PEACOCK: In the remote tribal lands of Charkhand State, the lush landscape is nourished by the annual monsoon. These hills have made some Indians very rich. Nearly half of India's mineral wealth is found in this region. It's also home to some of India's poorest people, including those who live in the tiny village of Roro. But Roro lies in the shadow of a sinister presence.

MADHUMITA DUTTA: "For me it was like the middle of this green jungle and forest and all, and suddenly there's almost like a snow clad mountain that I saw from a distance which kind of completely, you know, shocked me".

PEACOCK: High on the Roro Hills, this lunar-like landscape cuts and ugly swathe through the forest. I'm walking with environmental scientist turned activist, Madhumita Dutta across a toxic mix of tailings - asbestos and another cancer causing mineral, chromite. To be safe here, we need suits and masks, protection against the waste from a mine abandoned in 1983 by one of India's biggest corporations.

"The children use this as a slippery slide do they?"

MADHUMITA DUTTA: "Yes, it's like a playground. It's like a toxic playground. They think that this place is so back of beyond that nobody will know about their criminal activity but it's for everybody to see. The story needs to be told you know. This is the damning evidence about their irresponsibility and it's criminal negligence".

PEACOCK: Just below the mine sits Roro Village. In the summer, the dust blows everywhere. This is not a healthy place. The mine was closed soon after India's first cases of asbestosis were identified among the villagers who worked there. Asbestosis is a disease that slowly chokes the lungs with fibres, fibres that can also trigger cancer decades later - including the most painful type - mesothelioma. The mining here stopped long ago, but those who were children then, are now sick.

MADHUMITA DUTTA: [with village women] "This lady here she's saying that she's got chest pain and back pain. Pain when she breathes... she coughs... And next to her this lady, she's complaining of the same problem".

PEACOCK: The answer to the mysterious diseases that seem to haunt this place might lie in these tailings, which have washed down almost to the village. Without specialist medical expertise, diagnosis is difficult. I was taken to meet this man, too weak to leave his house. Sodan Sundi is only thirty-six. His doctors have given up. They can't explain his condition and say there's nothing they can do.

MADHUMITA DUTTA: "He's been sick like this for a while and the doctors in Chaibasa said he doesn't have TB but they don't know what it is".

PEACOCK: Here, industry calls it the 'poor man's roof' and it's absolutely everywhere. Asbestos bonded with cement into corrugated sheets. We know it as fibro and I first began covering the story of its trail of death in Australia thirty years ago. Back home and in other developed countries the problem now is how to get rid of it. But India it seems is racing headlong into repeating the same mistakes, only on a massive scale.

[to man selling roofing sheets] "Have you ever heard that asbestos is bad for your lungs?"

INDIAN MAN: "No".

Ahmedabad lies in the centre of what's called the 'Golden Corridor', India's industrial heartland, where slums like these provide an endless supply of cheap labour for its factories.

In their tiny home, Naran Mehra's daughters earn a few much needed rupees from sewing. Their father's too sick with asbestosis to work and, alarmingly, so is their mother. He worked at the power station, where asbestosis insulation was everywhere.

NARAN MEHRA: "When it blew about, my hair would turn white. When the dust would blow I'd have to take it off and shake the dust off, and it would fall on the floor".

PEACOCK: His wife, Sevita Devi, would wash his dusty clothes. When she too became breathless, her husband accused her of malingering.

SEVITA DEVI: "I'd keep quiet, and then I'd cry. We would all start crying. [upset] Where would we get medicines from? We had no money. We would buy for two days, then nothing for the next two days. I'd finish. We needed to get the medicines - but no money".

NARAN MEHRA: "There is nothing to look forward to. We have no hope. This is our end now. No question about it".

PEACOCK: Steadily worsening asbestosis also fills the lungs of Muthuswami Munion. For thirty-one years he's worked at a local asbestos cement manufacturer, Gujarat Composite. He lives in extreme pain.

MUTHUSWAMI MUNION: "Even now, I am breathless. Even while talking to somebody I am breathless".

PEACOCK: There's no real doubt how he developed his condition. For decades, his workplace was covered with asbestos dust.

MUTHUSWAMI MUNION: "We all did the same work. When we put the cement into the bags the dust would blow all around us. The dirt would blow around. The others also have problems like me... some worse".

PEACOCK: I want to find out more about this factory so I go to see Raghunath Munawar. He's become a tireless campaigner for sick asbestos workers. With no support of medical treatment, many victims simply return to their villages to die an unrecorded death. I ask Raghunath Munawar if he can take me into Gujarat Composite but he's had death threats from union officials there who've accused him of jeopardising workers' jobs. This is as far as he'd go.

