Aim of special session Due to their high incidence and high rates of mortality ARDs are the occupational diseases with the greatest impact. In spite of intensive preventive actions in many countries, the incidence of ARDs are often still growing as the latency periods of malignancies are expiring. Even more disturbingly asbestos is still used in many parts of the world.

There are several ongoing national and global initiatives and programmes for elimination of ARDs, including primary prevention through a ban, protection of demolition workers and better identification, notification, registration, reporting and compensation of disease cases. Policies in countries and continents have several common features, but also important differences in practical implementation and results.

To achieve a decline of ARDs globally, global actions for elimination of use of asbestos are required together with a careful protection of workers in the works for demolition and handling of existing asbestos and asbestos contaminated waste.

The session aims to compile a global overview of the present situation in the ARD elimination policies in different parts of the world by drawing from national and regional experiences and will discuss the proposals for global action for elimination of asbestos-related diseases.

¹Dr. Henrik J. Wolff, ²Professor Ken Takahashi, ³Professor Seong-Kyu Kang, ⁴Professor Jorma H Rantanen, ⁵Dr. Eduardo Algranti, ⁶Professor Philip Landrigan

¹Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Helsinki Finland

²Asbestos Diseases Research Institute, University of Sydney, Australia

³Gachon University Gil Medical Centre, Incheon, Republic of Korea

⁴University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

⁵Fundacentro, Sao Paulo, Brazil

⁶Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York (NY), USA