Asbestos map of Eastern Australia published

An article published online in Environmental Geology, an international journal of earth sciences, identifies parts of eastern Australia underlain by rocks with the right geological conditions to host asbestos. According to the author, Macquarie University researcher Marc Hendrickx, there is good news and bad news.

“The good news is that potential asbestos bearing rocks account for only 0.2% of the land area of eastern Australia and most of the outcrops are in remote areas."

The main occurrence of potential asbestos bearing rocks in eastern Australia is in serpentinite that occurs in narrow outcrop belts in all the eastern states. Other potential hosts include altered ultramafic rocks in central New South Wales (NSW), and metamorphic rocks in northern Tasmania, western NSW and western Queensland (QLD). The article also documents 78 occurrences of asbestos in eastern Australia. Most of these are of chrysotile asbestos but a small number are of amphibole asbestos including tremolite asbestos. According to Mr Hendrickx exposure to low levels of amphibole asbestos from disturbance of natural sources has been linked with mesothelioma elsewhere in the world.

The article also documents some reported cases of disturbance of asbestos bearing rocks in eastern Australia. Mr Hendrickx indicates “The bad news is that some of the areas have been unwittingly disturbed, mainly by using asbestos bearing rocks as a source of material for road construction. In two cases, in QLD and NSW this has resulted in affected roads undergoing remediation costing millions of dollars. Another example in Orange in central NSW involved 60,000 m3 of rock being crushed for aggregate during the development of a new business park before the asbestos content was realized. Air quality monitoring undertaken in similar situations elsewhere indicates exposure to low levels of respirable asbestos fibres is possible from disturbance of asbestos in rocks and soils in such circumstances.”

Mr Hendrickx suggests the specialized geological maps published as part of the study will help planning authorities and land owners avoid future “accidental” or unplanned disturbance of asbestos bearing rocks. “Understanding the geology of asbestos in Australia is an important step in preventing disturbance of asbestos bearing rocks, particularly those containing amphibole asbestos, that could lead to future health problems. With the publication of the map in this article planning authorities can no longer claim they were ignorant of the locations of potential asbestos bearing rocks in eastern Australia”.

Mr Hendrickx's research, in the Graduate School of the Environment at Macquarie University in Australia, hopes to ascertain the geology of Naturally Occurring Asbestos in eastern and South Australia and aims to discover if it has caused cases of the cancer mesothelioma in Australia. The project suffered a recent set back when historical medical records intended to be used to establish a link between NOA and mesothelioma cases could not be located by the Australian government authority responsible. Mr Hendrickx indicates that current reporting of mesothelioma cases to cancer registries does not provide sufficient information about past residential and occupational histories of patients to be of use in linking mesothelioma to NOA and that new epidemiological studies are required if this link is to be further explored.

The article “Naturally occurring asbestos in eastern Australia: a review of geological occurrence, disturbance and mesothelioma risk” can be accessed online from Environmental Geology, a Springer publication.

Sources

Email this story

Total views: 3227

Related Articles
· United Kingdom to introduce graphic images on cigarette packets
· Australian frog is rediscovered after 17 years
· Contaminated baby's milk induces wave of child illness in China
· Dead body left in UK hospital alongside living patients for seven hours
· World's first double arm transplant undertaken in Munich


Sign in to add your comment