Australia: Asbestos potentially lost by government council

Important asbestos potentially lost by government council

Sydney, Australia - A geologist who inquired about a set of records containing roughly 1,000 asbestos-related disease cases learned from a federal government department that the records were missing.

Marc Hendrickx received word from the Office of the Australian Safety and Compensation Council (ASCC) that they had potentially lost the Mesothelioma Surveillance Program records and were looking for them. The records contain one of the world's most comprehensive surveys on mesothelioma, with the full occupational and environmental histories of nearly 1,000 cases reported in the early 1980s.

Mr. Hendrickx is conducting a landmark study to determine the number of Australians who may have been exposed to naturally occurring asbestos at locations not well known to contain the deadly substance. He said the records were essential to his study since data collected after 1985 lacked certain details important to his research.

Of the approximately 600 new cases of mesothelioma diagnosed each year, about 10 percent of them occur in people with no known exposure to asbestos. Mr. Hendrickx believes the cause for those cases are hidden deposits of naturally-occurring asbestos, and he was planning to map out the dangerous locations in his project to prevent future exposure and reduce the risk of new developments that may disturb the asbestos.

The ASCC has admitted that the records were stored in 2001, but since last year, it has not been able to locate them. The council said it regrets the potential loss of the records and will still continue to look for them.

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