Urban transformation process and asbestos exposure to construction demolition workers: Review

Abstract

The urban transformation project initiated as a result of our national dwelling policy, which does not consider the healthy environment and aims to satisfy only the needs of harboring and justifies the house construction in the regions with high risk of natural disasters like earthquakes. Nevertheless, it deserves to be discussed with it is environmental and occupational risk factors. During the urban transformation project, organic and inorganic dust distributed in the air as a consequence of the building demolition, some minerals, and chemicals in the debris and excavation produce toxic gasses after reaction in their environment. Exposure to the debris occurs mostly during the demolition. Asbestos, used for the infrastructure water installations, electricity supply, isolation of the floor and ceiling, presents a high risk for the workers working in the demolition in our country similar to the whole world. Asbestos, which has a long latent time, fibrogenic and mutagenic effects and causes mesothelioma independent from the exposure level and time and respiratory diseases with high disease burden such as lung cancer, interstitial lung disease, causes diseases not only during the transformation process but also after long years due to the accumulation of asbestos fibers. In this paper, we evaluated the effect of the dwelling policies on the urban transformation project and the occupational risk of asbestos in the demolition workers, who are the most important personnel in the building demolition process. We also evaluated the preventive measures, which should be implemented against this risk.