Asbestosis smoke screen

Rafael Rubio, who has worked for TMB (the com­pany run­ning Barcelona’s un­der­ground) since 1978, is about to start a legal bat­tle. He wants recog­ni­tion that his as­besto­sis was caused by the in­hala­tion of as­bestos par­ti­cles over his years of work for Barcelona’s un­der­ground trans­port sys­tem. His claim, which was dis­cussed yes­ter­day at a press con­fer­ence in the head­quar­ters of the lawyers’ as­so­ci­a­tion Col·lec­tiu Ronda, is being de­nied by TMB. The com­pany ar­gues that to this day only 22 cases of un­der­ground work­ers with this sort of dis­ease have been recorded, and that none of them are as se­ri­ous as Rubio’s .

The eight trade unions that make up the un­der­ground’s works coun­cil be­lieve that this case is a clear ex­am­ple of the “opaque” pol­icy adopted by man­age­ment and they are ac­cus­ing the com­pany of ig­nor­ing ev­i­dence of a se­ri­ous oc­cu­pa­tional health prob­lem that could also be an issue for pub­lic health. In con­se­quence, they have called for the res­ig­na­tions of CEO Enric Cañas and pres­i­dent Mer­cedes Vidal.

The unions see Rafael Rubio’s case as merely the tip of the ice­berg and yes­ter­day called on re­tired work­ers and the rel­a­tives of work­ers who passed away due to lung dis­eases to get in touch and con­sider tak­ing legal ac­tion. Rubio sug­gested that the sig­nif­i­cant mor­tal­ity rate of work­ers from the same work­shop as him may have been as­bestos re­lated.

Rubio said yes­ter­day that he used to work in a pit where the train’s wheels and brake pads were spun and that he was con­stantly ex­posed to streams of dust (for years with­out any pro­tec­tive gear). It was not until 2002 that, in keep­ing with the law, ma­te­r­ial con­tain­ing as­bestos was re­moved.