The Great Earthquakes and Asbestos

The Structure of Damage Hidden in the “Reconstruction Processes”

Abstract

This paper explores the structure in which asbestos accumulated in our society during industrialization cause serious damage to human health after big earthquakes. Asbestos is a fibrous material which is very durable and resistant to heat, breakdown and most chemical reactions. Because of these qualities, asbestos was used for various industrial purposes in a number of countries including Japan for many years. Asbestos especially found its way into products such as building materials, automobile parts, textiles, and so on. However, it became evident that asbestos is easily inhaled, embedded in the lungs, and finally cause lung cancer and mesothelioma after a long period of latency. In Japan asbestos was banned in 2004 while the death toll from mesothelioma, which is exclusively caused by inhaling asbestos, have kept increasing from 1209 in 2010 to 1410 in 2013.

Asbestos can be a big threat to human body during and after big earthquakes since people in the effected areas are exposed to asbestos embedded in collapsed buildings and rubbles. In 1995, the Great Hanshin Earthquake hit Kobe, a city where a number of aging buildings remained in its inner-city. At the time no measure was taken against asbestos because it was not recognized as a problem which should be addressed in damage reduction and disaster recovery processes. However, today, construction workers who worked at building and rubble removal sites during the post-disaster period started to suffer from mesothelioma, and some of them already passed away. Moreover, a great number of citizens rushed to Kobe from all over the Japan to voluntarily join the relief activities after the earthquake, and they as well as the construction workers should be informed of the risk of asbestos and have medical checkup.

In 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake hit Tohoku region, and the author argues that the measures taken against asbestos after the 2011 Earthquake was also not sufficient, and that the tsunami, which was not seen in the Great Hanshin Earthquake, could have spread asbestos in collapsed buildings and rubbles in Tohoku to much wider areas than in 1995.