Toxic homes: New Zealand's asbestos legacy

Friday, 22 February 2019

High profile class action lawyer Adina Thorn has fallen victim to New Zealand's lax attitude to asbestos.

Thorn breathed in large amounts of asbestos-laden dust at a construction site on which builders had not identified the presence of asbestos, so there were no warning signs.

The incident happened in 2017 when she was looking around an Auckland house she owned which was being worked on by builders after flood damage.

'I decided to go in there and just have a look. I was just interested,' she said. 'The building was all shut up. The windows were shut. There were some exposed ceiling areas.'

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'I was coughing in there, but it didn't occur to me that there was asbestos.'

'When I came out, I was dizzy. I felt a bit sick.'

She went home, but the feeling got worse. She called friends, who raised the possibility she had inhaled dust containing asbestos.

It was a terrifying thought. ACC paid for a lung scan, which identified dust in her lungs. Tests done by her insurer identified asbestos was present in the property.

NO NATIONAL STRATEGY

Like Australia, New Zealand was an enthusiastic user of asbestos in building materials, and many older commercial and residential homes, an estimated 40,000 in Christchurch alone.

But unlike Australia, New Zealand does not have a national asbestos strategy, a source of frustration to 88-year-old Dr Bill Glass, whose pioneering work on protecting workers from industrial disease, including that caused by asbestos, was recognised in his award of the 2019 Senior New Zealander of the Year.

'While I did work for Worksafe, I argued that the government should have a national strategy, but I didn't get very far,' Glass says.

'It struck me as logical given that New Zealand used a lot of asbestos in its construction, and that people are concerned about that nationally.'

Glass, who is recovering from a stroke, does not expect to see his wish fulfilled, despite asbestos-related disease being the country's largest work-related killer.

More than 170 New Zealanders die each year from diseases related to past asbestos exposure, and every tradesperson is likely to come in contact with it.

LURKING DANGER

Left alone, most asbestos is not a health danger, but when asbestos fibres released into the air, through cutting, sanding, water-blasting or product deterioration, it poses a health threat, though diseases like the cancer mesothelioma, caused by breathing in asbestos dust, can take decades to appear.

Exposure like Thorn's was unlikely to cause disease, but mesothelioma can occur even after small levels of exposure to certain types of asbestos.

Workers exposed to asbestos dust over longer periods of time are more likely to fall fatally ill.

There was a brief flurry of concern over asbestos during the early stages of the Christchurch rebuild, but a report by the prime minister's chief scientific adviser Sir Peter Gluckman concluded the rebuild was unlikely to result in any significant increase in risk to homeowners and occupants of damaged houses, unless they repeatedly performed such work themselves, without taking proper precautions.

Australia is taking a much stronger line on asbestos.

The country remembers a bitter fight for justice and compensation of workers against James Hardie, which was dubbed Killer Company, and created the government-funded Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency with the ultimate aim of cleansing the country's buildings of asbestos, and tracking the health of people exposed to it.

'It's an unenviable fact that living in Australia means potentially living with asbestos,' Eric Abetz, Australia's employment minister in 2015 said, when the agency was set up.

'With up to one in three Australian homes containing asbestos, families doing simple renovation jobs around the house run the risk of exposure without even realising it, Abetz said.

'We have more work to do to raise overall awareness about the dangers of being exposed to asbestos – not just at work, but in our own communities.

'The Australian Government strongly believes in the need for a coordinated national approach to tackling asbestos,' he said.

Recent evidence indicates there is now a third wave of asbestos-related disease caused by non-occupational exposure associated with home renovations, the Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency says.

A national survey in 2016 found a shocking disregard for safety among Australian home-owners, landlords included.

DIY DANGER

Australia has ratified the International Labour Organisation Asbestos Convention, which requires signatories to effectively ban DIYers from removing 'asbestos from buildings or structures in which asbestos is liable to become airborne', limiting such work solely to properly-qualified contractors.

New Zealand, sandwiched between fellow non-signatories Nepal and Nicaragua, has not ratified the Asbestos Convention.

In New Zealand, DIYers can't plumb in a toilet, as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern found in 2017, but it is legal for a DIYer to remove asbestos, though there are legal duties on them to do it safely.

Two cases from the Tenancy Tribunal in January this year cast indicates haphazard handling of asbestos in homes is happening.

In the first, a landlord had work done on a garage in which his tenants stored possessions.

