Asbestos is a nasty old mineral. It’s known for releasing fine, microscopic fibers that can lodge in the body’s tissues and cause deadly disease over a period of decades. Originally prized for its fire resistance and insulating properties, it was widely used in all sorts of building materials. Years after the dangers became clear, many countries eventually banned its use, with strict rules around disposal to protect the public from the risk it poses to health.
Australia is one of the stricter countries when it comes to asbestos, taking great pains to limit its use and its entry into the country. This made it all the more surprising when it became apparent that schools across the nation had been contaminated with loose asbestos material. The culprit was something altogether unexpected, too—in the form of tiny little tubes of colored sand. Authorities have rushed to shut down schools as the media asked the obvious question—how could this be allowed to happen?
Hiding In Plain Sight
Australia takes asbestos very seriously. Typically, asbestos disposal is supposed to occur according to very specific rules. Most state laws generally require that the material must be collected by qualified individuals except in minor cases, and that it must be bagged in multiple layers of plastic prior to disposal to avoid release of dangerous fibers into the environment. The use, sale, and import of asbestos has been outright banned since 2003, and border officials enforce strict checks on any imports deemed a high risk to potentially contain the material.
Thus, by and large, you would expect that any item you bought in an Australian retailer would be free of asbestos. That seemed to be true, until a recent chance discovery. A laboratory running tests on some new equipment happened to accidentally find asbestos contamination in a sample of colored sand—a product typically marketed for artistic use by children. The manager of the lab happened to mention the finding in a podcast, with the matter eventually reaching New Zealand authorities who then raised the alarm with their Australian counterparts. This led to a investigation by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which instituted a national safety recall in short order.
The response from there was swift. At least 450 schools instituted temporary shutdowns due to the presence or suspected presence of the offending material. Some began cleanup efforts in earnest, hiring professional asbestos removalists to deal with the colored sand. In many cases, the sand wasn’t just in sealed packaging—it had been used in countless student artworks or spilled in carpeted classrooms. Meanwhile, parents feared the worst after finding the offending products in their own homes. Cleanup efforts in many schools are ongoing, due in part to the massive spike in demand for the limited asbestos removal services available across the country. Authorities in various states have issued guidelines on how to handle cleanup and proper disposal of any such material found in the workplace.
At this stage, it’s unclear how asbestos came to contaminate colored sand products sold across the country, though links have been found to a quarry in China. It’s believed that the products in question have been imported into Australia since 2020, but have never faced any testing regarding asbestos content. Different batches have tested positive for both tremolite and chrysotile asbestos, both of which present health risks to the public. However, authorities have thus far stated the health risks of the colored sand are low. “The danger from asbestos comes when there are very, very fine fibres that are released and inhaled by humans,” stated ACCC deputy chair, Catriona Lowe. “We understand from expert advice that the risk of that in relation to these products is low because the asbestos is in effect naturally occurring and hasn’t been ground down as such to release those fibres.”
Investigations are ongoing as to how asbestos-containing material was distributed across the country for years, and often used by children who might inhale or ingest the material during use. The health concerns are obvious, even if the stated risks are low. The obvious reaction is to state that the material should have been tested when first imported, but such a policy would have a lot of caveats. It’s simply not possible to test every item that enters the country for every possible contaminant. At the same time, one could argue that a mined sand product is more likely to contain asbestos than a box of Hot Wheels cars or a crate of Belgian chocolates. A measured guess would say this event will be ruled out as a freak occurrence, with authorities perhaps stepping up random spot checks on these products to try and limit the damage if similar contamination occurs again in future.
Featured image and other sand product images from the Australian government’s recall page.
Here we can observe the broken telephone effect. The original source said traces were found, which usually implies there’s not a whole lot.
So while asbestos is generally a bad thing, here we have a clear moral panic with schools closing down and hiring expensive experts, throwing away stuff over traces of asbestos found in some decorative sand. One could ask the question, how much asbestos on average is brought into schools by the sand the children carry in with their shoes, and how does it compare to the amount of asbestos found in this sand, and whether this whole thing is just a huge over-reaction?
Cha-ching.
I have the same suspicions. Someone is making bank on the cleanup.
It reminds me of the ridiculous overreaction when someone peed in a reservoir. Meanwhile bird droppings were a daily occurrence.
https://time.com/66459/portland-reservoir-pee/
I think half the parents who freaked out forgot they were liberally doused in Talc Powder when they were tykes.
