Canada and China. In 2008, mining in Russia produced more than 1 million metric tons of asbestos. In 2016, the country produced 1,100,000 metric tons.
Russia’s high production numbers stem from the city Asbest, located about 900 miles northeast of Moscow. Once known as “the dying city” because of its high rates of mesothelioma and related diseases, Asbest is home to a mine that measures seven miles long, one-and-a-half-miles wide and more than 1,000 feet deep. The company operating the mine is Uralasbest, the world’s largest producer of chrysotile asbestos.
About 500,000 metric tons of asbestos is gathered from the mine each year — roughly 20 percent of the world’s supply.
Uralasbest and Orenburg Minerals, the two largest asbestos producers in Russia, maintain that controlled use of chrysotile asbestos is not harmful to human health.
Russia is the world’s second-largest consumer of asbestos, trailing only China.
China
China is one of the world’s largest producers of asbestos. The country mined more than 450,000 metric tons in 2000, a total that placed it behind only Russia in terms of production. Since then, Chinese production has fallen slightly. Its mining total fell to 400,000 metric tons in 2016...