Despite being made aware of the tenants' concerns that the garage wall and ceiling panels contained asbestos, the landlord, and the builder he hired, dismissed the concerns.

The builder told the tribunal that 'he had been trained for asbestos', and 'this was definitely not it', and that 'it looked different', but the tenants' paid for a test showing it was.

'Understandably the tenants are now concerned that they may get affected by some illness at some point in the future,' the tribunal ruled.

In the second case a rental property was contaminated by asbestos a result of DIY.

Brett Pietersen, vice-president of the Demolition and Asbestos Association, said the cost of specialist licensed asbestos removers provided a financial incentive for building owners to overlook the presence of asbestos, and reckless builders to oblige.

​Pietersen would like to see a national asbestos database established to map Asbestos' presence and reduce the chance of incidents like these happening.

'This needs urgent attention,' he said. 'We need a central database of buildings, and ideally, containing copies of asbestos management plans.'

ASBESTOS REGISTER

Commercial property owners and workplaces must have asbestos management plans for their buildings and workplaces where asbestos is likely to be found, including residential tenanted properties.

These plans could be compiled into a register, which could be audited for compliance, Pietersen said.

'Despite two years into the new regulations, we are still coming across building owners who are unaware of their obligations to manage asbestos in their buildings,' Pietersen said.

Pietersen believed a register, however, would be of interest to property buyers, and to workers, but acknowledges a register the public could access could have an impact on property prices.

It would need some very careful thought about how that was created, and how that information was used,' he said.

Asbestos plans do not have to be revealed to workers, or tenants, just as homeowners who are aware there is asbestos in their homes do not have to reveal it to prospective buyers.

TENS OF THOUSANDS EXPOSED

Thorn's exposure is not a rare occurence.

Glass, in 2017, said there were upwards of 20,000 people listed on the non-public national Asbestos Exposure Register, operated by Worksafe.

Apart from DIYers, former service people, tradesmen and factory workers are among those exposed at points in their lives.

​Worksafe believes instances of exposure is under-reported and many are unlikely to know they were exposed.

WHAT ARE WE DOING?

New Zealand has not been ignoring asbestos, as the licensing of asbestos specialists, the prosecution of builders not handling asbestos carefully, and the requirements for building asbestos management plans shows.

Large Government-owned agencies like the Defence Force and the Ministry of Education have honed plans to manage asbestos in their buildings.

There have also been some attempts by government departments to lift awareness, with guides for the public, including: Removing asbestos from your home and Protecting your health at home.

Homes built before 1940, and after 1990, are unlikely to contain asbestos products.

It can be found in building materials including vinyl floor tiles, carpet underlay, cement flooring, flues to fireplaces, pipe insulation, ventilators, walls and ceilings, kitchen splashbacks, backing for electrical meter boards, downpipes, fences, garages and sheds, gutters, and roofing tiles.

But Pietersen wants to see New Zealand create an equivalent to Australia's asbestos agency, though, he does not see political interest in doing it.

'It is unusual for one country to learn from the experience of another country; it is even more unusual for a country to learn from the experience of its' own past,' Glass wrote in a co-authered article two years ago.

NEW ZEALAND HISTORY OF ASBESTOS

1943 New Zealand's first asbestos factory.

1944 The first health concerns with asbestos were published in a government report on industrial hygiene.

1951 Department of Health report notes dangers of dust to asbestos quarry workers.

1963 Quarrying asbestos in New Zealand ends.

1966: Government inspector in Christchurch notes lack of protection for workers from dust at Christchurch asbestos cement works.

1968: NZ Builders Worker's Union publishes articles on asbestos risks to health, 'the first time any organisation, including Government, had alerted the workers, their families, and the wider public to the health risks of asbestos'.

1971: 'Restricted, Confidential, Not for publication'- A Government survey of the health of asbestos workers led to encouragement to seek alternatives to asbestos.

1973: Asbestos regulations proposed.

1978: Asbestos regulation published after five year delay, but industry lacked equipment to measure worker exposure to asbestos dust.

1984-1990: Unions lead fight to reveal true scale of asbestos-related deaths.

1991: Asbestos Advisory Committee report acknowledges a 'major epidemic of asbestos-related disease'.

1992: National Asbestos Register and Asbestos Exposure Register created. Annual asbestos report initiated.

2014: Asbestos annual reports ended. Asbestos Exposure Register still exists, but it is not public. It contains over 20,000 names.

2016: Asbestos regulations brought in banning import and export of asbestos products.