Asbestos in the Community

Just after the turn of the century, the first wave of asbestos diseases and deaths occurred in the asbestos mining industry. The second wave attacked workers in the asbestos manufacturing industry. The third wave affected former building and construction workers and continues to do so. Now, due to decaying asbestos products the fourth wave of asbestos diseases, more subtle and insidious, is stalking a wide range of Australians at work, at school and in the home. The consequence of the fifth wave is still yet to come (workers from asbestos removal industry and consequence of uncontrolled-unsafe removal of asbestos cement products).

Asbestos was often sprayed onto ceilings and walls for a variety of purposes, i.e. decorative, etc. It was also used as a form of insulation around the pipes behind radiators or wood-burning stoves. Asbestos was also used in Vinyl floor tiles and their backings, roofing, eaves, shingles, some plaster and paint. Many routine repairs, renovation and maintenance activities - even putting in a new heating system - can disrupt asbestos, releasing millions of fibres into your home, school or office.

Asbestos cement products such as roofs and cladding contain as much as 11% to 20% of chrysotile and 5% to 10% amphibole asbestos (crocidolite or amosite). As a result of the continuing exposure to meteorologic influences such as rain, sunshine, wind and frost, as well as to industrial atmospheric pollutants, the surface of asbestos cement products corrodes and weathers.

Thus, cement particles and asbestos fibres are released from the surface and disperse in air and rainwater.
Residential housing and schools were often clad with fibro cement sheeting (commonly known as fibro) and roofed with corrugated asbestos cement products.

Children who regularly play the whole day in the vicinity of such buildings are possibly already subjected to a level of exposure to asbestos, which should not be ignored.
There has been concern for many years that young persons may be more susceptible to damage by hazardous asbestos fibres. The concern about exposure at an early age is particularly relevant in the case of carcinogens as critical organs may be susceptible to cell damage when they are still growing. Fortunately there is no evidence to date that asbestos has such an effect.

However, if children are exposed to asbestos at an early age, their long life expectancy increases the probability that they may live long enough to develop long latent period cancers such as asbestos-induced lung cancer and mesothelioma. As one eminent doctor commented at the turn of the 20th century in England, when asked if all girls exposed to asbestos in a yarn spinning factory would develop asbestosis, he replied, "Yes, if they live long enough".

The problem of chronic exposure of children to small quantities of airborne asbestos fibres was high on the agenda at the Third Wave conference (in New York). One paper at the conference told of asbestos fibres being found at autopsy in the lung tissue of a full-term stillborn infant that had never drawn an independent breath.