The jolt of fright came at the bottom of an information sheet sent to reporters:
"This press release is printed on chrysotile paper."
Why should that simple statement lead to nervous tremors?
Because chrysotile is not just any old ingredient in paper. It's a form of asbestos. And asbestos is a convicted mass-killer, one of the most feared substances on Earth.
Over the past century, it has caused millions of deaths, and the annual toll is still at least 100,000.
Asbestos is so lethal that most uses have been abandoned, and it is banned outright in more than 20 countries. It isn't outlawed here. But it has been so effectively cast into utter darkness that most Canadians could be excused for complacently believing it's an issue of the past.
Not the sort of stuff you'd want dropped on to your lap.
Yet, here it was - two glossy, light beige sheets - sent through the mail.
The press release, from a Montreal-based lobby group called the Asbestos Institute, is part of an effort by the industry and the federal and Quebec governments to rehabilitate asbestos by demonstrating it can be safely used.
At the same time, opponents are stepping up their campaign for a global ban on all forms of asbestos.
The two sides are digging in.
"It's a war," says Laurie Kazan-Allen, who heads the British-based Ban Asbestos International. At a conference held this fall in Ottawa, the group founded a Canadian branch.
Both sides say there's a lot at stake.
For asbestos supporters, it's two economically depressed Quebec towns, three faltering mines, more than 1,000 jobs and - federal officials say - a large part of Canada's trade in minerals and metals.
For their foes, it's human lives.
Asbestos people accuse the critics of hypocrisy and spreading disinformation.
Their ranks include "a whole set of fake ecologists divorced from reality" and "lawyers ... who enrich themselves on the backs of pseudo-victims of asbestos," says Reynald Paré, head of another industry group.
The critics retort that Canada - which they call the backbone of the world asbestos trade - has a sorry history of denying, or suppressing evidence, that asbestos is hazardous.
Scientists manipulated data and used unsound techniques in industry-funded studies that concluded chrysotile is innocuous, according to a new report in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine. Manufacturers and the Canadian government "continue to use them to promote ... asbestos."
"Canada's attitude is beyond the pale," says Daniel Green, of STOP, a Montreal-based environmental group. "It's a desperate attempt to save a desperate industry."
Asbestos has been used since 4,000 B.C. Back then, it made candles burn longer.
Its modern era began in 1879, when a mine in Quebec's Eastern Townships began producing the indestructible, flexible, fireproof, rot-resistant "magic mineral." By the 1960s, it was the miracle ingredient in car brake linings, pipe wrap, home insulation, stove ovens, floor and ceiling tiles, inflammable textiles - about 3,000 products in all.
As its use spread, though, so did horror stories.
Bands of asbestos are found in rocks. It comes in what appear to be long strands but are actually bundles of millions of miniscule fibres. As they're handled, the bundles disintegrate and the fibres float into the air. When they're inhaled, they settle in the lungs. Odds are, that's a sentence to a painful, lingering death.
Some 20 to 40 years after the exposure begins, the fibres cause a lung-destroying disease called asbestosis, or aggressive lung cancer, or mesothelioma - a brutal cancer in the abdominal lining with tumours so powerful they crush bones.
As the evidence and death toll mounted, asbestos became a pariah - banned, restricted, or crushed by billions of dollars of wrongful-death lawsuits.
Even so, it didn't disappear.
It continues to be produced at three mines in the Eastern Townships. A bit is used in Canada; in brake linings for big trucks and to manufacture chlorine. More than 90 per cent, though - worth about $130 million a year - is exported. Most goes to poor Third World countries where it's mixed with cement to make durable wall and roof sheets for low-cost housing, or pipes to carry water.
But the Canadian industry is a dim remnant of its shining glory days. Not only have global sales plummeted, but the Quebec mines have also been hurt by tough competition from Russia, China and Brazil.
The mines - the mainstays of two towns, Thetford Mines and Asbestos - are hanging on by their fingertips.
The biggest, the Jeffrey Mine - a massive open pit, two kilometres across - is under court protection from creditors. It's operating, with a judge's permission, for just three months while it fills a small order for the U.S. space shuttle. One company runs the other two mines. Since there's too little business to keep both going, they alternate: When one is open, the other is closed.
The total workforce is down to less than 1,200 from a peak of 10,000; annual output has plunged from 1.5 million tonnes to just 240,500. Canada has slipped from second to third among the world's asbestos producers.
Rather than let the mines slide on to history's scrap heap, Ottawa, Quebec and the industry are working to halt, or even reverse, the decline.
This year, Ottawa and Quebec are each contributing $250,000 to the Asbestos Institute - which has received $54 million in government and industry support since it was created in 1984. The two governments also sponsor trade missions and bring businesspeople, journalists and others to Canada on fact-finding trips. They recently decided to allow asbestos cement to be used in their buildings.
