| Book Review | Labour History, 96 | The History Cooperative

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BOOK REVIEW

*Jock McCulloch and Geoffrey Tweedale, Defending the Indefensible: The Global Asbestos Industry and its Fight for Survival, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008. pp. xii + 325. $85.00 cloth.*
As far as occupational health hazards are concerned, a lot has been written about asbestos. It is almost certainly the best-documented and most appalling occupational health disaster, affecting almost every country from the richest to the poorest. The death toll from long latency asbestos related diseases, notably mesothelioma, is yet to peak in countries like Australia – more than 40 years after the peak periods of usage.	1
Anyone with a passing interest in health or media reporting of it will be aware of the main features of the story – the years of denial, obfuscation, manipulation and outright lies by the major asbestos producers and users about the hazards associated with asbestos. Then there was the strident resistance to paying claims for victims, delaying court proceedings while people with late stage asbestosis and mesothelioma rapidly approached death. James Hardie used the corporate veil of off shoring its business and an under-funded compensation package to evade and minimise its corporate liability. Finally, but not least, we witnessed the courage and dedication of sufferers, especially Bernie Banton, who with the Australian union movement in one of its finest moments of recent times, finally forced governments to bring Hardie to account.	2
So given all that has been written and said about asbestos over the past 30 years is there anything worth else worth knowing? Do we really need another book on asbestos? After reading Defending the Indefensible the emphatic answer I reached was yes.	. . .

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