Updated
Ausgrid claims that most of the 35 electrical substations in Sydney's Central Business District with friable asbestos have been cleaned - at night by workers in full protective suits to avoid alarming members of the public. The Electrical Trades Union's NSW Secretary Steve Butler warns the problem will not be just in Sydney, but nationwide, with more than 50 Ausgrid employees already developing asbestos disease, and the toll growing by at least two a year.
Matt Peacock
Source: AM | Duration: 3min 4sec
Topics: asbestos, cancer, occupational-health-and-safety, mesothelioma, sydney-2000
TONY EASTLEY: Last week AM revealed the problem of asbestos in the electrical fuse boxes of many private houses.
Now, the Electrical Trade Union has sounded the alarm about friable, dusty asbestos which the union says is present in underground substations in Sydney's Central Business District.
Ausgrid, which operates the substations, says asbestos has already been safely removed from the vast bulk of the sites where it's been identified.
Matt Peacock reports.
MATT PEACOCK: Earlier this year an Ausgrid briefing paper warned about the possible public reaction to the visual impact of workers wearing full protective suits undertaking asbestos removal work in Sydney's Central Business District, and the "perception of asbestos exposure".
According to the New South Wales secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, Steve Butler, many of the substations are close to high pedestrian traffic.
STEVE BUTLER: In the middle of the footpath that you're walking along as you're walking down Pitt Street, there'll be a iron grate that people will lift off and there'll be a set of stairs that goes down into an electricity substation.
MATT PEACOCK: Around 35 CBD substations were identified to need work to contain the friable asbestos, work that Ausgrid planned to undertake at night to avoid worrying the public, although both Ausgrid and the union worried that overtime bans due to budget cuts threatened the work program.
Since then, though, according to Ausgrid's Anthony O'Brien, most of the potentially dangerous asbestos has been removed.
ANTHONY O'BRIEN: In the Sydney CBD, asbestos has been present in some substations for a long time. We have safely removed the asbestos from 90 per cent of those substations, so more than 30 have had the asbestos removed.
MATT PEACOCK: But the ETU's Steve Butler says that Sydney's problem may well be repeated nationwide.
STEVE BUTLER: I don't believe it's a problem restricted to Sydney. I don't believe it's a problem restricted to New South Wales. I think it goes countrywide.
I've got no doubt if this problem exists in New South Wales, it exists in Victoria, it exists in Queensland, West Australia, South Australia and Tasmania.
MATT PEACOCK: Mr Butler is already alarmed by the growing incidence of reported asbestos disease amongst his members, running, he says, at the rate of two a year and growing.
STEVE BUTLER: In the electricity industry, if two people died every year as a result of electrocution, they'd shut the place down. If two people were run over by trucks working in that industry, they'd shut the place down.
Only when it comes to people leaving the organisation, the companies wipe their hands of them. They're now entering their golden years. They retire and a couple of years into their retirement, they get a bit of a cough, they do down and get an X-ray done. All of a sudden, they're in the gun, they're life's gonna be over real quick and everyone else has wiped their hands of 'em.
MATT PEACOCK: So far in Ausgrid alone, says Mr Butler, 30 people have contracted asbestosis, with 21 developing the fatal cancer mesothelioma.
TONY EASTLEY: That report from Matt Peacock.
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