Clapper, Patti, Schweizer and Mason

Australia has lived in the shadow of asbestos for decades.  Even now, years after the use of materials containing asbestos has been outlawed, officials are discovering the deadly mineral in all sorts of unlikely places.   The most recent occurrence:  educational materials used by high school students in Queensland. 

School officials in Townsville announced that asbestos had been recently discovered in science kits manufactured more than twenty years ago that students have been using for more than two decades.  The mineral kits were used, in part, to help students learn to correctly identify minerals.

While school officials claim that the real risk that students faced from these kits was quite small, the discovery has called into question existing asbestos policies in Australian public schools. 

One of the most vocal detractors, Bruce Flegg, an opposition education spokesman, said he had very little faith in claims by the education department that Queensland schools had the strictest asbestos monitoring and remediation programs around.

Flegg went on to say that “students, parents and teachers deserve straight answers and confidence in a state government that will put the interests of the school community before political interests and cover-up.”

School officials are adamant that there has been no cover-up in this asbestos discovery and that the health and safety of the children and staff who frequent their facilities is the utmost priority. 

In fact, education department director-general Julie Grantham said the kits would be hastily removed in order to further minimize or altogether eliminate the risk.

Flagg countered Grantham’s statements by saying: “We are still seeing far too many examples of children and teachers who are exposed to potentially deadly airborne asbestos fibres.”

The true scope of the threat posed by asbestos in Australian schools may not be known for decades.  Asbestos related diseases such as mesothelioma have extremely long latency periods, taking as much as up to 50 years before development of symptoms.  Therefore, current students may be in their sixties before the even know it they were dangerously exposed.

Australia continues to struggle with asbestos and has one of the highest rates of mesothelioma diagnoses.  This is because for years the asbestos industry was one of the country’s biggest money makers.  Thousands of individuals were employed in mining of the mineral, manufacturing asbestos materials, and installing these harmful products in residential, public, and industrial settings.

The estimated amount of asbestos still in “circulation” in Australia is astronomical and may never be completely cleaned up.