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Senators to call for sandblasting disease inquiry
June 18, 2005 - A Democrats Senator says the Defence Department may have employed contractors to do sandblasting after the potentially fatal practice was phased out 20 years ago.
Sandblasting can cause the lung disease silicosis when victims inhale silica dust.
It is similar to asbestos, in that it destroys lungs and eventually causes death.
Senator Lyn Allison and Liberal Senator Gary Humphries will call for a Senate inquiry into silicosis on Monday.
Senator Allison says she has been told contractors employed by the Defence Department may have done sandblasting without using protective equipment.
"There are some questions to ask about the practice being used after it was banned, including through a Commonwealth agency, the Defence Department," she said.
"I think this is a national issue and we need to know the extent of it."
Ms Allison says there could be hundreds of compensation claims from people with the disease.
"We knew that it was dangerous and in fact stopped the practice, but what we didn't do is follow-up on those people who had previously been exposed," she said.
"Now we leave them to fend for themselves.
"We expect them to get compensation in the courts and it's very difficult some years down the track to prove that your exposure is what led to your health problems."
Victims raise the dust
Michael West
June 18, 2005 - 'ALL of the guys I used to work with on the shop floor when I was a supervisor. They're all dead, all gone. Just the other day, someone was talking about Charlie Borg. How old was he? Fifty-two or so. Dead. I don't know anyone in blasting or painting for Dimet who's still alive."
Nick Karakasch is one of the lucky ones. The other 55 or so painters and sandblasters he supervised are dead. Karakasch started on the factory floor as a clerk at the Dimet industrial coatings plant in Brooklyn in Melbourne.
Before he went out on his own as a protective coatings consultant, he had worked his way up to general manager of Dimet when it was owned by industrial products giant ACI.
With a big push now on in Canberra for a Senate inquiry into silicosis, the former Dimet executive has seen first-hand the damage wreaked on the Australian workforce by silica and other toxic chemicals.
Industry and government, Karakasch says, have a case to answer on compensating those dead and dying of lung disease. The manufacturers and suppliers of the silica, asbestos, strontium chromate, coal tar pitch, lead, tri-butyl tin oxide and other hazardous chemicals in protective coatings knew the dangers they presented to workers who inhaled them, he alleges. "Safety precautions? Yeah, there was a label on the container: 'If swallowed, seek medical advice'," he says.
They may not be in his lungs - yet - but asbestos, silica and other carcinogens are certainly in his blood.
Years ago, on Christmas Day, young Nick Karakasch and his brother Ian used to go down to the James Hardie asbestos plant at Brooklyn where his father worked. It was just next door to the Dimet plant where he forged his own career.
"It was a cloud of dust," he recalls. His father, Theo Karakasch, died of mesothelioma in 1972. His brother died of the same deadly disease, aged 57, only two years ago. He didn't even work for Hardie.
Both took Hardie to court and both won compensation. Now, Nick Karakasch, like another former Dimet worker, Richard White, and a group of top thoracic surgeons, believe Australia is on the cusp of another wave of dust disease: silicosis.
Richard Marles, assistant secretary of the ACTU, says dust-borne disease is the biggest killer in the Australian workplace today. "We are really at the peak of the bell curve of those who are dying of dust diseases," he says. "They are creating a tragedy which will see tens of thousands of Australians die. This is the great untold story in Australia at the moment."
Haydn Walters, director of medicine at Royal Hobart Hospital, can't put an estimate on it but he believes there are many former sandblasters, miners and spraypainters suffering from silicotic lung injuries who have not been diagnosed.
"It's a worldwide phenomenon," says Walters, who believes there could be an epidemic of disease in countries such as India and China with little or no workplace safety regulation. In Australia, although the link between silica and lung disease has been known for 100 years, adequate safety precautions were not in place until the 1980s.
"There is something about the very fine particles of freshly created silica. Silicosis is a nasty disease. It scars, shrinks and cavitates, then literally breaks down the lungs so people cough up black lumps of their own lung and they die of respiratory failure."
Like asbestos, the incubation period is long, from 10 to 30 years. For White, it was 20 years from exposure at Dimet's plant in the Northern Territory to diagnosis. White sought compensation through the courts but lost, both in the NT Supreme Court and on appeal in the High Court. His case was thrown out because he was a smoker.
The court accepted there were inadequate safeguards for exposure to hazardous chemicals, however. Karakasch and others contacted by Inquirer who worked for Dimet, ICI and protective coatings producer PGH all claim there were no safeguards.
White's boss in the NT, Barry Medley, who'd never been a smoker but has throat cancer and calcification of the lungs, reckons he was "never told any safety stuff. The wind blew the sand over over us. We copped all the dust." White and his co-workers constantly sucked in the fine silica particles swirling around the ships and aircraft whose surfaces they blasted. Another co-worker, Victor Fishwick, also has silicosis.
As with asbestos, exposed as a killer so acrimoniously last year in the James Hardie scandal, silicosis is the next, perhaps the last, wave of industrial disease in Australia. Most of its victims worked as miners, labourers, painters and blasters in the 1960s and '70s.
On Monday, Liberal senator Gary Humphries and senator Lynn Allison, leader of the Australian Democrats in the Senate, will champion the cause of dust disease victims by calling for a Senate inquiry into silicosis.
