Asbestos in hospitals could be endangering staff and public, unions warn.
Hospitals around Australia are riddled with asbestos and health unions say that, in some, it remains a danger to staff and even the general public. View the 7.30 Report here.
Unions and lawyers are warning that hospitals across the country are riddled with asbestos.
Turner Freeman Lawyers represented late asbestos campaigner Bernie Banton and is acting for hundreds of sufferers of dust diseases.
“Hospitals throughout Australia were full of asbestos and many remain full of asbestos,” Lawyer at Turner Freeman told the ABC’s 7.30 program.
“All of the steam pipes are wrapped in asbestos, in the ceiling cavities there is asbestos sprayed.
“There are asbestos fire doors, it is in the boiler houses, it is in the laundry.
“Wherever there was heat, wherever there is steam, there was asbestos.”
Annabel Crouch worked as a speech therapist at Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital for three decades.
Her doctor recently told her she has the fatal and incurable asbestos cancer mesothelioma.
It is believed she contracted it from asbestos-lined service tunnels under the hospital.
Read more on this story below:
- “Hospitals in Australia riddled with asbestos and pose serious health risk, union officials say”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-03/hospital-tunnels-riddled-with-asbestos/5863568
ABC news story, posted 4/11/14, by Matt Peacock - “Protocol for asbestos removal ‘appropriate’ in Illawarra hospital”
http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/2674021/protocols-in-place-to-minimise-risk-health-body/?src=rss
Illawarra Mercury, posted 4/11/14, by Andrew Pearson
