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OVER the next 10 years, several thousand builders,
plumbers and mechanics will experience the sudden personal fear that a
persistent cough and shortness of breath they’ve tried to ignore may be
something much more serious. Most, like me,
will come home with puffers and pills to control minor allergies. But far
too many workers will find that deadly asbestos poisoning will change
what’s left of their lives.
While the use of asbestos in New Zealand has been
all but banned for almost a decade, the long-term effects of asbestos
exposure are only just starting.
It can take 30 to 50 years after exposure for an
asbestos-related disease to become apparent.
New Zealand can expect asbestos-related diseases to
reach epidemic proportions during the next 10 to 15 years.
Over the past 20 years, such diseases have increased more than 1000 per
cent. By 2012, one overseas trade union journal expects asbestos related.
diseases “will be the largest single cause of male mortality under the age
of 65.”
By then, New Zealand scientists suggest, cancer deaths related to asbestos
will be equal to those of melanoma, already proportionately the highest in
the world.
In the 1940s, Kiwi industry took to this amazing
material like bees to honey. New Zealand pioneered the world development
of asbestos cement for walls and cladding.
Thousands of 40-year old asbestos corrugated roofs
and roofing tiles are only beginning to disintegrate now. Up to 99% of NZ
vinyl floors laid between the late 60s and mid-80s are likely to contain
asbestos. Until 1970, asbestos was used to filter beer and wine.
The extent of asbestos still found in textured
ceilings, paint, linoleum, insulation, protective clothing, firedoors,
plus the miles of lagging around hot water and steam pipes and boilers
throughout homes, offices, ships and factories is indicative of the
problem.
One reason that asbestos-related diseases have not
been highly publicised in New Zealand, is the emphasis that has been
placed on smoking-related diseases, often confusing asbestos illnesses
with smoking.
Smoking will seriously compound the risks of
asbestos. The American Medical Association Journal estimates that an
asbestos worker who is also a smoker is twice as likely to get lung cancer
as a non-smoking asbestos worker, and is more than 90 times as likely to
die from lung cancer as a non-smoking person not exposed to asbestos.
There has also been vast underreporting of
asbestos-related illnesses. This is partly because of the emphasis on
smoking-related diseases mentioned above, and partly because of the
natural reluctance of people trying to hide the problem, hoping instead,
that the coughing, rasping, breathlessness, phlegm, weakness, and lethargy
would somehow, just go away.
Who really wants to know about lung cancer at 45 years of age, or 50? Or
even 60 for that matter?
Called “the worst occupational health hazard of the
century,” asbestos was known to be medically harmful 100 years ago, but
New Zealand officialdom has had a history of slow acceptance and even
slower response.
By 1931, Britain had established restrictions on the
manufacture and use of asbestos. Forty years later, New Zealand finally
legislated its own restrictions.
Associate professor Bill Glass says “the full story
of asbestos exposure in New Zealand has yet to be told. It is not a story
we will be proud of.” Internationally, asbestos is big business, and this
is a factor in a number of countries’ slow response to the danger. The
International Centre for Trade Union Rights (whose president is former New
Zealand CTU chief Ken Douglas), says that “the asbestos industry is as
capable and famous as is the tobacco industry for defending its poisonous
product and for using similar tactics of half-truths, cover-ups and
outright lies.”
Governments that reject imports of raw asbestos can
have a tough time. Two years ago France tried to ban asbestos imports, but
Canada challenged the ban at the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO)
free-trade court, which has a very poor history of supporting
environmental and health issues.
It’s not the first time that the WTO (whose
president is former Labour prime minister Mike Moore), has faced
widespread working-class anger. The WTO decision on the French ban is
expected this month, and will have major implications for a proposed total
European Union asbestos ban.
Those workers most at risk in New Zealand will be
long-serving plumbers, fitters, electricians and laggers who will
experience 40 per cent of expected asbestos-related lung cancers.
Another 23 per cent of the victims will be builders,
carpenter and asbestos cement workers. Watersiders at 5 per cent are more
at risk than motor mechanics at 2 per cent.
Removing old lagging and sprayed asbestos insulation
is the most dangerous category of asbestos exposure. Working with raw
asbestos and manufacturing processes is next.
However, things do change. In 1980, The Department
of Health assured workers that brake linings held “little cause for
concern because the material is one of the least hazardous variety and
generally becomes modified under the heat of use.”
Ten years later, Wellington Clinical School epidemiologist Neil Pearce
confirmed the major cancer risks from the “safe” chrysotile asbestos used
in brake linings, and encouraged people using protective measures while
working with all types of asbestos.
As dangerous as installing asbestos building
materials may have been, it is far more dangerous to remove it 40 or 50
years later. Asbestos fibres do not disintegrate, but bonding agents
holding them together do, and the risk of free-floating asbestos dust
multiplies.Without proper protection and close attention to safe removal
procedure, the present 15-year epidemic will only be a taste of what’s to
come.
The OSH/Department of Labour’s 1999 revised
Guideline for the Management and Removal of Asbestos lays out the
requirements for workers involved with asbestos and for employers or
owners of premises where asbestos is found. Some aspects of asbestos work
such as asbestos removal, is restricted to direct supervision by a person
with a Certificate of Competence in this work.
The two OSH national asbestos registers are
maintained at the Wellington School of Medicine. One documents cases of
asbestos exposure. The other cites instances of asbestos-related disease.
OSH is not strategically involved with the registers, and its funding in
this area has been cut.
Unions, ACC and the health service need better
access to each other and to the registers, which, apart from being
voluntary and incomplete, are largely inactive and have little
relationship to reality.
The critical issue for many sufferers of
asbestos-related diseases is early diagnosis and adequate compensation,
which proper monitoring with active, updated registers will help to
establish.
While there have been no recent advances in medical
treatment for asbestos-related illnesses, and none are foreseen in the
near future, respiratory and lung specialist Peter Martin believes early
medical contact is essential.
“Lung cancer,” he says, “is the most common form of
asbestos-related disease, and is often treatable, especially in early
stages.”
Even when the disease is not treatable, “it is not
necessarily an instant death sentence, and early monitoring will help to
promote a quality of life.”
Since the early 1970s the EPMU has been closely
involved in seeking better recognition of asbestos-related diseases,
adequate compensation, worker education, and enforced site protection.
Other unions, especially in the building finishing
and service sectors, have also experienced high exposures.
A large number of workers who have been seriously exposed to asbestos dust
are not members of a trade union, and will need as much on-site
information and encouragement as possible.
EPMU national health and safety officer Mike Ward
explains: “The first principle of working with asbestos is knowing if you
are or not. If there is any possibility you will be handling material with
asbestos, check it out first.
“The second principle is to have appropriate
protection for yourself and those around you. The third principle is not
to create dust.
“Asbestos selects its victims. The worker doing the
job is not always the first person affected.
“Innocent people in the vicinity — even the person washing the dusty
overalls —are often the ones who get ill.
“Just limiting dust, wearing dust masks, and wetting down the working area
does not ensure safety when working with asbestos.
“It’s vital that workers and especially supervisors are familiar with the
guidelines.”
Ward says the amount of asbestos removal work
remaining is still extensive, and that knowledge and proper use of
protective equipment is the only sure way that workers can protect
themselves.
“I don’t want to panic anybody,” he says. “But
asbestos is still here, the disease is still increasing to epidemic
proportions.
‘This is a wake-up call.” [Click here] For More
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