Asbestos diseases hitting young Aussies as warning issued to home renovators
A brutal disease is on the rise across Australia after crossing over into the “ordinary world”, with a new wave of cases impacting teenagers.
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A new generation of Australians are dealing with the fallout of decades-old decisions to allow the widespread use of asbestos in homes and buildings, with teenagers now being diagnosed with brutal diseases.
Jarni Greatorex learned she had peritoneal mesothelioma two weeks after her 16th birthday in 2021, having suffering a collapsed lung and fluid rushing into her heart.
“I don’t exactly remember the day they told me,” she said. “Because most of the 10 weeks I did spend in hospital, I was zoning out.
“There was a lot of traumatic things going on for me, so I tried my best to just ignore everything.”
Her mother Jessie Dean recalled the shock of being told her daughter had a disease usually associated with older, blue collar workers.
“It’s now hitting children,” she said.
“I mean she’s 18 years old. We knew three, four decades ago. I believe they knew 100 years ago how bad it was.
“So to know that they knew about this and they could have stopped this from happening, is even worse.”
The mother and daughter are speaking out during National Asbestos Awareness Week, with experts warning that Aussies trying to save cash by carrying out home renovations themselves could end up paying with their lives.
The Asbestos Diseases Society of Australia said this year it was aware of three people who are in their teens or young adults who suffer from asbestos cancers, including Ms Greatorex.
“They’ve crossed over from the industrial world, into the ordinary world,” chief executive Melita Markey told the ABC in April.
It is believed Australia is approaching the peak of a “third wave” of asbestos-related disease, more than 20 years after the cancer-causing material was banned from use in all forms in the country.
More than 4,000 Australians still die annually from the diseases, which can take decades to present.
Asbestosis was first diagnosed in British factory workers in 1900, but was not named until the 1920s.
Professor Anthony Linton said the demographic of people who are contracting asbestosis or mesothelioma are not the mining or tradie types typically linked with the illnesses.
“Nowadays we are actually far more worried about home renovators,” he said. “Because asbestos is in about one in three homes.”
Data shows almost half of people being diagnosed now believe they were exposed around the home, the research director at the Asbestos and Dust Diseases Institute said.
“There is a huge ethnic and cultural divide,” he said. “Men and women, young people and old people.
“There are patients who are teenagers who are diagnosed with this disease.”
Just this year the NSW Environmental Protection Agency found mulch containing asbestos at 75 sites across greater Sydney, after a parent found the materials at a park in the inner west.
The bonded asbestos was not considered a “major risk”, NSW Health said at the time, but its presence sparked a widespread investigation and outraged community members.
Any home built before 1990 is highly likely to contain asbestos, according to the Asbestos and Silica Safety and Eradication Agency.
Much of this material is now decades old and the older it is, the more it begins deteriorating and can release harmful fibres.
The Asbestos and Silica Safety and Eradication Agency said management and removal falls “under multiple and sometimes overlapping laws and regulations”.
“No single agency has responsibility for removal of asbestos in Australia. Responsibility rests with the person or organisation that owns the building or property that has the asbestos in it.”
Asbestos removal is not legal for DIY renovators in the ACT, where only licensed specialists are allowed to carry out the works.
In other states and territories a non-licensed person is allowed to remove non-friable asbestos as long as the area is no bigger than 10 sqm.
John Limpus, who has worked in the field of asbestos removal for more than 20 years, said he has been horrified by some of the things he has seen on building sites in recent times.
That includes builders cutting straight into walls with angle grinders without conducting proper testing, potentially spraying homes with toxic dust.
“I can’t believe what’s going on,” he said. “There’s so many people getting exposed.
“The worst thing is tradies coming and exposing innocent people to it. That is a regular event.”
Maree Stokes has worked to support families dealing with asbestos-related cancers since she lost her husband, Eddie, to mesothelioma 21 years ago.
He was a bus driver in his mid-50s when diagnosed in 1996, at a time when some doctors were still learning about the disease.
It had been decades since Mr Stokes worked as an apprentice panel beater in his youth, picking up asbestos with his bare hands.
“I remember going to the respiratory physician,” Ms Stokes said. “She said ‘mesothelioma’.
“I said ‘what does that mean?’. She said ’12 months’.
“I just burst into tears.”
Ms Stokes, who was vice president of the Asbestos Disease Foundation of Australia, urged Australians to call in experts when doing any renovations to remove the deadly materials.
“It’s worth it, it’s not going to cost you your life,” she said.
Professor Linton, an oncologist, said efforts to develop new treatments for the “very tough cancer” were ongoing, and it is still considered incurable.
That’s why it was important to have asbestos removed safely and quickly from Australia’s homes, work and environment, he said.
“Asbestos is going to be a problem for the next 80 to 100 years.”
Now 18, Jarni is working and undergoing treatment every 3 weeks as she tries to get her life back on track.
She says her illness has become a “normal part of my life” but has urged authorities to take action and prevent others like her facing the same fate.
“The more they talk about it, the more they are putting it off,” she said.
That message was echoed by her mother, herself a cancer survivor, who does not want other families to suffer “the same heartache we go through”.
“This shouldn’t be a normal part of a teenager’s life,” Ms Dean said.
“If they’d actually acted on it more than two decades ago, how many more people would already not be affected by this?
“People need to be up in arms about it. There’s children getting it now.”
Originally published as Asbestos diseases hitting young Aussies as warning issued to home renovators
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