"ASBEST, Russia — Sniped at for decades by health advocates, Russia’s doggedly defiant producer of asbestos — a substance banned as a killer by more than 60 countries — thinks it has perhaps finally found the perfect figure for a campaign to rehabilitate the product’s deeply stained image: President Trump.

“Trump is on our side,” said Vladimir V. Kochelayev, chairman of the board of Uralasbest, one of the world’s few remaining producers of asbestos, citing what he said were reports that the Trump administration was easing restrictions on asbestos use.

The United States stopped mining asbestos in 2002, but the material still pours onto the world market from a huge hole in the ground in Russia’s Ural Mountains."

Andrew Higgins reports for the New York Times April 7, 2019. [2]