The Whens of Wittenoom

By Isabel Storey

Chronology of the mining and use of blue asbestos from ancient to modern times with emphasis on the events at Wittenoom, Western Australia. This mining has resulted in WA having the highest rate of mesotelioma in the world.
Includes comprehensive Bibliography.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Isabel Storey
• Release date: Apr 9, 2011
• ISBN: 9780987118813

Isabel Storey

My long term aim is to have the best of my work floating around beyond my lifetime.Encouraging this conceit are a couple of events which lead me to believe I have something worth sharing. One of my poems was bracketed between Donne's "Ecstasy" and Blake's "Tyger". The BBC purchased 7 poems to be used within "PlaySchool" (at the time I was Isabel Reeves). I have 2 non-fiction works which have provided positive feedback from viewers.I have no illusions. My work, so far, does not have any appeal for a wide audience. Add to this, my eagerness to publish before I had sufficient appreciation of the publishing and marketing side of putting one's books 'out there'. (I am working on this.)If you have any connection with the effects of asbestos, you may want to read "The Whens of Wittenoom."If you, or anyone close to you, has their life turned upside down due to the manic episodes inherent in bi-polar disorder, you may want to try reading "Life Before Lithium." Hard copies had been provided for review and the response was that it was a page turner and that folk were not able to put it down until sleep overtook at 3am. The publisher to whom I sent this MS was embarrassed by the need to advise that the reader appointed to assess my book had disappeared and taken the manuscript with her!Earning Purple is a longish short story full of the magic found during mania and, as such, a metaphorical account of "Life Before Lithium".

Book preview

THE WHENS OF WITTENOOM

Blue Asbestos Through the Ages :Chronology of a Slow Death

by

Isabel D Storey

PUBLISHED BY:

Isabel D Storey on Smashwords

The Whens of Wittenoom

Copyright © 1994 by Isabel D Storey

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

NOTE TO THE READER

Some entries within the Chronology are included to provide some context of the times. Mining of any form has always been dangerous. Accidents happen that are not connected to mining. Disasters are always more dramatic the closer we are to the event. That does not diminish the reality but says much about our capacity to cope.

*****

CONTENTS

Diseases Related to Mining in General

Asbestos Related Diseases

Mesothelioma

Fibres and Cancer

Airborne Fibres

The Chronology

BC

AD -> 1870

1898

1901

1910

1920

1930

1940

1950

1960

1972

The Fibre Counting Begins

1980

1990

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Reports

State Archives

Journals

Books

Official Records (mostly Shire of Ashburton Council Minutes)

*****

The Whens of Wittenoom

A town is born. A town dies. Not uncommon.

That the cause of the town's being is also the cause of its ceasing to be is less common unless it is a mining town. But this is a town in which people own their own homes. They choose to live there despite the fact the mine closed nearly thirty years ago. Or perhaps because of it in that there were many houses sold for less than people would pay for a old second-hand car.

The town of Wittenoom was created to house workers at the nearby mine and processing plant. Had the material mined been almost any other substance it would have had few problems.

It was an asbestos mining town; mining and milling blue asbestos fibres. The dust created in this process at that time resulted in the full spectrum of asbestos-related diseases and conditions caused by inhaling dust: pleural plaques, asbestosis and lung cancer which affected those employed in the mine and the mill.

The fibres released at that time contributed to Western Australia having the highest rate of deaths from mesothelioma (cancer of the lining of the lung) in the world.

As the name of this particular disease is one found often in the following pages it might be helpful to be able to wrap one's tongue around the word early on

Mee soh thie (as in thief) lee oh mah.

Known in Wittenoom as the Big M.

In compiling the following account many sources have been used.

All information contained in the Chronology has been accessed from other sources. When my opinion intrudes, this is identified by being placed in parentheses. Wherever possible I have gone back to original documents. Where this was not possible and accounts differed, I chose the one seeming more reliable based on accuracy on other points.

All the information contained within the Chronology has been sourced from documents within the Bibliography.

Where I felt that some readers may instantly react against a piece of information, I have included the source with the item.

DISEASES RELATED TO MINING IN GENERAL_

Pneumoconiosis : results from inhaling and retaining excessive dust in the lungs. Anything foreign breathed into the lungs over a long period eventually causes tissue changes. Inorganic dusts that cause the least severe medical problems include :

carbon among coal-workers (anthracosis)

iron among welders, hematite & magnetite miners (siderosis)

These dusts can accumulate to the amounts of about 20 grams (0.7) ounce with only minimal tissue changes.

Inhalation of silica dust (silicosis) is far more serious and is found in mining, sand-blasting and pottery workers. It takes only 5 to 6 grams of dust retained in the lungs to cause symptoms.

