International Ban Asbestos Secretariat Devil’s Dust Awards 2025
by Laurie Kazan-Allen
In the run-up to the glitzy 2025 awards season which sees recognition for stars of stage and screen, the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat (IBAS) is acknowledging impactful work of a different kind. Winners of the Screen Actors Guild, the Academy Awards, the Golden Globe and Critics Choice receive imposing and tasteful statuettes to mark their successes.
Not so the “winners” of the IBAS Devil’s Dust Awards 2025 whose ruthless promotion of an acknowledged carcinogen and/or suppression of victims’ rights have earned them a rather revolting accolade: a virtual avatar appropriately nicknamed the Lucifer.1
The Devil’s Dust Awards shine a light on the dark web of shyster-scientists, avaricious businessmen, sleezy lobbyists, callous civil servants, corrupt labor officials, impotent international agencies, obdurate regional bodies and submissive national institutions. While the high-profile awards mentioned in paragraph one beget rejoicing and celebrity, the Devil’s Dust Awards signal public censure and contempt.
RECEIPIENT OF IBAS DEVIL’S DUST 2025 AWARD
CATEGORY: NATIONAL AUTHORITY
NAME OF WINNER: THE SUPREME COURT
LOCATION: BRAZIL
The winner in this category is the Supreme Court of Brazil which inexplicably erased a published 2024 deadline for issuing a verdict over the unconstitutionality of the country’s continued production of asbestos. More than seven years ago, the Court outlawed the industry and yet in 2025, Brazil is the world’s 3rd largest asbestos supplier. Recently, Brazil became the largest exporter to India, over-taking Russia in 2022 with annual sales of 169,134 tonnes.
It is clear that Supreme Court Justices have bowed down before the industrial might of those controlling the income stream generated by the output of the Cana Brava chrysotile asbestos mine with little or no concern for the deadly consequences for workers and communities at home and abroad. Shame on them!
RECEIPIENT OF IBAS DEVIL’S DUST 2025 AWARD
CATEGORY: CORPORATION
NAME OF WINNER: THE ALTRAD GROUP
LOCATION: FRANCE
For its consistent refusal to engage with efforts to raise life-saving funds for medical research, this year’s award goes to France’s Altrad Group, a $2.9 billion construction and industrial services multinational. In 2017, Altrad acquired Cape – formerly one of the UK’s biggest asbestos conglomerates and a global player in the asbestos sector. At about the same time as the take-over was formalized, internal Cape documents were made public which revealed the extreme lengths to which the company had gone to downplay the asbestos hazard, withhold damning workplace data and weaken protective measures.
Having studied the documentation, the Asbestos Victims Support Groups Forum UK launched the Cape Must Pay Campaign, which called on the company to make a £10 million donation to medical research. As the current owner of Cape, Altrad was asked to honor the debt to the asbestos-injured. It has refused to do so.
RECEIPIENT OF IBAS DEVIL’S DUST 2025 AWARD
CATEGORY: TRADE ASSOCIATION
NAME OF WINNER: FIBRE CEMENT MANUFACTURERS’ ASSOCIATION
LOCATION: INDONESIA
After the Supreme Court of Indonesia upheld a petition calling for the mandatory labelling of hazardous asbestos-cement roofing material (2024), a group representing commercial interests – the Fibre Cement Manufacturers’ Association – sued petitioners including the consumer protection organization LPKSM Yasa Nata Budi and campaigning group the Indonesian Ban Asbestos Network for massive damages and punitive fines.
As far as we are aware, this ferocious legal attack is unprecedented anywhere in the world and confirms what civil society campaigners have long suspected: that there are no depths to which asbestos pushers will not sink to protect profits.
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