Australia: carpet underlayment loaded with asbestos

[pscot]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/25/2665634.htm?section=australia



James Hardie knew that for three decades until the early 1970s hessian bags which had been used to transport asbestos were recycled for use as carpet underlay.Many Australian homes may still have carpet underlay which contains the deadly asbestos fibres.Jo Grgurich picked up the hessian bags for Fremantle Bag Company in Western Australia in the late 1950s, where four of his work colleagues have since died from the cancer mesothelioma.He says if the bag was badly damaged it was recycled as carpet underfelt without being cleaned.

"They weren't clean enough ... because you couldn't," he said.


In 1971 its environment manager noted a pile of empty bags in a Melbourne factory and was told they were to be sold to be pulped for the manufacture of carpet underlay.For the thousands of Australians who might get mesothelioma, James Hardie has an asbestos fund to pay compensation.But Barry Robson from the Asbestos Diseases Foundation says this now means thousands more may need that money.

"The renovation market is the next big wave," he said."Us poor buggers work in the industrial side of the asbestos. We'll all be dead in another 10, 15 years from it, but it's the renovators, the home renovators, the young people that are renovating their homes.
They're dragging up these carpets without any protection and most probably have their young kids with them. Forty, 50 years from now, those young kids could come down with a deadly asbestos disease."

Member of the Asbestos Research Group and thoracic surgeon Doctor Roger Allen says he has seen cases of home renovators suffering asbestosis or mesothelioma.

"We've had the first wave, which are the workers who worked mining the stuff, and then we've had the second wave, which is the group of people who are like the builders, the carpenters, the plumbers," he said.Now we're getting to the third wave, which are the home renovators. So we're getting people who now even in their early 40s are coming down with mesothelioma."

Mr Robson also claims that James Hardie has covered it up.

"The directors of James Hardie through the decades all should be charged with criminal charges," he said."They knew, and have Hardie's internal documents recognising the fact that they knew, that the fibres were potentially lethal. All directors for that company since the '50s should have been charged under criminal law." (more)

[MrModerate]

1. Asbestos: Like cigarettes, but you don't have to be a smoker to die. n/t

[Arcana]

2. I've always been suspicious of recycled things, recycled does not always equal healthy

A few other recycled items I would never touch:

Vinyl records molded into bowls.
Anything made from motherboards
Anything made from recycled tires other then used tired or shoe soles.

Tires are treated with dozens of chemical additives to improve their performance, and using a tire as a wallet instead of what it was meant to be seems like a big risk.