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(CNN Spanish) - Nagoya 5000 trains were manufactured in the 80s for the subway of that city in central Japan. The Nagoya Metro decided to take them out of circulation between 2011 and 2015 to replace them with more modern formations.
The authorities of the city of Buenos Aires saw it as an opportunity. In 2013, the management of the then head of government, Mauricio Macri, bought 30 Nagoya 5000 wagons, which began to circulate on line C, which connects part of the southern part of the city with the Retiro terminal. It was in December 2015, during the mandate of the current mayor, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta.
According to an expertise accessed by CNN, the Nagoya 5000 contain asbestos, also known as asbestos, a carcinogenic mineral banned in Japan since 2006 and in Argentina since 2001.
Source: Metro Guild / National University of the South
Despite the ban in the country and as with the purchase of the CAF 5000 trains to the Madrid Metro in 2011, the Buenos Aires authorities bought formations built decades ago that contain this carcinogenic substance.
The results of these studies were delivered in November by the asbestos specialist, Leticia Lescano, who conducted the studies at the request of the underground guild.
Source: Metro Guild / National University of the South
Lescano, a professor of geology at the University of the South (Bahía Blanca) and a researcher at the Scientific Research Commission (CIC-CGAMA) of the province of Buenos Aires, told CNN that “all the spark arresters of the Nagoya and the plates of the spark arresters, and some brake insulations contained chrysotile asbestos in large quantities. ”
According to Metrovías, the private operator of the Buenos Aires subway, 121 trains are currently circulating on the network. According to CNN research, 40 of them contain asbestos.
Lilian Capone is a medical specialist in Pulmonology and Occupational Medicine. It integrates the medical board that examines the health of subway workers. "Asbestos is a fiber, so it has a needle thread that enters the airways and is impacted inside the lung, and can affect both the lung and the pleura," he told a news conference. November 19th.
Sbase, the public company that owns the Buenos Aires metro, bought the Nagoya 5000 through the Japanese corporation Marubeni. The Japanese gave the City a certificate that the trains met "safety and environmental standards."
Source: Underground of Buenos Aires State Society
From Tokyo, Marubeni's spokeswoman told CNN that when the company sold the Nagoya 5000, it warned the Buenos Aires authorities that the trains contained asbestos. Sbase denies it. The Japanese company insists that it has documents that prove it, but refused to share them with us.
On the certificate that contradicts the version of Marubeni and in which company left that Nagoya 5000 trains complied with safety and environmental standards, "the company argues that" it was made at the request of the customer. "
Despite the danger of asbestos, experts argue that passengers would not be in danger. It is the subway workers who are really exposed to this carcinogenic material.
“The risk of disease is related to the exposure time and the dose, which would be the amount. That is to say, the workers that we have seen with thickening of pleura, pleural plaques, are those of the workshops, which are the ones that are most exposed, ”said Dr. Capone. "Asbestos brings inflammation, fibrosis and cancer," he added.
The problem of asbestos in the subway already affects three lines: B, C and E. These branches receive an average of more than 460,000 passengers and 2,181 workers every day, according to Metrovías.
A report by Borg Argentina, the company hired to decontaminate part of the fleet, estimated that only on line B should it extract 2,600 kilos of asbestos. In that branch there are at least 13 workers in the workshops officially diagnosed with pleural plaques in their lungs due to asbestos exposure.
Workers on lines C and E have not yet been evaluated and the union requests that all subway employees be examined.
Roberto Pianelli, general secretary of the metro guild, told CNN: “There are more than 4,000 workers who were working in an area contaminated with a carcinogen that, on top of that, the diseases it produces have a latency period of 10, 15 years, then they are going to have to study every year to see when they have the misfortune of being sick. ”
Sbase and Metrovías do not recognize the results of the expert opinion ordered by the union in this case. They maintain that in mid-December they will begin official exams on Nagoya 5000 trains. This has already happened with the CAF 5000 trains and with the Mitsubishi trains. In both cases, the official expertise was carried out months later and finally coincided with the results of the study commissioned by the union.
In mid-November, the union resumed force measures and filed a collective amparo with the local Justice.
Under the protection, the union requests that the contact of workers with asbestos be prohibited, that all those who may have been exposed in the last 40 years be identified and that a date be set to begin the process of buying new trains .
A judicial source informed CNN that they will analyze the scientific examinations of the trains to determine if the guild's request is accepted.
