Australia Loses Asbestos Disease Records
An office of the Australian federal government has admitted to “potentially losing” more than 1,000 files that detail asbestos-related disease cases from about 20 years ago. The files are required by experts to better understand exposure risk, notes an article in The Sydney Morning Herald.
According to the article, the records were a compilation of details collected in the 1980s for one of the world’s most comprehensive surveys on mesothelioma. Just recently, a Sydney geologist requested the records, which were originally used in order to determine the number of Australians exposed to dangerous levels of asbestos at little-known, naturally-occurring asbestos “hot spots”.
However, the Office of the Australian Safety and Compensation Council, part of the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR), came up empty handed when issued the request.
Marc Hendrickx from Macquarie University said the records from the old Mesothelioma Surveillance Program are essential for the new study.
“It is certainly not our policy to discard records such as these,” said DEEWR director Julie Hill. “We regret the potential loss of these important records to the research community and are still attempting to locate them.”
According to Hendrickx, the missing records contain full occupational and environmental histories of about 1,000 mesothelioma cases reported in the early 1980s.
Currently, about 600 people are diagnosed with mesothelioma in Australia each year. However, the article notes, about 10 percent of all cases occur in people with no known exposure and at least some are believed to be caused by hidden deposits of naturally-occurring asbestos. Hendrickx planned to map these natural deposits using the data from the Mesothelioma Surveillance Program as well as new data collected recently.
The study also hoped to reduce the risk of housing developments accidentally disturbing the asbestos deposits and exposing residents, says the article.
“The potential permanent loss of these records would be a great loss to mesothelioma research in Australia and raises questions about the federal government’s policies surrounding long-term storage and archiving of nationally significant scientific research datasets,” says Hendrickx, who believes the map will no longer be possible without this data.
