Media Release
For Immediate Release: May 28, 2013
Charity Walk in BC for Canada’s #1 Occupational Killer - Asbestos-related Diseases
The Asbestos-related Research, Education & Advocacy Fund (AREA Fund), which raises funds for asbestos-related projects and raises awareness of the devastating effects of asbestos exposure, will be hosting its second annual “Walk for Truth - Asbestos Kills” event in June.
Powell River BC, June 22, 2013 – AREA Fund is hosting a family-friendly walk to raise awareness of the hazards of asbestos, to raise funds for asbestos-related research, education and advocacy projects, and to honour all victims of asbestos. The walk will have guest speakers, followed by a walk through town carrying message signs, and will close with a hotdog barbeque.The day before the walk there will be a medical education session for doctors and following the walk there will be an asbestos novel book reading at a local coffee shop. For all details visit http://www.areafund.ca/2013_Walk.html .
AREA Fund, a BC grassroots nonprofit, is hosting its “Walk for Truth - Asbestos Kills” event in Powell River on June 22, 21013. The walk will open at the Recreation Complex with guest speakers, including Pat Martin, Winnipeg's MP and ban asbestos activist, and the daughter of an asbestos victim. Participants will help raise awareness by carrying asbestos message signs on a 3.5 km walk through town and will honour asbestos victims by dropping 107 daisies from the footbridge into the creek below. The daisies represent the 107,000 people that the World Health Organization estimates will die from asbestos-related diseases this year alone. The walk will close with a hotdog barbeque and a photo op for kids with the fire fighter’s mascot Sparky.
Following the barbeque, there will be a free book reading and signing at River City Coffee with Canadian author Jim Williams for his award winning novel Rock Reject; it won the inaugural Beacon Award for social justice literature. Set in a BC asbestos mining town in the 1970s, it’s a story about accepting responsibility for one’s actions, corporate irresponsibility, and the blind pursuit of profit at the expense of physical and environmental health. The author (originally from BC) is flying in from Halifax, NS with his family.
On June 21, there will be a continuing medical education session on asbestos-related diseases at the Powell River Hospital; it will be open to all medical practitioners. The presenters, Dr. Christopher Lee, MD FRCPC (BC Cancer Agency) and Dr. Tim Takaro, MD, MPH, (Occupational Medicine Clinic, VGH) are well-respected experts in the field.
Being the number one occupational killer in BC, and right across Canada, asbestos-related diseases touch many lives, but workers are not the only ones at risk. More than 4,000 products contained asbestos; these products are in buildings constructed before 1990, including homes, public buildings and workplaces. Everyone is susceptible to asbestos exposure and asbestos-related diseases. There is no known safe exposure limit to asbestos and no cures for the diseases it creates. Prevention is the only “cure”. AREA Fund is encouraging everyone participate in the “Walk for Truth” http://www.areafund.ca/2013_Walk.html .
About AREA Fund - The Ford family of Powell River, BC created AREA Fund in 2010 in loving memory of Dave Ford who died of mesothelioma (a terminal cancer in the lining of the lungs caused by asbestos). AREA Fund was created when the family learned that asbestos-related diseases are the number one occupational killer in Canada, and that there was no Canadian fund to specifically support asbestos-related research, education and advocacy work. AREA Fund’s mission is to raise funds for asbestos-related research, education and advocacy projects, and to raise awareness of the devastating effects of exposure to asbestos. For more information visit: www.areafund.ca.
Media Contact Tracy Ford, AREA Fund Co-founder
weekdays 604-439-2330
evenings and weekends 604-540-5103
tracy@areafund.ca
