Hospitals in Australia riddled with asbestos and pose serious health risk, union officials say

By Matt Peacock - ABC News, November 3, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Unions and lawyers are warning that hospitals across the country are riddled with asbestos.

Tanya Segelov represented late asbestos campaigner Bernie Banton and is still acting for sufferers of dust diseases.

"Hospitals throughout Australia were full of asbestos and many remain full of asbestos," Ms Segelov told the ABC's 7.30 program.

"All of the steam pipes are wrapped in asbestos, in the ceiling cavities there is asbestos sprayed.

"There are asbestos fire doors, it is in the boiler houses, it is in the laundry.

"Wherever there was heat, wherever there is steam, there was asbestos."

Annabel Crouch worked as a speech therapist at Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital for three decades.

Her doctor recently told her she has the fatal and incurable asbestos cancer mesothelioma.

It is believed she contracted it from asbestos-lined service tunnels under the hospital.

"We went up and down the tunnel 10 times a day," Ms Crouch said.

"And there would always be people working on it, the pipes, there'd be plumbers doing things.

"No-one thought there would be asbestos or any danger.

"I mean, you do expect your work place is a fairly safe environment, so it's a bit of a shock when you find out that a hospital is full of asbestos.

"But of course in the last while I have learnt that many buildings are full of asbestos."

Another of Sydney's major hospitals, Westmead, in the city's booming western suburbs, closed its service tunnels earlier this year after asbestos in them was disturbed earlier this year.

"A young untrained apprentice was cutting something he should not have been cutting," CFMEU health and safety co-ordinator Michael Preston said.

"But he wasn't warned or anything that there may have been asbestos in the area."

Now only a select few are allowed into the tunnels, and they are required to wear protective clothing and face masks.

Westmead Hospital chief executive Danny O'Connor acknowledged the risk.

"There is asbestos in the tunnel but prior to the disturbance of the lagging on the piping within the tunnel, all of the asbestos was contained," he said.

"I'm not aware of any report that speaks of friable (dusty) asbestos in the tunnels."

But two months ago, industrial hygienists PRESNA reported that there was friable asbestos throughout the tunnels.

It found white asbestos, brown asbestos and high risk blue asbestos on the concrete columns, concrete surfaces and paths.

"The asbestos in the tunnels has been tested for the purposes of whether it is airborne or not, so a series of tests have been undertaken," Mr O'Connor said.

"All of the tests that have come back have not identified asbestos at detectable levels."

'Lots of people at the hospital have probably been exposed'

The unions said it was not right.

"It just makes me angry that we are still dealing with this sort of thing in 2014," Mr Preston said.

"[The] tunnel system underneath [the hospital] is riddled with bonded and friable asbestos, pipes, brackets, lagging, all sorts."

He was also concerned the public may have been invited into the tunnels.

"It's not a simple case of just the maintenance staff who've been down through the tunnels," Mr Preston said.

"They've actually taken the TAFE students down there to have a look at the pipe-work.

"They used to have open days for families, Halloween parties.

"They used to put up all these decorations and try to make it scary.

"But nobody knew at the time what the actual scary thing was down there – the asbestos.

"I shudder to think that I could have taken my kids on a tour through that place."

Ms Crouch has now lived with mesothelioma for two years and acknowledged she is on borrowed time.

"No-one warned staff about there being asbestos and to take care, or when renovations were being done," she said.

"My fear is that there are lots of people at the hospital who have probably been exposed."