Quebec has funded pro-asbestos health studies, and introduced an industry-support plan that includes research into new products for the Canadian market. The most promising so far include adding a bit of asbestos to asphalt for highway construction; mixing it with cement to make hollow utility poles that let wires be repaired at ground level; and creating indestructible paper for passports, archives - and that frisson-inducing press release.
Ottawa sends its lawyers, diplomats and politicians - all the way up to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien - into the fray whenever other nations threaten further restrictions. In the late 1990s, it went to the World Trade Organization to challenge France's decision to ban all asbestos, and lost. This week, at a United Nations conference in Geneva, Canada and Russia blocked changes to the Rotterdam Convention on trade in hazardous materials that would have let countries ban imports of chrysotile.
The Asbestos Institute tried to get a Brazilian labour inspector fired for campaigning against asbestos.
It bused 250 asbestos workers and their families from the Eastern Townships to protest outside the Ottawa conference.
It backs sister groups in countries that buy Canadian asbestos. This fall, one of those groups bought large pro-asbestos newspaper ads in India - Canada's largest customer - where a ban is being debated.
Until recently, all this effort appeared to fail. Some 20 countries, including most of the European Union, imposed outright bans. The entire EU will eliminate asbestos at the start of 2005.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a ban in 1999. Chile imposed one two years ago, despite a personal plea from Chrétien to its president. Argentina followed suit.
Since then, though, the battle has hit a stalemate. More than 60 countries still use asbestos; production and sales have levelled off.
Japan agreed to a ban, but with so many loopholes it's expected to have little impact. Several cities and states in Brazil outlawed asbestos but the national government refuses. The debate in India is deadlocked.
A court ruling overturned the U.S. ban; Argentina's has been delayed.
The main message of its supporters is that asbestos can be safe.
To understand that argument you need to know there are two main forms of the mineral. The first, amphibole, breaks down into relatively long, stiff, needle-like fibres. Since any exposure can be lethal, it was banned virtually worldwide 30 years ago.
All the focus now is on the second type - chrysotile, or white asbestos. Its fibres are short, curly, and silky. The Canadian industry has argued for decades that those fibres pose little risk. Its most recent evidence - a $1 million study funded by the institute and Quebec - looked at biopersistence, or how long asbestos fibres stay in the lungs after they're inhaled. Its recent report concludes half the chrysotile is gone within 16 days, compared with 466 days for amphibole. The institute enthusiastically trumpeted the results.
"The longer the biopersistence, the greater the health risk," says spokesperson Denis Hamel. "The finding ... shows once again that safe and responsible use of Quebec chrysotile is possible." The hazard from either type of asbestos also depends on how it's used.
In the bad old days, it was sprayed or scattered through the air as if it was as harmless as snowflakes - in fact, TV producers used it to simulate flurries and blizzards.
Asbestos dust floated through and piled up in mines and manufacturing plants; it got into the air when buildings were insulated or renovated. Unprotected, unknowing workers inhaled fibres by the millions. They wore asbestos-covered clothes home, dooming kids who ran for a hug when dad came in the door, and wives who shook out the garments before laundering them.
Apart from the mines, asbestos hit hardest in Sarnia, at the southern tip of Lake Huron, where the mineral was heavily used in the petrochemical industry. Inside a now-defunct foundry in the city, provincial inspectors once found, "probably the highest asbestos fibre concentration ever recorded." A local clinic is still dealing with more than 1,100 cases - ranging from lung damage to cancers - linked to asbestos exposure.
Mesothelioma has struck in the small city at five times the expected rate. Asbestosis is nine times more prevalent than average.
Asbestos supporters admit terrible mistakes were made.
"We all know what happens when it's not used properly," Hamel says.
But, they argue, the critics are too influenced by that tragic past. Even the current deaths are the lingering effects of long-ago exposures, they say.
"Prior to 1974, asbestos was used as insulation in buildings and ships. It was not a good use," says Louis Perron, the industry specialist at Natural Resources Canada.
"What we're living with now is in relation to that use. If it hadn't been used for that, you probably wouldn't have all the negative impressions you have now."
Things have changed, the supporters insist. But perception is everything, and the reputation of asbestos is so bad that the word is being expunged. The lobby group will soon be renamed the Chrysotile Institute. Press releases refer to chrysotile; not asbestos.
That cosmetic change might get people to take a fresh look.
If they do, the aim is then to convince them that asbestos - oops, chrysotile - is just like dozens of other substances that are dangerous if handled carelessly but pose little or no risk if a few rules are followed. It should be regulated rather than banned.