However very recently there was a bit of a scandal around mulch being contaminated with old asbestos building waste and this contaminated mulch being used in parks and playgrounds. So, for many schools there was likely a strong pain-point, a keen recent memory in place of a real danger they dealt with barely months ago.
The federal government recommendation for the sand was simply stop using it just in case, put on N95 respirators and gloves when you double bag it just in case, then chuck it in the standard trash because it’s trace and low risk. No special handling after double bagging, standard landfill bins ok.
The mulch problem, very recent really, was a lot more of a kerfuffle.
My understanding is it doesn’t take more than a single small fibre of the stuff in the wrong place to get you, eventually anyway, it being a slow developing problem – so trace or bucket load doesn’t really matter so much it is worth taking seriously. And that trace around dumb children who will do silly stuff with it is potentially very very dangerous to them, even if you won’t find out for 30 odd years…
Yes this situation isn’t as bad as some asbestos incidents, but still kids playing with the stuff makes the odds of generating the nasty little fibres higher and all while not wearing the PPE to be around them relatively safely. Far better to be cautious than risk a big wave of health problems that will be making folks ill while still in their prime working years too.
One thing to remember is that, being rich in the mineral, Australia has had more than it’s share of hi-profile asbestos pollution incidents, so there may be some heightened sensitivity at play.
Another thing to remember, asbestos being a naturally occurring silicate mineral that is liberated by the erosion and weathering of certain common types of rock, trace amounts are present in just about every shovelful of dirt you pick up. The better question is, if you really went looking for it, where wouldn’t you find it?
So there is heightened sensitivity, and public ignorance about the relative risks, and people willing to exploit it all to sell news articles, grandstand as politicians, or just sell unnecessary asbestos clean-up services to panicking parents and school administrators.
/r/lostedditors
“the asbestos is in effect naturally occurring and hasn’t been ground down as such to release those fibres.”
I wonder if vibration during shipping might not grind the sand against the asbestos, resulting in particles of the dangerous sizes — not to mention that using the product as designed could cause friction and grinding action.
Of course, there are almost no numbers available (here). The whole thing might be an over-reaction. Or not.
I’m trained in asbestos work as part of my job. The part you quoted is BS. Vermiculite that had asbestos in it was used for insulation in Libby Montana and was fresh from ground and exposed lots of people to asbestos.
You are correct about the mechanical abrasion of sand generating friable fibers that can go airborne. Asbestos is safest when it is not disturbed. Kids play sand is something that is intended to get airated and disturbed. Worst case scenario.
How is the sand colored? I would think the coloring would contain the asbestos, mostly.
This appears to be “magic sand” or “kinetic sand”, which is ultra-fine sand grains coated in some organic compound that repels water. The coated grains are then wetted with oil, which makes them stick together like wet beach sand that never dries up, and that’s what the kids play with.
Come to think of it, it doesn’t sound like a very healthy product to begin with.
Could be unhealthy in other ways too, but does sound like a quite a low risk for airborne asbestos.
Australia has a large panic over minute amounts of asbestos, meanwhile in Ukraine entire villages roofed with the stuff have been turned to rubble. Soldiers who manage to evade killer drones, bullets, land mines, bombs and non-kinetic weapons face a grim prospect of getting cancer later in life.
War sucks. Both sides should surrender and fight their leaders (who start the wars, always).
I’d suggest the Ukrainian’s would consider it a victory, and worth the cost even, should their exposure to crap in a warzone to be their biggest problem in a few decades time… That means they lived through the war, and their home is still free and feeling secure enough to not be living with permanently under siege type mentality.
I live in NZ/Aotearoa, and its pretty intense, as a parent it is concerning as you don’t want to be ruminating about negative long-term possibilities for your kids health. We see a lot of building and demolition sites with people wearing full PPE and big warning signs for asbestos removal so the fear is there in society of the risk – what the perceived vs real effect of asbestos is out of my knowledge though.
Also one chain store estimates they sold over 67k units of the product, so its not like its only a few buckets of the stuff. (Remember NZ total population is ~5.3 million people).
The bigger problem tends to be the water distribution system, which was built with asbestos cement. 50 year old pipes are degrading and releasing asbestos fibers into the drinking water.
https://iwaponline.com/ws/article/22/4/4445/87250/The-concentration-and-prevalence-of-asbestos
Fortunately, drinking asbestos fibers doesn’t seem to have such a clear link to cancer since the fibers do dissolve in the strong acid in the stomach, but with asbestos in the water you get asbestos everywhere, in the air as well, and then in the lungs.