Stop-work risk over ‘toxic cocktail’ at $17bn motorway

Construction on Sydney’s WestConnex may halt after workers were exposed to a ‘toxic cocktail of poisonous chemicals’.

Construction workers are seen in the M4-M5 link. Source: NSW Government

Construction on the $17bn WestConnex motorway in Sydney could come to a halt after dozens of workers on the major infrastructure project were exposed to a “toxic cocktail of poisonous chemicals” including asbestos, ­silica dust and lead.

Workers at the M4-M5 Link Tunnels site at St Peters in Sydney’s inner south raised concerns about their health and safety after drilling works turned up a black sludge material they said “stank” and ate away at the rubber soles of their work boots.

An independent review, commissioned by the Lendlease Samsung Bouygues joint venture building the project and obtained by The Australian, identified risks of “contaminants of concern” including asbestos, lead, carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and dioxins.

A separate SafeWork NSW notice issued in August found workers “may be exposed to a risk to their health and safety due to the inhalation of asbestos fibres or other hazardous material while contaminated soil is being excavated”.

Lendlease has subsequently sold out of its involvement in WestConnex, with the Spanish conglomerate purchasing its engineering arm for about $160m.

CFMMEU secretary Darren Greenfield. Picture: AAP

Darren Greenfield, the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union’s state secretary, said it was outrageous that workers had been exposed to a “toxic soup of contaminants”.

“Dozens of workers on the WestConnex project may have been exposed to a toxic cocktail of poisonous chemicals including asbestos, silica dust and lead in a shocking safety breach,” he said.

Mr Greenfield said the union would stop work on the project “within a week” unless the concerns of workers were addressed.

“This is at the entry to the tunnels so it will slow anyone getting into the tunnels there,” he said.

He said the industrial action would be a legal stoppage taken on safety grounds.

“Workers were walking around the site and complaining to my organisers that after two days of putting on a new pair of boots, it was dissolving the rubber soles on their boots — that’s how contaminated it is,’’ he said.

“For that sort of stuff to be happening shows how toxic it is.”

The SafeWork NSW improvement notice, issued to Lendlease on August 24, noted work health and safety laws were being contravened. Of particular concern, the notice reads, is the “run off from an uncovered pile of spoil possibly contaminating the access and egress (thorough) fare that was in close proximity to the contaminated pile”.

Mr Greenfield said safety inspections at the site revealed that workers had been supplied with insufficient personal protective equipment, that air monitoring equipment had not been ­work­ing and that contaminated soil from excavation work had not been not appropriately isolated.

A WestConnex spokeswoman said on Monday “the health and safety of our community and our workforce is our highest ­priority”.

She said the WestConnex M4-M5 Link contractor had advised that piling works around the former Alexandra landfill site undertaken in August had “uncovered potentially contaminated material”.

“The material was tested and found to contain small amounts of bonded asbestos within wet fill material,” she said. “SafeWork NSW attended the site and issued an improvement notice to the contractor to undertake a review of works to ensure all appropriate controls were in place.

“This review and its recommendation have been undertaken and SafeWork NSW has closed the notice while the construction activity in question has also since been completed.

“The contractor has followed the advice of two external consultants in the safe management and removal of this spoil.”

Mr Greenfield said “it was outrageous that workers are exposed like this and yet again it takes the union‘s intervention to force a company to improve safety on their site”.

He said the union had uncovered significant safety issues on some of Sydney’s biggest construction sites in recent weeks, including a Lendlease site in Sydney where workers were exposed to a risk of a six-storey fall over an unprotected edge, a major power failure at the Multiplex site in Wynyard and raw sewage from broken pipes leaking at the Crown Casino site in Barangaroo. “The union will not back down from holding to account any builder who thinks they can put profits ahead of the lives and safety of construction workers,” Mr Greenfield said.