Asbestos Awareness Week 2011

Asbestos Awareness Week is a great opportunity for unions, workers, sufferers of asbestos-related disease, governments and others to focus attention on asbestos issues.

Large numbers of Australian homes and workplaces still contain asbestos and Australia continues to suffer one of the highest known rates of asbestos-related disease, per head of population, in the world.

For decades asbestos was one of the most commonly used building materials. Australia had the highest, per capita, use of asbestos in the world from the 1950s until the mid- to late-1980s and about every third domestic dwelling built before 1982 is thought to contain asbestos. After many years of concerted union campaigning, the import and use of asbestos and asbestos-containing materials in Australian workplaces was finally banned in December 2003.

Unions have campaigned for decades about the dangers of asbestos and have successfully helped secure long-term compensation for people affected by asbestos-related disease. Many have lost their lives through their exposure in the workplace. Miners of asbestos have been badly affected but also many other tradespeople, workers and family members of workers. Waterside workers who loaded asbestos onto ships, mechanics who worked on asbestos-filled brake pads, electricians and technicians in power stations who used asbestos, as well as builders, carpenters, roofers and other tradespeople who used ‘fibro’ building products.

Now the danger is for home renovators and their families, as well as tradespeople such as carpenters, plumbers and electricians.

For more information about events in your area, visit www.actu.org.au/Events/.