I never heard of the term "greenwash" until John J.W. Rogers used it, but his article itself was an uninformed diatribe against "fear mongers" concerned about the health effects of chrysotile asbestos (CA) ("Stop using asbestos? Not so fast," Nov. 10 Point of View article). He cites a 1988 article in the journal Chest and makes a non-testable assertion about "no danger" being reported from naturally occurring CA.
I went to Google Scholar and put in "health effects of CA" and got over 5,000 citations. One of the first was titled "C.A. is the main cause of pleural mesothelioma," Amer J. Indus. Med. (30: 252-266; 1996) by Smith and Wright. Another was about non-occupational exposure to CA that indicated there were "excess" deaths from lung cancer in women who were only environmentally exposed to CA.
Why was this article in The N&O anyway? It sounded like it was written by the asbestos industry, used out-of-date citations and was totally wrong concerning the adverse health effects associated with CA.
