Fernanda Giannasi

Fernanda Giannasi is a Civil and Occupational Safety Engineer and was a Labor Inspector for 30 years at the Brazilian Labor Ministry, in the inspection of health and safety conditions at the workplaces with emphasis on the insalubrity, lethality and dangerousness of carcinogenic agents (asbestos, nuclear, silica) and other toxic substances such as POPs – Persistent Organic Pollutants mercury, among others.

She founded the GIA-Grupo Interinstitutional of Asbestos and was manager of the State Program for the Banning of Asbestos. Currently retired, she is a health, labor and environmental consultant for workers’ organizations and victims of industrial processes. She founded the Brazilian Association of People Exposed to Asbestos (ABREA) and was one of the creators of the CONTREN-National Commission of the Workers on Nuclear Energy, which was involved with a relevant role during all antinuclear activities at Rio/92 (UNCED).

She also coordinates the Virtual-Citizen Network for the Banning of Asbestos for Latin America and is a member of the Brazilian Environmental Justice Network. She was the vice-coordinator of the CEA-Committee for Asbestos Studies, which regulated the 162 ILO Convention to deal with the protection of workers exposed to asbestos. She is part of the Italian Academy of Sciences of the Work World (Collegium Ramazzini), which awarded her the Ramazzini Prize in November 2018.

Her struggle has been recognized several times, receiving awards, including the Occupational Health of the American Public Health Association (APHA) in Chicago/1999; the title of “Anti-Asbestos G-Woman in Tokyo in 2004 and the Rachel LEE Jung-Lim Award in 2017 in South Korea.

She was recognized for her work in favor of citizenship by the National Progressist Entrepreneurs Basis-PNBE, which awarded her as an Outstanding Citizen in 2001; she was also the winner of the Claudia 2001, which annually awards projects that contribute to improving the quality of life developed by women, as well the Personality in Engineering in 2012 and 2018 received the 2017 FazDiferença (Makes the Difference) Prize from the prestigious Newspaper “O Globo. She also received commendations from the Order of Judicial Merit of Labor from the TST-Superior Labor Court (2014) and the TRT-Regional Labor Court (2015).