I may have been the first to publish about the ticking time-bomb of Hessian bags used to to transport asbestos, then used to make carpet underlay.
Bromwich, D. W. (2006). “The 2005 Australian Asbestos Codes of Practice – An Occupational Hygiene Perspective.” Journal of Occupational Health and Safety – Australia and New Zealand 22(5): 463-470.
Matt Peacock’s new book Killer Company: James Hardie Exposed is published next week but has already had a lot of publicity with the ABC TV 7:30 Report and numerous other reports and blogs. He was able to find people who actually worked in factories that picked up the asbestos contaminated hessian bags that transported asbestos, for processing into carpet underlay.
My estimate is that about 25% of the carpet underlay was made from asbestos contaminated bags, so the extent of the problem is huge. There would have been many carpet layers and home renovators that would have been exposed during the placement and removal of the carpet. I suspect there would also be an ongoing problem with the carpet that is still in place.
Years of pounding of the carpet by feet would tend to break up clumps of fibre into respirable asbestos, increasing its toxicity. However that same action would tend to flatten the underlay, so less air is displaced. Somewhere next to the most worn sections of carpet should be the greatest concentration of respirable asbestos fibres. Infants crawling on the carper would get the highest exposure and would more likely live the decades to develop mesothelioma of the lung.
It would be interesting to do some simple trials with a TSI Dustrak, just walking around an old carpet and measuring the dust level near the carpet. Walking on a carpet should produce puffs of air as the displaced air escapes each footstep. Some would travel inside the carpet and some would form invisible dust clouds around the feet.
Quantifying the risk would not be easy. While the TSI Dustrak survey near the carpet could direct where the highest dust levels would be, it would be difficult to measure the asbestos fibre concentration near the carpet, as the background would contain a lot of other dust, including carpet and hessian fibres.
Measuring asbestos fibres in mine dust has been attempted with some difficulty, so there is a precedent. Pre-treatment of the airborne carpet dust by heating it in the presence of oxygen would remove all the organic dusts like hessian and carpet fibres may make the task easier.
It will interesting to see how many carpet layer and home renovators s contract mesothelioma. A full stop would currently conceal the funding available to investigate the issue.
