An investigation opened on the RATP and one of its subcontractors, accused by a worker of exposure to asbestos

An investigating judge has been investigating, since October 2022, the RATP and its subcontractor ERI, accused by a worker of having exposed him to asbestos without protection for twenty years, the Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed to AFP , Wednesday, March 1. Judicial information, entrusted to the public health center of the Court of Paris, is open for “endangering others” and “employment of a worker whose activity exposes him to ionizing radiation without compliant risk assessment” or “compliance with prevention rules”.

This 39-year-old employee, hired at ERI in 2001 and on sick leave since 2020, was heard in early December. He told AFP that he had worked almost without respiratory protective equipment for twenty years. He says he was only informed of the presence of asbestos in the electrical networks of the metro he was dismantling at the end of 2015.

RATP and ERI ensure compliance with the law

He has since been diagnosed with an anxiety-depressive syndrome. “I no longer sleep, I no longer eat, I have become a shadow of myself”, testifies this worker to AFP. If he hasn’t developed a disease at this point, he knows that exposure to asbestos is known to cause lung or pleural cancer years, or decades, later. In 2014, the French Institute for Health Monitoring estimated that this insulating fiber, now banned, could cause up to 100,000 deaths by 2050.

Contacted by AFP, the president of ERI declared that his company “had always complied with the provisions of the Labor Code”. He defended “appropriate training”A “monitored by occupational medicine” as well as “appropriate safety equipment”. The RATP, for its part, said it had “not aware at this stage” of this procedure, adding that “maintenance operations on these materials are carried out in accordance with the regulations concerning the prevention of asbestos risk”. The two companies mention strict and regular field checks on these points.