Fed: Asbestos bags used for carpet underlays, new book claims
Sat Aug 22 02:42:04 EST 2009
Fri Aug 21 16:42:04 UTC 2009
SYDNEY, Aug 22 AAP - James Hardie has left a deadly legacy kept secret from the public, with asbestos waste used for a range of domestic purposes including driveways and paths, a new book claims.
Author Matt Peacock writes about the practice, and the use of hessian bags that once carried asbestos as carpet underlay, in his new book `Killer Company: James Hardie Exposed'.
In an extract, published in The Weekend Australian newspaper on Saturday, Peacock writes that up until the 1970s it was common practice to build driveways, paths and garage floors from asbestos waste.
He writes that James Hardie employees were encouraged to help themselves to the waste for their own use at home.
Asbestos waste was also scattered in other places, the book says.
"For Hardie, the driveways were part of a bigger problem," Peacock writes.
"Thousands of tonnes of its asbestos waste were dispersed in all sorts of places: in rivers and creeks, on vacant blocks, on roadways, even on football ovals."
Peacock writes that James Hardie knew about the dangers of asbestos before the 1970s but did not warn people.
"The company's reaction ... was not to alert people to the dangers; instead, it set about quietly stopping the practice."
The book also claims that the hessian bags in which raw asbestos was shipped to Australia were recycled for other uses.
Peacock writes that John Downes, who later developed asbestosis, worked for the Active Bag Company until 1965 and recalls picking up the bags from the James Hardie factory in Camellia.
"After the bags were tumbled in a machine to remove the obvious raw asbestos, Downes said, they were sold to various firms for use as `carpet underlay or onion bags'," the book says.
"Just this company alone would have processed about a quarter of a million asbestos bags every year."
The revelations come after former James Hardie chief executive Peter Macdonald was fined $350,000 on Thursday for breaching the Corporations Act over misleading statements about asbestos compensation.
Non-executive board members, including Meredith Hellicar and Telstra director Peter Willcox, were fined $30,000.
Mr Macdonald was also disqualified from managing a company for 15 years while a number of others were banned for between five and seven years.
