Wednesday, February 21, 2024

AUSTRALIA

Since January, New South Wales has been gripped by concern over asbestos found in recycled mulch laid at public parks, supermarkets and schools.


Friable asbestos has only been found at one location, Harmony Park in Surry Hills. The rest has been bonded asbestos, which is less dangerous. 
(ABC News: Shaun Kingma)© Provided by ABC News (Sydney)


More than 40 sites have tested positive for asbestos as authorities investigate how the banned mineral was mixed with the mainstream gardening material.

At both manufacture and investigation, identifying the presence of asbestos in mulch relies largely on an extraordinary but commonplace piece of equipment — the human eye.

Staff at The Mulch Centre near Geelong are trained in identifying asbestos and other contaminants when receiving loads of green and timber waste.

"We have staff on site that put eyes on every load that's tipped out," managing director Russell Norton said.

"Our plan on trying to keep the loads as clean as possible is to apply a financial penalty to the people that tip the waste at our site, and if it's contaminated, they get charged a contamination fee."

Loads with rocks, plastic and takeaway wrappers have been stopped by Mr Norton's staff, but he said he had not heard of a situation like the one currently happening in Sydney, during his career.

"To get that many sites, I feel there's been a major let-down in their processes to end up in that situation," he said.

EPA still investigating

The NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) has identified one supplier as common across all contaminated sites — Greenlife Resource Recovery Facility (GRRF) — but is investigating the "complex supply chains involved".

"We are still investigating all lines of enquiry and have not ruled in or out any one cause for this contamination," an EPA spokeswoman said in a statement to 7.30.

"It is a criminal offence to have any asbestos in mulch and the EPA will not hesitate to take regulatory action against anyone who has impacted the product."

GRRF strenuously denies that the company is to blame.

"GRRF takes its responsibilities extremely seriously in processing eco-friendly mulch made from locally sourced timber products," a spokeswoman said in a statement.

"The recycled mulch is independently tested by a National Authorities Testing Australia (NATA)-approved laboratory … the independent testing shows GRRF's mulch did not and does not contain asbestos."
'Like looking for a black sock in a bucket of black socks'

At another NATA-accredited facility in western Sydney, occupational hygienist Linda Apthorpe showed 7.30 the arduous process involved in testing mulch for asbestos contamination.

Bags of mulch are labelled, dried and combed through in small batches, then put through a mechanical sieve and examined again, including under a microscope.

A keen eye is crucial.

"It's kind of like looking for a black sock in your family washing bucket of black socks," Ms Apthorpe said.

"We're looking for a different colour or shape, we're looking for even vinyl flooring materials that could be present in here — anything that could have accidentally got through the process."

All but one of NSW's contaminated sites has contained non-friable or bonded asbestos, a less dangerous form of the material.

"A fragment of bonded asbestos-containing material is not immediately going to pose a risk to health," Ms Apthorpe said.

"And so that's important to put that into perspective: just because it's there, it doesn't immediately pose a risk to health."

Professor Bernard Stewart, an expert in environmental causes of cancer, told 7.30 the risk posed by contaminated mulch was "astonishingly low".

"It's not to be confused with the risk to schoolchildren posed by road safety or posed by children taking to smoking or vaping," Professor Stewart said.

"It's something beyond that sort of risk."

But Professor Stewart said he backed the EPA's clean-up approach: "Other causes of cancer don't have a definitive link with a particular tumour type … so the EPA has no alternative but to address the possibility of exposure by every means at their disposal because of community anxiety, and because of the possibility later down the track of litigation based on the premise that not enough was done."

Concern over mulch has spread to at least two other jurisdictions. Queensland's Environment, Science and Innovation Department confirmed to 7.30 it was conducting "precautionary, targeted" asbestos sampling at mulch suppliers, while the ACT has announced the same potentially contaminated asbestos from NSW had been sold in and near Canberra.

Mr Norton, from The Mulch Centre, stressed well-made mulch was a safe and necessary garden product.

"We've got some of the poorest soils in the world, and we need to do everything we can to reduce the amount of water usage we've got in our gardens and give it our best go, and mulch is critical for that," he said.

"No one should be scared of mulch."

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