RAGHUNATH MUNAWAR: "I told them that I don't want to stop their livelihood - but what worries me is their health".

PEACOCK: So later I visit the factory myself. Gujarat Composite's been accused of not supplying its workers with masks and overalls, for not disclosing their medical records, nor paying them compensation.

[entering factory] "Hi. Matt Peacock, from Australian TV. Can we speak to the manager?"

A quietly menacing crowd gathers while we wait. Eventually the Personnel Manager emerges and tells us no worker here has become sick from asbestos.

[to Personnel Manager] "No disease? No asbestosis?"

PERSONNEL MANAGER: "No."

Suddenly the manager appears. He's less forthcoming.

"We want to know if the factory is safe".

[manager upset points to camera]

MANAGER: "What do you want?"

PEACOCK: "Just two questions".

MANAGER: "Please stop it. [wants filming to cease] Call the police...disturbing our atmosphere...".

PEACOCK: We learnt from that, that the Personnel Manager who we were speaking to that there was no disease in that factory which of course we know is a lie because we've spoken to people who are still working there with asbestosis diagnosed".

Tragically the sick man we met earlier, Muthuswami Munion is one of them. But with a wife and four sons to feed, he feels he has no choice. He must keep working at the factory that's slowly killing him.

MUTHUSWAMI MUNION: "How can I get another job at this stage? It's impossible. I have two years left. After that it's over".

PEACOCK: It's here in his house, and there's now scarcely a street or village in India without asbestos sheeting. It's cheap, versatile and lasts for decades. But most of what you see here doesn't even originate in India. Ninety per cent of it has been imported, much of it from a country that should know better.

This is Canada's ugly secret. In the heartland of French-speaking Quebec beneath this giant hole, mining of white asbestos or chrysotile, continues underground. Canada doesn't want the asbestos for itself. In fact it's spent millions clearing it from public buildings, including the nation's Parliament House. But what's unsafe in Canada it seems is still safe enough to export to India.

PROFESSOR AMIR ATTARAN: "It amounts to Canada being a purveyor of death around the world. Our country is an exporter of a deadly substance and we enjoy it. At least our Federal Government does. If Canada and our Prime Minister is prepared to make a quick buck by selling asbestos to people who don't know better, even though it'll kill them, I've got an idea. Why don't we get in the business of selling weapons to children around the world too. Guns".

PEACOCK: Selling asbestos overseas is big business. The government's poured millions of dollars into a lobby group with its headquarters in this Montreal office block. The so-called Chrysotile Institute refused to speak to Foreign Correspondent. It peddles the message that asbestos can be used safely in the developing world, even though it clearly hasn't been in Canada.

PROFESSOR AMIR ATTARAN: "The tobacco companies said smoking was fine, the asbestos companies say asbestos is fine. You don't need to be exceptionally well schooled in epidemiology or medicine or science or much of anything to know that it's not worth trusting. There is absolutely no disease that affects workers more in Quebec than asbestos disease, mesothelioma, so it has killed hundreds, if not thousands of people in Canada, particularly the miners, but in other industries too".

PEACOCK: The mine managers won't allow us in to film. Asbestos has become a dirty word in the Western World and the industry prefers to be discreet.

But this footage shot in 2004 shows the operations in what's one of the most asbestos rich regions of the world. Most of the asbestos from this mine is bound for India. The town's Mayor, Luc Berthold, is convinced that the modern industry is now safe.

LUC BERTHOLD: "If it's used safely - if the workers in India respect the safety measures that we have put in place here concerning chrysotile fibres, then yes it's a good product that offers many advantages".

PEACOCK: The Canadian industry is even pushing to export more. It hopes to re-open another mine nearby in the aptly named town of Asbestos. Rusting vehicles are a reminder of the town's mining past. If mining does recommence here it will more than triple Canadian production, as well as sure up crucial independent seats for the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. He says in India asbestos is legal, so Canada is entitled to export there.

But how can India be expected to exceed safety standards the rest of the world has never met. I still needed to see for myself just how safe workers here are. I've come to a place where Canadian asbestos was used, at least until recently. Two years ago the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation filmed these scenes inside the Eagle Asbestos factory near Ahmedabad. It's a shocking sight. The workers are in a fog of carcinogenic dust, scooping up armfuls of raw asbestos fibre. No TV crew has set foot inside here since. I want to see if conditions have changed but I don't get very far.

[outside factory] "Now there's a gentlemen here from the factory interrupting us. They're not happy about us filming".

