Banning Asbestos Was Only Half the Battle: How South Africa Is Learning to Remove It Safely

More than sixty countries have banned asbestos, yet the deadly fibers remain woven into the fabric of daily life for millions of people. In low-income neighborhoods across the world, asbestos-cement roofing and wall panels installed decades ago continue to weather, crack, and shed microscopic fibers into homes, gardens, and playgrounds. A new study published in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Science argues that this lingering threat is not primarily a scientific or regulatory problem but a governance one, and it offers one of the first detailed blueprints for how a state can systematically dismantle the hazard in occupied, vulnerable settlements.

The research, led by David Lefutso of the Disaster Management Training and Education Centre for Africa at the University of the Free State, together with colleagues at the University of Johannesburg, examines South Africa’s Programme on Rectification of Pre-1994 Residential Properties, a state-funded housing initiative embedded in the National Housing Code. From this program the team reverse-engineered what they call a Risk-Governed Housing Remediation Framework, an analytically abstracted model that integrates risk appraisal, multi-level institutional coordination, engineering standards, occupational health safeguards, procurement design, fiscal oversight, regulatory convergence, and community participation into a single operational system. Their central claim is striking: the danger lies not in a lack of rules, but in the absence of an implementation architecture that synchronizes the rules that already exist.

The scientific case for urgency is well established. Asbestos refers to a group of naturally occurring silicate fibers prized historically for their durability, heat resistance, and insulating properties. When disturbed, these materials release fibers that cause mesothelioma, lung cancer, and asbestosis, and the World Health Organization maintains that there is no known safe threshold for human exposure. Because disease latency can span decades, the authors describe legacy asbestos as a slow-onset disaster: a hazard whose outcomes depend less on uncertainty about the science than on government action and capacity. Exposure persists most acutely during maintenance, renovation, removal, and waste handling, precisely the activities that dominate life in ageing, low-income housing stock.

South Africa carries a particularly heavy burden. The country was once a major producer and consumer of asbestos, and its townships and state-financed homes are dotted with asbestos-cement roofs and cladding that have deteriorated over decades. Studies of township housing have documented environmental and domestic exposure routes around houses with asbestos-cement roofs, and community-level research across low- and middle-income countries confirms that routine disturbance and informal disposal practices create continuous household exposure pathways. National abatement regulations, including the Asbestos Abatement Regulations of 2020, require identification of asbestos in place, inventories, risk assessments, and management plans, but the study finds that such tools alone do not generate the institutional capacity, budgets, and coordination needed for area-wide remediation in occupied neighborhoods.

The framework’s first component treats risk-based targeting as a genuine governance mechanism rather than a routine diagnostic step. Condition surveys, hazard identification, and professional engineering judgement become decision points that determine whether asbestos-containing materials should be removed, encapsulated, or otherwise managed. This matters because poorly planned removal can itself spread fibers, particularly where sheets are weathered, damaged, or informally altered in densely occupied environments. By making professional assessment a precondition for funding and implementation, the framework formalizes technical judgement as a filter, ensuring that the choice between removal and containment is justified by exposure likelihood, material condition, technical feasibility, and the capacity to prevent secondary exposure during the work.

The second and third components address institutional fragmentation and engineering quality. Asbestos remediation sits at the intersection of environmental regulation, labor control, housing delivery, building standards, and municipal enforcement, mandates that in many countries operate in parallel silos. The South African design links national policy custodianship, provincial implementation authority, municipal enforcement, and independent professional oversight into one operational chain, while approved inspection authorities, professional engineers, contractors, and occupational health actors share responsibility for inspection, certification, and verification. This layered accountability reduces the risk that a single authority commissions, implements, and certifies the safety of its own work. Engineering specifications for wall construction, roof sheeting, fixing methods, and enrollment with the National Home Builders Registration Council are treated as upstream governance criteria that shape funding approval and quality assurance, aligning hazardous material removal with broader housing improvement in line with the Sendai Framework’s emphasis on reducing existing risk through safer construction.

Occupational health receives equally systematic treatment. The framework positions worker safety not as a narrow compliance requirement but as a system for preventing risk displacement, a critical concern when removal occurs near households, schools, and pedestrian routes. Requirements for risk assessment, safety planning, personal protective equipment, decontamination, air monitoring, medical surveillance, and long-term exposure records are directly linked to community protection and post-work clearance. The study is explicit that remediation does not automatically reduce risk the moment work begins: badly governed removal can create new exposure pathways for workers, residents, and surrounding communities, so worker and household protection are framed as mutually reinforcing obligations rather than separate ones.

Two of the framework’s most distinctive components concern money and justice. Procurement is used as an instrument of environmental justice: contractor eligibility, competitive bidding, and a mandated 35 percent participation rate for micro, small and medium enterprises link remediation to local economic inclusion, so that communities bearing disproportionate environmental risk also benefit from the public investment flowing into their neighborhoods. Fiscal governance is treated as a safeguard in its own right. A Funding Resources Test and a Value-for-Money Test act as gatekeeping mechanisms, ensuring that large-scale remediation does not quietly cannibalize budgets committed to new housing and infrastructure. The authors argue that fiscal control is part of the governance of justice, because poorly designed remediation can unintentionally divert resources from other vulnerable households.

The final component embeds social vulnerability and community participation into the safety architecture itself. Written consent, temporary relocation where needed, consumer education, communication planning, grievance channels, and Community Liaison Officers recognize that remediation happens in domestic settings, not controlled industrial environments. A technically sound intervention, the study argues, can fail if residents fear the process, distrust implementers, or are excluded from decisions affecting their homes. Trust, cooperation, and local knowledge determine whether remediation proceeds without resistance, misunderstanding, or secondary exposure, making participation a condition for safe implementation rather than a courtesy.

The authors are careful about the limits of their contribution. The analysis is a policy design study, not an evaluation of implementation performance, exposure reduction, or cost-effectiveness, and it draws on document analysis and a structured literature review rather than interviews with households, officials, or contractors. The framework is grounded in South Africa’s institutional context, and its transferability depends on local regulatory, fiscal, and governance conditions. Even so, its implications reach well beyond asbestos. The same governance logic applies to lead-based paint, contaminated soils, unsafe roofing materials, and radon, slow-onset hazards embedded in the built environments of vulnerable communities worldwide. The study’s enduring message is that prohibition was never the finish line: until legacy hazards are eradicated or safely managed, the decisive question is whether governance systems can remove them safely, fairly, and sustainably, one roof at a time.

Subject of Research: Governance frameworks for legacy asbestos remediation in low-income housing

Article Title: From Prohibition to Protection: A Governance Framework for Asbestos Remediation in Vulnerable Settlements

Article References: Lefutso, D., Ogundeji, A. A., Nyam, Y. S., & Buthelezi, N. B. C. (2026). From Prohibition to Protection: A Governance Framework for Asbestos Remediation in Vulnerable Settlements. International Journal of Disaster Risk Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13753-026-00767-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s13753-026-00767-1

Keywords: asbestos remediation, risk governance, disaster risk governance, environmental justice, low-income housing, South Africa, occupational health, mesothelioma, housing policy, slow-onset disaster, procurement, community participation