Eugenia Martín (Madrid, 57 years) go once a year to the pulmonologist to check if there is asbestos in their lungs. Martin is an officer and has never worked with the material, but your husband did: Julian Martin was the operator of maintenance at Metro de Madrid. “When he washed his uniform, had white powder in the pockets. I was told that it was an indirect exposure, but for many years,” recalls Martin. His partner died in October 2018, as a result of cancer caused by asbestos. “Metro never told him that I worked with that material and that it was dangerous. None of his colleagues,” laments the widow.
In the public transport company, with 7,000 employees and managed by the Community of Madrid, there are at the moment four workers with asbestosis, an occupational disease caused by exposure to asbestos. Two of them have died. The Prosecutor’s office filed a lawsuit against seven makers of Health and Prevention of Risk from Underground by crimes against the rights of workers, homicide, reckless and injury by negligence. In December pull out all the statements.
on the other hand, the Metro was sold in 2011, a number of trains (65 cars) with asbestos to Underground of Buenos Aires. Now, Subway asks, almost 15 million euros when considering illegal that sale. In addition, 13 Subway workers have ailments that could be related to the exposure to the material
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The past year, Metro said that it would conduct a TAC to their workers. “We do not consider personal risk; they have refused to do the test”, says Javier Llano, representative of the trade Union of Machinists of the company in madrid (SCMM). Metro argues that it only performs the test if prescribed by a doctor —a mutual that works with them. While it is true that the drivers have not worked with the mineral, “the reality is that there is a companion with the disease,” pointing to The Plain: “it Is evident that there is a risk”. Therefore, the SCMM has decided to pay the test to the members so wish.
The drivers they suspect that the driver fell ill because came asbestos in the cabin. Until the beginning of the dosmiles, the brake shoes of the braking system of some trains contained asbestos —Julian Martin and repairing, among other things, these pads and are still finding pieces with asbestos both in the trains as in the infrastructure of the network—. When braking, the friction of those pads degraded the material in microfibers that could have floated up to the inside of the driver’s cabin. “If she was the engineer, there is the possibility of reaching out also to the travelers of the first cars”, pointing from the SCMM.