At last a breakthrough. After weeks of negotiations, the Indian industry association agrees to show me what they call a "responsible" factory. It's here in the bustling city of Hyderabad where the sixteenth century Muslim monument, the Charminar, still dominates the city centre. Charminar is also the trade name of Hyderabad Industries' top selling asbestos cement sheets, which come pumping out of this and seven smaller factories around India.

This company is Canada's biggest customer. Its safety officer is keen to show me how the bags of fibre are opened inside a sealed compartment, untouched by human hands. Yet signs of dust are still visible. These masks that have been provided appear only for show because they offer virtually no protection against the most dangerous fibres which are so small, they're like a gas.

"Should I be wearing this now?"

DR RAO: "As a matter of extra precaution you are welcome to wear the mask".

PEACOCK: "But you're not going to?"

DR RAO: "Because I know the evidence that the dust levels are very low".

PEACOCK: But around the corner where we weren't supposed to look, a broken bag and the broom tucked away in the shadows indicates the clean up is not always with a vacuum cleaner. The company Managing Director, Abhaya Shanker, also heads the industry lobby that spruiks asbestos. He seems relaxed about the potential hazards.

ABHAYA SHANKER: "This particular asbestos has not been known to give cancer so far".

PEACOCK: "So the World Health Organisation, the ILO, the Australian Government and however many.... fifty other governments, they're all wrong?"

ABHAYA SHANKER: "They are wrong about chrysotile asbestos because they have banned asbestos when the blue asbestos which is the dangerous kind was being used and that was giving them health problems because the Western world were using it irresponsibly".

PEACOCK: But in his own factory, warnings on the bags of Canadian asbestos are clear about the risk - that this asbestos can cause fatal diseases like cancer.

PROFESSOR AMIR ATTARAN: "The argument that chrysotile asbestos is safer than other kinds of asbestos is the most scientifically ridiculous nonsense I've ever heard. It's like saying light cigarettes are safer than regular cigarettes. The idea that there is a safe amount of exposure for asbestos is a bit like saying there's a safe amount of exposure to getting shot by a revolver".

PEACOCK: Asbestos is a booming business in India and there's no sign of a slow down. Backed by government concessions and subsidies, asbestos cement roofing is steadily displacing safer options like thatch, tiles or steel.

ABHAYA SHANKER: "It's the poor man's roof and you cannot, the government cannot afford to deny the poor man a viable option".

PEACOCK: If Western experience is any guide, it's these end users of asbestos cement who are also in danger. Yet according to Hyderabad Industries' do's and don'ts guide for its customers, there's absolutely no risk.

"Let me read you the caution you have on this pamphlet. 'Caution - asbestos cement products present no known risk on health'. Now that's not true is it?"

ABHAYA SHANKER: "Yes, but if we...".

PEACOCK: "But that's not true. People have had their health affected".

ABHAYA SHANKER: "This pamphlet is for people who live under asbestos roof sheeting".

PEACOCK: "And whom you're recommending cut with a saw".

ABHAYA SHANKER: "Yes".

PEACOCK: "Making dust".

ABHAYA SHANKER: "Yes that's right but we also recommend that you do it with water, you try and minimise the dust levels".

PEACOCK: "Where does it say that? It doesn't say that. It shows a photo of people cutting with a saw".

ABHAYA SHANKER: "Yeah but we go and train them on the thing. There are certain pamphlets, there are certain pieces of paper that we tell them how to use it responsibly".

PEACOCK: Mr Shanker told me Hyderabad Industries has always looked after the safety of its workers, but this is the same wealthy company that owned the mine at Roro where our story began.

ABHAYA SHANKER: "We have stopped mining asbestos fibre...".

PEACOCK: "Twenty years ago?"

ABHAYA SHANKER: "Yes, that's right".

PEACOCK: "And you left the mine with mountains of tailings where children play, did you not?"

ABHAYA SHANKER: "No I think we've sufficiently covered them as per the government requirement. We've left them the way we were supposed to".

PEACOCK: The Indian industry continues to grow aided and abetted by Canadian suppliers not prepared to use it themselves.

MADHUMITA DUTTA: "I think they are racist. You know it's such a double standard. The fear is you're going to see a huge spike in number of diseases in years to come because this is also a disease which has a long latency period. So in 20 years time, you will have a situation which may be an epidemic situation".

PEACOCK: In this population of more than one billion people, asbestos cement use is growing rapidly. One day these slums will be demolished, but the indestructible asbestos fibres will remain, ever present, and they'll continue to kill. They are India's toxic time bomb.