Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows, through black-and-white archival film and photographs and colour interviews, the dangers of asbestos exposure and that asbestos-related illness and death could have been avoided in Australia. The early scenes show the covers of medical reports from 1898, 1930 and 1955, superimposed on images of workers at the asbestos mill at Wittenoom Gorge in Western Australia, as the narrator reveals when the links between asbestos and health risks first became known. Professor Eric Saint then speaks about asbestos and the knowledge of its dangers.

Educational value points

• The clip shows workers at Wittenoom Gorge which, along with the nearby Wittenoom township, was the site of the worst industrial disaster in Australia’s history. Nearly 20,000 workers and their families were exposed to lethal levels of blue asbestos at the mine, in the mill and in the township after mining first began in 1938. It is estimated that the deaths of 25 per cent of these people will be due to asbestosis, mesothelioma and related diseases.

• Wittenoom Gorge, a major asbestos mine, was operated by Colonial Sugar Refining (CSR) between 1943 and 1966 and, despite the evidence seen here that the inhalation of asbestos dust is dangerous, the company failed to implement safety provisions to protect its workers in the poorly ventilated mine and mill. Damning reports were made by WA health officials and medical specialists in 1959 and 1961 but no action was taken.

• Explaining and referencing their claim that CSR knew about the health dangers of asbestos was a challenge to the Four Corners filmmakers, which they met by combining the conventional technique of using an expert ‘talking head’ with images of one medical report after another, superimposed on archival footage of asbestos workers. These techniques are highly effective in driving home the message of just how long CSR had known of the dangers of asbestos.

• Asbestos is the name given to a group of fibrous naturally occurring silicate minerals, including chrysotile (white asbestos, the least dangerous), amosite (brown asbestos) and crocidolite (blue asbestos, the most dangerous). When asbestos is disturbed, it forms a dust made up of tiny fibres that is easily breathed in. The opening scene shows the extent of the Wittenoom workers’ exposure as they are seen wreathed in asbestos dust.

• Asbestosis, lung cancer in general and in its particularly fast-acting form, mesothelioma, are the deadly trio of diseases caused by asbestos and chronicled in the clip. Asbestosis is scarring of the lungs due to asbestos exposure, with the airways becoming so inflamed and scarred that oxygen is no longer able to pass from the lungs into the blood. Mesothelioma is a cancer of the pleura, the lining of the lung. WA has the highest rate of mesothelioma sufferers in the world.

• In 1988, the same year that the Four Corners program was made, the direct liability of CSR in relation to the Wittenoom workers was established in the case Heys Barrow v CSR, and since that time CSR has settled more than 1,400 compensation claims from people who worked or lived at Wittenoom and have developed asbestosis or related diseases. In December 2006 the company’s liability was also established in relation to lung cancer caused by asbestos.