The current pandemic has reminded us of the importance of airborne transmission of infectious pathogens, such as COVID, which kills quickly. Toxic, such as asbestos, they kill slowly but they also end many lives before their time. It is a silent death that has swept away many people: the last acquaintance, the presenter José María Íñigo. Asbestos, rresponsible for mesothelioma, a deadly cancer, was used as artificial snow in Christmas decorations of the television sets that ended his life.
The Cabildo de La Gomera has been the only one in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife that has developed an ambitious plan to remove fiber cement from the island, a dangerous material that for many years has been known to be fatal. A few months ago, La Gomera developed an application whose results were presented yesterday in the plenary session of the Cabildo. The gomeros have detected almost 103 cubic meters of fiber cement and have approved a plan to eradicate it from the entire island through a management commission to Gesplan endowed with one million euros.
The Canary Islands Government, however, does not have a single plan in place to remove asbestos from the islands, beyond planning for its removal from schools. and institutes. Nor have the plans of any other Cabildo of the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife transcended, despite the notable presence of this material throughout the archipelago. In addition to using in self-construction, it was also used to build schools in the Canary Islands. “Almost every day we receive calls from various people to remove asbestos elements from homes in the Canary Islands,” explains Jesús González, head of the authorized company González Montoro.
In the Canary Islands there is no authorized landfill to dispose of asbestos, a carcinogenic material present in almost all homes in the Canary Islands
“What we usually do most is remove the uralite water tank from the houses, they are very present in the Canary Islands”, explains a González Montoro. However, the withdrawal process is expensive and time consuming. Withdrawing a single deposit costs between five hundred and seven hundred euros because it must be isolated, palletized and finally sent to the peninsula for its final disposal. “There is no authorized asbestos landfill in the Canary Islands,” explains the company.
In fact, numerous companies advertise to illegally remove a fiber cement water tank for forty euros, “then they deposit it in a ravine, with the danger to public health that this entails, and the municipalities end up calling us to eliminate it with security “, explains one of the authorized companies. Asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma are diseases directly associated with the inhalation of their fibers. There is suspicion that asbestos can cause other cancers (kidney, ovary, breast). The risks associated with swallowing it are somewhat less.
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