The family whose campaign defeated the Colombian asbestos industry

Asbestos was banned in dozens of other countries by 2005, but the Colombian asbestos industry insisted people were safe from their asbestos. They were wrong. It took a national campaign, fronted by journalist Ana Cecilia Niño and her husband Daniel Pineda, for Colombia to finally prohibit asbestos in 2021. Sadly, one of them would not live to see the law pass.

Coffee

Daniel Pineda was studying in Bogotá in 2008 for a master’s degree in geophysics. Maria Felisa Robles, mother of Ana Cecilia Niño, lived next door but it took some time for the future couple to get to know each other. “Maybe for three years [Ana] came to the house to speak with her mum,” Daniel told Confront, but he thought she was “excessively beautiful” and was too nervous to talk to her.

Ultimately, Ana took the lead. She struck up a conversation with Daniel and asked him to a Halloween party. He already had plans at his church, but they later arranged to go for a coffee. They never looked back. By 2014, they were living together in Bogotá with their one-year-old daughter, Ana Sofia. Ana Cecilia worked as a journalist and Daniel as a geophysicist. Neither worked with asbestos. However, a disease caused by exposure to asbestos would soon upend the family’s lives.

Sibaté

Only one form of asbestos has been mined since the South African asbestos mines closed in 2001: white asbestos, or chrysotile. White asbestos, which makes up more than 95% of all asbestos mined, can cause fatal diseases such as asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma.

White asbestos was first banned by Sweden in 1982, and by 2014 it had been banned in more than 50 countries. The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) listed it as a carcinogen and called for a ban in 2006. Despite this, however, every year thousands of tonnes of asbestos continued to be mined and imported in Colombia, mainly for producing asbestos-cement roofing.

The Colombian asbestos industry falsely insisted that white asbestos was safe to use. They argued, as asbestos companies around the world had done over the past 90 years, that the risk was historic. They said that safety measures to minimise people’s exposure to asbestos dust meant there was no longer any risk to human health.

Former head of industry body Ascolfibras, Jorge Hernán Estrada, said in 2015 that there was “no concrete case, verified by health authorities, of a person who has developed cancer after being exposed to this fibre”.

Not everyone exposed to asbestos will fall ill and it can take decades for a disease to develop. However, the collective impact across Colombia has been immense. A 2025 study analysed the country’s mortality data for mesothelioma, a cancer almost always caused by exposure to asbestos. It identified 1,539 deaths from mesothelioma between 1997 and 2022. When accounting for other asbestos-related deaths, including lung cancer and asbestosis, the death toll can be estimated at between 3,078 and 13,851 people.

The highest concentrations of deaths were found in the town of Sibaté, along with Bogotá and Soacha. Sibaté was home to the country’s largest asbestos-cement factory, operated by manufacturer Eternit Colombia. The firm dumped its waste across the town, exposing residents to the carcinogenic material. Nearly a third of the town’s subsoil contained asbestos, near a school, apartment buildings, in a football stadium and at a sports centre, according to a study in 2019.

Sibaté was the town where Ana Cecilia Niño grew up. As a child, she played in the streets near discarded asbestos products and asbestos waste. At the time, she – and other residents – did not know the dangers. It was only 30 years later that she learnt what her lungs had been exposed to.

Campaigning

Ana started to feel discomfort in her back in 2013. Doctors thought she had muscle spasms but the pain did not subside. It took until September 2014 to track down an accurate diagnosis: mesothelioma, a terminal cancer caused by asbestos exposure. It has no known cure.

The news of Ana’s diagnosis left the couple devastated, with their plans for the future in shreds.

It was also the turning point, when Ana knew she wanted future generations to be safe from killer asbestos diseases. Together, the couple set an ambitious goal – to end the Colombian asbestos industry.

Their campaign took a few months to find its feet. The early messaging they adopted, “no to asbestos”, didn’t quite feel right, it was too negative for them. They wanted a more hopeful and loving message which fitted in with their personalities.

“Then we started Colombia sin Asbesto [Colombia without asbestos],” said Daniel. At the heart of this campaign was the simple and powerful idea that all Colombians deserved to breathe clean air, free from asbestos.

Ana drew on her experience as a journalist to produce a savvy media campaign. Meanwhile, Daniel used his knowledge of game theory to construct a cohesive national strategy. They held events in schools and universities. They built a network through collaborating with other victims, campaigners, scientists, and NGOs. They lobbied politicians. They also contacted journalists to get the story covered by prominent newspapers, radio, and television news.

The campaign looked for small wins to keep up confidence and momentum. These mini-victories, such as a viral social media post, brought fleeting relief to Ana’s pain.

However, the asbestos industry was not short of supporters in positions of power. Daniel remembers a Senator asking him, “for what reason do you need to prohibit asbestos?” The senator continued to say that asbestos helped the Colombian economy, and that he and Ana should give up. “The best option for you is to go to your house and enjoy your life,” he told the couple.

Daniel says there were times when they believed they were fighting a losing battle. There had been seven previous votes on prohibiting asbestos in the prior decade, especially in 2007, all without success. And despite all the momentum, a Senate Committee, once again, rejected banning asbestos in 2016.

“It is so difficult to fight with the influence of some organisations like Eternit, because money is the first argument for politicians,” said Daniel.

Pain and persistence

Ana and Daniel not only had to manage a national campaign, they also had to manage Ana’s terminal illness.  Mesothelioma is a painful disease, and they both carried the weight of knowing that Ana would not live for much longer. They both loved nature and carved out time to leave Bogotá for breaks in the mountains. Daniel recalls that had they not found these moments of peace and beauty together, they would have burnt out.

