Twenty years of education to arrive, no doubt, at non-places. The asbestos scandal has just experienced a new twist. Considering that it is impossible to determine with certainty when the victims were intoxicated, the Paris prosecutor’s office has just requested the end of the criminal investigations, AFP tells us. Thus, around twenty files could be classified by the Paris public health center.
And yet! Everywhere in France, from the shipyards of Dunkirk to the Jussieu campus, people have been exposed for years to this carcinogenic fiber. Often with dramatic consequences. According to health authorities, recalls Agence France-Presse, asbestos could be responsible for 10 to 20% of lung cancers and cause 100,000 deaths by 2025.
The prosecution’s requisitions do not call into question the link between asbestos and several pathologies, but the magistrates could not “date the exposure or the contamination”, according to information collected by The world and the AFP. In other words, it is impossible to confuse the authors of the offences. The protagonists cannot therefore be referred to the courts.
The National Association for the Defense of Asbestos Victims (Andeva) is crying foul and believes that justice is interpreting the results of a judicial expertise carried out in 2016 contrary. “According to the experts, explains a representative of the association , as soon as we were exposed, we were contaminated. It is absurd that the magistrates have a diametrically opposed reading”. As soon as the orders are issued, Andeva will appeal.
But, in this legal battle, the victims have, most of the time, suffered setbacks.