"You shouldn't ban a material because in one use it's hazardous," says Perron. "You won't ban gasoline just because it can explode."
The big issue is whether chrysotile is actually safe below a certain exposure level and, if it is, whether that low level can be achieved.
Canadian officials insist the answer to both questions is yes.
To keep exposures low, they push a strategy known as "safe use."
It requires good ventilation and protective equipment in mines and processing plants. It means always embedding the fibres in a solid material like cement, plastic resin or paper so they can't fly around as they did when they were sprayed in attics for insulation. Asbestos should be wetted while it's being handled. The air in mines and plants must be tested to make sure the number of fibres meets the "no hazard" standard.
Asbestos cement has its own regulations. The sheets and pipes are supposed to be cut to size in a properly ventilated factory before they're shipped to a job site. If they don't quite fit, builders should send them back to the plant for trimming. If they must be cut on the spot, high-speed saws and drills are to be avoided. Manufacturers are to police contractors to ensure the rules are followed.
There are alternatives to the current uses of chrysotile. Pipes are also made of iron or plastic. Cement can be strengthened with fibreglass, Kevlar, wood pulp, blast furnace slag and other materials.
Government and industry people argue the replacements are either inadequate or potentially more hazardous than chrysotile. At the very least, they say, the alternatives should be subject to the same tough scrutiny asbestos receives.
"It would be bad if we learned 10 years from now that the substitutes are hazardous, and that we're just exposing workers to another epidemic as with asbestos in the '60s and '70s," Perron says.
As a final tweak, some suggest the companies that make replacement products fund the anti-asbestos groups.
The World Health Organization offers an inconclusive assessment of chrysotile. It says exposures can be kept low in mines and factories, but not necessarily on construction sites or in other poorly controlled environments. While it concludes low exposures don't seem to cause asbestosis, it's not sure about the cancers.
And given how long it takes for asbestos to cause disease, it can't say how much difference the recent "safe use" techniques will make.
The critics completely reject the industry's case.
In the first place, they object to Canada's reliance on asbestos exports.
"It's not safe enough for Canadians but it's safe enough for foreigners," fumes Kazan-Allen. She denies Ban Asbestos International gets money from asbestos' competitors. Donations come from advocacy groups, unions and "private individuals and professionals whose lives or work have shown them the horrific effect of asbestos-related diseases."
Her side scoffs at the notion of "safe use," especially in Third World conditions where regulations are weak and poorly enforced.
What contractor will wait hours while asbestos cement sheets are sent through grid-locked traffic to be cut, asks Barry Castleman, an environmental consultant from Maryland and author of an 800-page "bible" on the history and science of asbestos. What manufacturer would crack down on its own customers?
In India, asbestos continues to arrive from Canada in big bags that are opened by hand and dumped into the cement, says Gopal Krishna, of the Ban Asbestos Network of India. The critics also argue that any new pro-chrysotile studies are just more of the industry's old deny-and-obscure tactics.
As for biopersistence, "it's a red herring," Castleman says. "Many chemicals don't last long in the body, but along the way they cause cancer."
More than 95 per cent of all the asbestos ever used has been chrysotile, he says. "It accounts for most of the disease. There is no safe exposure."
Most disturbing, the critics argue, Canada is the industry's crucial pillar. Its argument that asbestos now poses no risk - coming from such an advanced, respected country - keeps the global trade alive. Remove that scientific prop and the entire edifice would collapse.
"If Canada stopped exporting, others still would, but it would eliminate the last major obstacle to an asbestos ban," Castleman says.
"If the only people saying it's good are the Russians, we can deal with that. Canada saying it's good makes it more complicated."
The industry here is in decline, the critics argue. It may have just 10 years before economic forces pull it down. Canada's reputation is being blackened for nothing. Why not simply retrain or pension off the remaining miners, and be done with it?
Government and industry officials don't intend to give up.
It's partly a matter of trying to save jobs in a region with few economic alternatives.
As well, the mines played a big role in Quebec's history. A bitter strike in the early 1950s helped to launch the nationalist movement. It also brought former prime minister Pierre Trudeau to prominence. The province owned one of the mines in the 1980s.
For its part, Ottawa sees asbestos as the frontline of a bigger battle against a growing movement, mainly in Europe, to restrict or ban other Canadian minerals and metals - including lead, mercury, aluminium, copper, arsenic and cadmium - on the grounds they're a health hazard. The federal government isn't actually promoting asbestos, but the concept of safe use, Perron says. "It's not something done for the asbestos industry. It's for the use of all minerals and metals."
Chysotile, "is the first block in the wall. ... You can't pick and choose. You believe in safe use or you don't. You've got to fix a line and stay with it."