Experience in Western Australia has been that workers in asbestos mines are ten times more likely to contract asbestosis than gold miners are to contract silicosis.

The inhalation of aluminium, talc or beryllium (berylliosis) also produces forms of pneumoconiosis.

(Back to top)

ASBESTOS RELATED DISEASES_

Pneumoconiosis : as listed above, of which asbestosis is one form. Can be produced by all types of asbestos.

Pleural plaques : may appear as a thickening on the lining of the chest wall, may never be diagnosed in life and may not affect general health in any way. Can be produced by all types of asbestos.

Lung Cancer : Lung cancer has been produced in smoking asbestos workers by all types of asbestos. Non-smokers exposed to asbestos dust for a long period evidence a slightly higher rate of lung cancer than the general non-smoking population. Can be produced by all types of asbestos.

All of the above industrial diseases are known to occur following continued exposure to levels of all forms of asbestos dust which far exceeds that within environments outside mines and factories.

However :

(back to top)

MESOTHELIOMA is different.

It is caused, not by dust, but by microscopic fibres. Fibre counts are measured in the number of fibres per millilitre or cubic centimetre. That is, the number of fibres found in a thimbleful of air.

Waste material (tailings) containing 5% of asbestos were used as aggregate in cement construction throughout the town, streets were covered with tailings, they were used to keep down the pervasive red dust in household yards, spread across the school playground and used in the construction of the airport.

Fibres remain in Wittenoom. They remain in the remnants of tailings about the town. They are made air-borne every time a surface on which they rest is disturbed by activities such as walking and driving.

The fibres are invisible.

The air in the town is many, many times more clear than when the mine was open. It LOOKS just like anywhere else in a remote region unpolluted by modern industry.

Residents of Wittenoom want to know why they cannot be treated as members of any other small town in Western Australia.

Because mesothelioma, a rare cancer, is now less rare. Within Western Australia the death rate from mesothelioma among men is 42, among women 4.5 deaths per million. This is the highest recorded rate in the world. Mesothelioma affects the lining of the lung (the pleura) and, less frequently, the lining of the abdominal wall (peritoneum). The lining of the pleura is normally about as thick as a cigarette paper. When mesothelioma occurs it becomes markedly thickened and may eventually totally enclose the lung with a malignant growth sometimes several centimetres thick. The tumour is highly malignant and is often accompanied by a chest pain greater than with other lung tumours. Life expectancy after diagnosis is often as little as nine months. The most chilling factor is the length of time it takes to develop. Ranging from fifteen to fifty years, it takes, on average thirty-five years from first exposure to this known carcinogen to death.

It is thought to occur spontaneously in one in a million deaths. This is termed the background rate.

There is no argument that exposure to the mineral fibres of blue asbestos (crocidolite) contributes to the death rates from mesothelioma world-wide. That Western Australia is one of two places in the world where these mineral fibres have been commercially mined, milled and despatched can account for some of the high level of occurrence.

There is some question as to the proportion of deaths that can be attributed to exposure to blue asbestos fibres. It is estimated by some that 30%-50% of cases of mesothelioma have no known exposure to blue asbestos fibres. The counterclaim is that it is extremely difficult for anyone in an industrial society not to have been exposed to products containing blue or other forms of asbestos.

The person first to have publicly made the connection between mesothelioma and blue asbestos was Dr. Wagner of South Africa. His more recent studies show that blue asbestos is not the only mineral fibre capable of inducing mesothelioma. He claims the group of minerals to which the blue asbestos fibres belong amphiboles- are also carcinogenic and productive of mesothelioma.

(back to top)

Two things which have been on this Earth since before the advent of Humankind are :

(1) air-borne mineral fibres shed through weathering and (2)the fossils of dinosaurs who also experienced cancers.

Cancer is found among all vertebrate beings. The cancer that is known as mesothelioma is common among cattle with the tumour being found among calves at slaughter.

(Incidentally, tuberculosis was rare in Man compared with its common occurrence in cattle. The incidence of tuberculosis was falling/had fallen when the incidence of mesothelioma started to rise. The first autopsy within which the definite relationship between blue asbestos and mesothelioma was established was performed on a man thought to have died of tuberculosis.)

It is known that there exist families who are particularly prone to developing cancer and families within which cancer is a complete stranger. Most people are likely to fall somewhere between these two extremes. To the present, protecting people from being exposed to carcinogens through legal or social sanctions means that in protecting the susceptible, the resistant are given protection they do not need and may not welcome. Where no legal or social sanction exists, the susceptible exercise their freedom to go to or do that which is