Juhani Artto
Translated by Linus Atarah
Turkey, the world’s third jeans exporter banned manual sandblasting last year, even though it has been known for 70 years that it causes silicosis.
The morals of jeans wearers are being put to a test. Whether to buy jeans whose production process could be lethal to people who work in the sector.
One harsh question to the jeans shops: Whether to sell products which workers produce at the cost of their lives to customers.
At issue is a product to known to all, jeans, which have been treated to look fashionable by with the appearance of being used, by manual sandblasting. In Turkey the use of that method has exacted a high price. At least 40 workers in jeans manufacture have died due to inhaling sand dust at their workplace.
The use of sandblasting in finalizing jeans production has been going on for a good part of two decades. It began in Italy in the late 1980s.
There is no cure for silicosis
When jeans are sandblasted, very fine sand dust float in the air that the workers breathe. The dust is from the sand which is used to blow the treated jeans material with pressurized air.
Breathing air polluted with sand dust is deadly to humans. It blocks the lung tracks causing them to get infected and scarred. If the exposure continues for a long time the worker contracts silicosis and the result is early death. There is no known cure for the disease.
In the Turkish jeans manufacturing industry the first two cases of silicosis were detected in 2005. The second victim of the treacherous working conditions died the day following the doctor’s diagnosis. The victims had begun work as sandblasters five years previously at the age of only 13 and 14. Neither of them smoked.
A Turkish medical doctor, Zeki Kiliҫaslan, in Today’s Zaman publication in 2008 estimated that there could be up to 5000 sandblast workers in Turkey who are ill with silicosis. At that time known cases were over 500. Some of the victims probably are migrant workers from Turkey’s poorest neighbouring countries who were used by businesses during the beginning of the sandblasting years.
Afterwards recruitment was concentrated on young men and often minors, who migrated from the poor countryside to the cities in search of jobs. According to sources in Turkey, sandblast workers have earned between 200-400 euros a month.
Workers who sandblast jeans contract silicosis much more quickly than miners and foundry workers where it takes 20 years or more from the start of work to coming down with the illness. In jeans workshops where the working weeks are long a few years of exposure or even shorter is enough to contract the illness.
Serious health hazards generated from jeans manufacture created a pressure group to ban the manual sandblasting of in jeans production. The Ministry banned sandblasting during the finalizing of jeans production but only in April 2009.
In the EU the process was banned 40 years ago. The World Health Organisation (WHO) had warned of the dangers associated with the spread of sand dust for the first time already in 1932.
Thus knowledge of the risks has been available for decades but Turkish decision-makers delayed, listening more to businesses in the sector than the movement demanding the banning of the process. Officials did not want to step on the toes of companies in the sector because jeans manufacture is big business in Turkey. The country is the world’s third exporter of jeans. In 2008 the value of Turkish jeans export rose to 2.3 billion dollars, i.e., 1.8 billion euros.
Life is cheaper than protection gear
Jeans can be treated to look like used ones by some other methods other than manual sandblast. It can even be done by bleaching the jeans in the sun. Of course the process is slow and that reduces the interest in it.
The alternatives have not attracted companies especially because manual sandblasting can be done with little investment. If there is little interest in the health of worker, money is only needed in compressors as well as simple equipment with which the worker directs the sand into the spots of the material that need to be bleached and softened.
A year after the Ministry’s decision, it is unclear how well banning sandblasting has being adhered to in Turkey. It is known that some Turkish firms have reacted to the ban by transferring the production stage which sandblasting to countries where there are weak protection regulations. Not long ago firms in EU member countries did a similar thing when EU decision-makers placed strict limits to the use of sandblasting. At that time work was transferred to other places, among them Turkey.
After the ban Turkish firms have directed its commissioned work for sand-blasting to at least, China, India Egypt and Bangladesh, says HesaMag, a publication concerned with work safety. In addition it is know that manual sandblasting is used in the garment sector of Mexico and Cambodia.
It can be said it is almost certain that in spite of the ban manual sandblasting is also still in use in Turkey. Production is carried out in small manufacturing centres where official inspection is weak.
An on-going wide campaign
In light of such knowledge it is clear that part of the used jeans treated to look like used ones on sale by garment shops are produced in conditions that are lethal to workers.
International Clean Clothes Campaign is at the moment gathering information on the production of sandblast jeans. The goal is to get garment retail firms as well as consumers wake up to the problems of the workers producing jeans and participate in its solution by the choices that they make.
According to the campaign garment retailers should concentrate their supplies on those manufacturers who do not use manual sandblasting. Consumers can push firms towards that direction by demanding information on the production process of products and refusing to buy risk jeans.
In Turkey trade unions are disseminating information on the risks involved in sandblasting in areas where it has been widely used in the last years. Similarly action is being taken to have compensation paid to those who have damaged their health sandblasting jeans.
And what about the possibilities of stopping manual sandblasting in China, Bangladesh, Egypt and in other countries where trade unions are weak? In this task Chinese and Egyptians Bangladeshis as well as and Turks need the support of jeans users and jeans traders in other parts of the world.
The writer is a freelance journalist specialized in trade union issues who has worked as a sand-blaster in a German rust protection firm in 1981-1982.