Ana underwent countless procedures and treatments to try to buy more days with her loved ones. At the same time, her focus on the campaign remained. “They removed a lung, my pericardium, and my left internal muscles, but they will never take away my hope of seeing a Colombia without asbestos,” she posted to social media in 2016.

As her mesothelioma advanced, it was increasingly difficult for her to walk and breathe. Even hugging became painful. The couple held fewer physical events and pivoted to more digital campaigning tactics.

Living with mesothelioma can be punishing. In a television news interview from September 2016, Ana described the intensity of her disease. “On many days I lie down due to the pain. It doesn’t leave me, and then I say, ‘no more Lord, take me with you because I can’t stand the pain’.”

She also had to balance creating positive memories with her young daughter, Ana Sofia, while emotionally preparing her for what would soon happen. “Many times, I had to tell her, ‘Mum has to go to heaven’,” said Ana.

On January 8 2017, two-and-a-half years after receiving her diagnosis, Ana Cecilia Niño died from mesothelioma, aged 42.

Self-hug

Ana Cecilia, a previously healthy woman dying from an asbestos disease, was an emphatic rebuttal to the industry line that asbestos production was not dangerous. Yet still, production continued.

Emotionally shattered, the responsibility fell to Daniel and others to continue the fight. “After the death of my wife, I put all my effort to find the route [to ban asbestos in Colombia]”, he said. Daniel launched the Ana Niño Foundation with a new symbol, a pair of arms crossing themselves in a “self-hug”.

It is a gesture which he says represents the love and hope inherent in their campaign. “I love my life, I love your life, I love the lives of the future generations,” and that the only way to protect each other from wrongdoing was to take action.

After Ana’s death, the campaigning intensified. Greenpeace Colombia organised public protests to raise attention, and helped thousands of people to contact politicians. Scientists were granted wider platforms to debunk industry narratives. Daniel started a petition, which ultimately gathered over 145,000 signatures. It asked, “How many more victims like my wife does it need for this country to ban asbestos?”

The campaign’s first major victory came in October 2017 when a Colombian Senate Committee approved the ‘Ana Cecilia Niño law’, put forward by Senator Nadia Blel. But took two more years of persistence and campaigning for it to pass in a full Senate vote and in the House of Representatives, before it was signed into law by President Duque on 11 July 2019. Asbestos in Colombia finally was banned from 1 January 2021 onwards.

It was a significant victory for Daniel and hundreds of other campaigners, scientists, and victims of asbestos-related diseases, who had worked so hard for this day.

However, Daniel was still grieving the loss of his wife. Since Ana’s death he had given so much to the campaign, and he was hit by depression. “I didn’t know what my route was,” he said.

Who pays?

Campaigners warn the job is still not finished. The law did not just prohibit asbestos, it also made provisions for replacing asbestos products, assisting workers in the asbestos industry, and supporting plans for those exposed to asbestos. Not all of these have been implemented. Guillermo Villamizar, founder of Colombia Asbestos Free Foundation (FundClas), told Confront that lots more needs to be done to clean up the remaining asbestos waste across the country. Support must also be provided to those most at risk of developing asbestos-related diseases in the years to come.

A study co-authored by Villamizar found that 87% of low-income neighbourhoods in Cartagena still have asbestos-cement roofs. As these products degrade over time, or if they are accidentally damaged, asbestos fibres can be released. Furthermore, the waste from decades of asbestos production remains in sites across Colombia.

FundClas is also asking the government to introduce measures for “safe removal programmes, support for vulnerable communities, and the recognition of asbestos as an indicator of environmental inequality”. This recognises that asbestos products are still used predominantly in lower-income communities.

Another major question is who pays to clean up the contamination from asbestos today and in the decades to come. Both Daniel and Villamizar argue it should be those companies that knowingly polluted Colombia’s towns and cities with their products, and not the taxpayers.

As of publication, Eternit Colombia has not responded to requests to comment on this story.

“The legacy of the asbestos industry in Colombia is one of a prolonged and largely overlooked public health crisis,” said Villamizar. “Beyond the numbers, the country has endured decades of misinformation, delayed regulation and institutional neglect, allowing entire communities to live –  and still live – among contaminated materials without protection or alternatives.” While Colombia sin Asbesto succeeded in prohibiting asbestos, the asbestos industry continues to operate in other parts of the world, using similar tactics to those deployed in Colombia.

Responsibility

Daniel now spends much of his time in the mountains of Boyacá, to the north-east of Bogotá. The foundation continues to raise awareness about asbestos and campaigns for the Ana Cecilia Niño law to be fully enacted, along with providing training and prevention courses for dealing with Colombia’s asbestos legacy.

“I am the person to represent the victims,” said Daniel. He is seen as the leader and the face of the movement, and is there to take the calls from other families fighting asbestos-related diseases. He would like to live in a world where no more people are diagnosed with mesothelioma or other illnesses caused by asbestos. “It’s not easy for me… but this is the world that I live in.” After each call he takes, he pauses to pray and to meditate.

He has also created a sanctuary in a small town called Villa Ana, filled with flowers, trees, and a treehouse. Here, Daniel runs another project as part of the foundation, called the Antistress Academy. It’s designed to help those living with asbestos-related diseases or dealing with trauma to treat their emotional pain from a place of gratitude. “In the mountains, we speak about our pains,” said Daniel. “Maybe this is the form to help us emotionally.”

The daughter he shared with Ana Cecilia, Ana Sofia, is now in secondary school. She has grown up seeing her father comfort other families during some of the most difficult moments in their lives. In the brief time Ana Sofia had with her mother, she witnessed how – in the face of death – she helped defeat an industry that caused so much heartbreak, through a campaign built on love and hope.