Their calls are supported by a group of thoracic experts including Walters and White's other specialists, David Bryant of the University of Sydney and St Vincent's Hospital, and Trevor Williams, respiratory consultant physician and clinical director, department of allergy, immunology and respiratory medicine at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne.
Occupational health and safety experts, the Catholic and Anglican churches, industry consultants and peak bodies such as the Australian Lung Foundation are also delivering submissions.
Williams told Inquirer last week: "There is a conventional link between lung disease and exposure to silica. This has been known since the late 1800s when they used a drill called the Widowmaker. Within a few years, the [worker's] lungs were shot. What has become more apparent recently is that there seems to bedifferent patterns of disease."
Cathy Bray, a physiotherapist with Breathe Easier Physiotherapy, says victims of industrial exposure to silica suffer a significant compromise in their quality of life.
"They can't be involved in normal things which people of their ages can be involved," she says. "They can't play with their children. In Richard White's case especially." The numbers of victims is unknown, she says. "Often it's diagnosed as something else. In rural places it's diagnosed as emphysema or lung cancer."
Industry is to blame, according to Bray. "Safety initiatives were rarely adopted at that time [1970s]," she says. "Precautions were not taken until the 1980s. Companies had external advice about masks and that [protective clothing] was starting to happen in the late 1970s.
"My experience in hospitals has been [with workers] in metals, sandblasting, ships, rust work, rural areas, machine maintenance. Any industry where blasting was involved in confined spaces. The therapy is expensive and they [victims] don't usually have the finances. [As to the companies], people were busy making money and ignoring issues of health. It must have occurred that there were risks. A lot of advice was ignored. Blasting was outlawed in England in 1949 and in NSW in 1959.
"What really happened with Richard's case was that the insurance companies seem to have endless funds to ensure that the victims have either died or are dying of lung disease. It's obscene. I'm gobsmacked at how aggressive these guys are. Win at any cost. There seems to be no regard for the human element of it. It [the lawsuit] was all conducted like a business transaction."
Tom Faunce, senior lecturer in the medicine and law faculties at the Australian National University, echoes Bray's sentiments. "There was an official culture of ignoring safety precautions," he says. "The question is, were government and industry aware that their practices were in breach?"
There is a prima facie case for theSenate inquiry, says Faunce. Richard White has amassed about 300 documented cases living and dead. Dimet had 5000 employees. There are maybe 10 other companies who operated similar practices.
The response from Australian corporates was muted this week. Company searches show that the many companies in the Dimet and PGH stables have been sold and restructured many times. Even if the company is wound up, however, the legal liability resides with the entity that last owned it.
ACI and private equity group CVC Asia Pacific are believed to own former PGH and Dimet entities respectively. A spokesman for ACI says he believed there is no residual liability.
Spokesmen for two potential corporates, Nylex and Orica (which now owns chemicals group ICI) did not provide responses by the time of publication yesterday.
A range of mining companies may also be liable in the event that the Senate inquiry finds for corporate compensation. BHP-Billiton, via its Whyalla operations, is also a potential corporate target.
Specific Proteins in Blood May Indicate Lung Cancer
According to a recent article published in BioMedCentral (BMC) Cancer, distinctive proteins that can be measured in a patient’s blood may help detect lung cancer.
Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States and Europe. In fact, more people die from lung cancer each year than from breast, colon, and prostate cancers combined. One reason that lung cancer mortality is so high is the lack of effective screening. At present, standard screening is not able to detect lung cancer early enough to aid in improving survival. Therefore, effective and financially feasible screening for patients at a high risk of developing cancer is under evaluation.
It has been recognized that specific proteins are often produced and released by cancer cells and/or other cells in the body of a patient who has cancer. If researchers can determine which of these proteins are indicative of cancer, future screening techniques may focus on a simple blood test. However, to be effective, these proteins must reveal the presence of cancer in its earliest stages, when it is most treatable.
Researchers recently identified protein “profiles”, or specific proteins, that appear to indicate the presence of lung cancer in patients, as well as distinguish between lung cancer and other conditions. A clinical study was recently performed that included evaluation of 84 proteins with potential roles in the identification of lung cancer. The study included blood samples from 24 patients who were newly diagnosed with lung cancer, 24 healthy individuals, and 32 patients with a lung condition known as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Overall, seven proteins demonstrated a significant difference between lung cancer patients compared to healthy individuals. All 56 individuals without cancer (healthy individuals and those with COPD) were correctly identified by protein analysis, and over 60% of lung cancers were correctly identified.
The researchers concluded that, although further evaluation is necessary, these results add to a growing body of evidence that protein analysis from blood samples may provide beneficial screening measures in the future. Through accurate screening measures, long-term survival may ultimately be improved for patients with lung cancer. Patients at a high risk of developing lung cancer may wish to speak with their physician regarding their individual risks and benefits of participating in a clinical trial further evaluating screening measures for lung cancer. Two sources of information regarding ongoing clinical trials include the National Cancer Institute (www.cancer.gov) and www.cancerconsultants.com.
Reference: Gao W-M, Kuick R, Orchekowski R, et al. Distinctive serum protein profiles involving abundant proteins in lung cancer patients based upon antibody microarray analysis. BMC Cancer. 2005; 5:110. doi:10.1186/1471-2407-5-110.
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