Class action over 'chemical exposure'

FORMER students who claim they were exposed to chemicals at their Sydney high school are threatening legal action.

FORMER students who claim they were exposed to chemicals at their Sydney high school, which was built on a gasworks, are threatening legal action against the NSW Education Department.

The students told ABC's 7.30 last night they were exposed to toxic chemicals at Camden High School, leading to chronic illnesses, birth abnormalities, cancer and brain tumours. Built in the 1950s, Camden High School was located on top of a former gas-works. The school was moved more than 40 years later when chemicals were discovered.

"We've actually had relatives of 16 per cent of the people in touch with us come forward and suggest that those people have died as a result of illnesses contracted at this site," lawyer Jim Marsden, who is representing about 70 people in the class action, told the ABC. "If ultimately we find that a department or a number of departments are responsible and . . . there has been illness caused as a result of these contaminations . . . whoever was responsible must be held to account."

Rachel Dowling attended the school in the 80s and blamed chemicals for her thyroid cancer: "There was always an egg smell, and I always thought that the bunsen burner gas taps had been left on or leaking. "