A Hong Kong NGO has issued a report on working conditions in a Chinese factory producing iPhone touch screens for Apple and called on the company to apologise to workers for a spate of chemical poisonings. Hong Kong-based SACOM alleges workers at a factory owned and operated by Taiwanese manufacturer Wintek (which produces touch panels and flat screen displays) have been poisoned as a result of using n-hexane to clean iPhone touch screens.

The report also alleges non-compliance with Chinese law and Apple's code of conduct. You can download the report here.

Globalisation Monitor - a Hong Kong NGO - has published a book documenting the long fight by Chinese workers over cadmium poisoning in battery factories owned and operated by Gold Peak Batteries (a Singapore-listed subsidiary of the Gold Peak Group, a Hong Kong-based conglomerate). No Choice but to Fight! A documentation of battery women workers’ struggle for health and dignity takes the reader through China’s official complaints system, the Bureau of Letters and Calls, to disciplined picket lines that briefly brought production at a major global battery factory to a halt. You can see more here, including details of how to purchase the book.

In April, the Asia Monitor Resource Centre in Hong Kong hosted the Asian Asbestos Conference 2009 (more here), at which numerous speakers denounced the tragic human consequences resulting from the continued use of asbestos across the region. It is troubling, then, to see now that a study in Japan shows that one in eight lung cancer patients has previously been exposed to asbestos. The research was conducted and jointly released by 12 medical institutions across the nation. About 60,000 people die from lung cancer in Japan annually, which according to the new study means that up to 7,500 deaths could be directly attributed to asbestos exposure. In 2007, only 660 people were recognised as suffering from asbestos-related lung cancer and thus eligible for government aid. The new study throws this figure into doubt and may well open a floodgate of compensation claims. See more here.

The Asian Asbestos Conference 2009 is hosted this year by the Asia Monitor Resource Centre along with the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat and other partners (you can see more here). Asbestos is a lethal substance still in use across Asia. Even though it is banned in many countries, an "asbestos cancer epidemic may take 10 million lives worldwide before its probable global ban" (as stated by Joseph LaDou, University of California).

It is tragic that in Asia we are still talking of a ban, where asbestos related diseases hardly surface in official statistics and few doctors are able to correctly diagnose occupational lung diseases like silicosis and asbestosis (which are routinely diagnosed or misdiagnosed as tuberculosis), but thousands are dying quietly and without assistance of any kind. To add to the misery, the asbestos manufacturing lobby, which in the past was led by the Chrysotile Institute from Canada and now aggressively promoted by the Chrysotile Association led by Russian manufactures, has been active in promoting "white asbestos" as a safe and cheap material when used under "controlled conditions". Controlled conditions were difficult to achieve in the West and it is ambitious to say the least that such conditions exist in Asia.

AAC 2009 is an important event and will start this Sunday (27 April). It will be worthwhile attending if you happen to be in town and are interested in the issue.

Thirty-four miners were trapped in a flooded coal mine on Monday morning in Henan. The accident happened at about 7:20 a.m in the Gaomendong Coal Mine in Jiaxian County of Pingdingshan City, when 42 miners were working underground. Eight escaped, but 32 others were trapped. According to latest news, rescuers pulled 32 of the 34 trapped miners out of the coal mine alive. One died and another was still missing. The official of State Administration of Work Safety said the coal mine in Jiaxian County was operating illegally, when the accident happened. More here.