BackThe New South Wales (NSW) Ombudsman, Professor John McMillan, recently released a report ‘Asbestos: How NSW government agencies deal with the problem’. He found that there are serious gaps in the NSW Government’s response to the health risks posed by asbestos and how it can be handled and disposed of safely. The report follows an earlier NSW Ombudsman report, published in 2010.
Asbestos is a dangerous substance. Inhalation of asbestos fibres released into the air can cause fatal diseases including mesothelioma and lung cancer. These diseases do not show symptoms until decades after exposure. The Australian State of NSW has one of the highest incidences of asbestos-related disease in the world. In the 5 years between 2011 and the end of 2015, over 800 people in NSW died from asbestos-related diseases and over 1000 were diagnosed.
The dangers of asbestos were not known until the late 20th century. Up until that time, Australia had been mining asbestos for over 100 years. Australia was also the world’s highest user per capita of asbestos in the 1950s. Asbestos cement sheeting for walls and roofs was widely used in building construction into the 1980s.
In 2010, the NSW Ombudsman reported findings from his investigation into how the NSW government was responding to the risks posed by asbestos. He found that government approaches were disjointed, ad hoc and confusing. Tens of thousands of buildings containing asbestos continued to be renovated or demolished, with no controls or adequate guidance to caution home renovators who did the work themselves. Asbestos was being illegal dumped on public and private land. Community awareness of the dangers of asbestos was minimal. An abandoned asbestos mine lay unremediated, leaving derelict buildings and mounds of asbestos tailings piled 75 metres high, next to a publicly-accessible road. Airborne asbestos fibres from the site posed a significant health risk to the 1,100 people in a nearby town.
The NSW government agreed with most of the 2010 report’s recommendations, which included adopting a state-wide asbestos plan. However, it did not establish a single asbestos agency to provide leadership and coordination, or make a number of changes to the law, as had been recommended. The Ombudsman, who had continued to monitor the response of government agencies, revealed in his recent 2017 report that despite the efforts of a number of government agencies to deal with this problem, significant gaps in the law remain. These leave three groups of people vulnerable to exposure: do-it-yourself home renovators, people in regional Aboriginal communities living in disintegrating houses containing asbestos (and some near old asbestos mines), and people living on sites where facilities producing asbestos used to be.
The Ombudsman has called again for a single asbestos agency to be established, to ensure a coordinated and properly funded approach to keeping the NSW community safe from the dangers of asbestos. He has also recommended that people selling buildings should be required by law to disclose whether or not there is asbestos on the property.
Source: New South Wales Ombudsman, Australia
