The latest report from the International Labor Organization on asbestos in factories in the Middle East and Africa has just been released.
In its latest report, the organization says that it has documented 1,988 cases of asbestos-related injuries in factories located in more than 30 countries, including the United States, China, Indonesia, India, Turkey, France, Spain and Brazil.
The study, based on information from more than 100 interviews, also found that a small number of workers in some of the factories had been exposed to asbestos, although no serious adverse effects were seen.
The report was released at a time when a number of high-profile health and environmental health crises have been unfolding in the region, including an outbreak of respiratory disease in Bangladesh that began in 2015 and has been blamed on the release of industrial fumes in a major city.
A new study released Tuesday shows that workers in several Chinese factories have been exposed, including in the Beijing subway system, where the health effects are seen most acutely among young children.
The study, which found that the workers had inhaled more than 4,000 milligrams of asbestos dust in just over four hours, also showed that many of them had inhated a level of asbestos that was “inconceivable” in the city’s subway system.
The World Health Organization has said that the outbreak of the respiratory disease has caused an estimated 2,000 deaths and 2,400 injuries across China.
The country has since launched a massive investigation into the cause.
In another example, the Chinese state-run Xinhua news agency said that a young girl who had inhamed herself in a crowded subway station was in intensive care for six days.
She was treated with antibiotics and underwent further tests to determine whether she was at increased risk of developing lung cancer.
A study by the American Institute of Environmental Medicine, a nonprofit environmental health organization, also reported that workers had breathed in as much as 11,000 times more asbestos dust than the World Health Organisation said was permissible.
In a report published last month, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that some workers had been found to have inhaled the equivalent of two tons of asbestos.
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