Workers allegedly exposed to asbestos at a Yarraville company have raised questions over the handling of the incident.
While the incident occurred more than a year ago, it has taken 15 months for the workers to receive a promised report which should have taken less than a week to complete, according to the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union.
It argues the report is flawed because nobody consulted the affected workers, who they say had dust from material that tested positive for asbestos spread over their face and clothes.
Routine testing of marble chip being used at CSR Gyprock in February, 2017, identified asbestos within the sample. A 1200-kilogram bag of the raw material had already been loaded into a hopper for mixing.
Star Weekly understands at least two workers were allegedly exposed to dust from the raw material before work was halted and the bag removed. The union said workers were told samples would be sent to a lab in Western Australia for stringent testing.
Workers spent the following months chasing the results, but the testing had instead been carried out in Melbourne and they were denied a copy of the report.
The workers pushed for further testing in Western Australia and involved the union.
The Western Australia report was provided to the workers this month.
A CSR spokeswoman said that as soon as site management became aware of the initial test result, the material was quarantined and removed. She said an independent safety report confirmed that any exposure by employees would have been negligible.
“In response to further requests for information, we undertook another more comprehensive independent expert review, which confirmed the verbal advice we had received, and which we then shared with employee representatives,” she said.
“Despite the raw material being tested by four independent experts, no conclusive result was determined.”
Airborne asbestos fibres can cause potentially fatal conditions that can take more than 30 years to develop.
