Sarah Oliver
A lawyer who specialises in asbestos related personal injury law has voiced her concerns about a bid to dispose of asbestos at a site in Ravenhall.
As reported by Star Weekly, Cleanaway wants to accept asbestos at the Melbourne Regional Landfill in Ravenhall.
The company is seeking approval from the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) to amend its licence to permit the receival and disposal of asbestos waste at the site.
The proposal has been met with concern from Brimbank and Melton councils.
Gordon Legal partner Victoria Keays has also raised concerns about the proposal, saying the west has been an area of Melbourne particularly affected by asbestos in the past.
“One of the things that strikes me about this is that the western suburbs of Melbourne have a really sad history with asbestos,” Ms Keays said.
Ms Keays’ biggest concern with the application to dump asbestos is not only its dangers to the current community, but to the future population in Ravenhall.
“It is a growth corridor and even if the current towns or suburbs are a kilometre away, that’s not likely to be the case forever,“ she said.
“Looking at the map, it’s close to the prisons. And I think these things, proximity to communities including prisons, is something that I would hope would be taken into account in this application.”
This month is asbestos awareness month which Ms Keays said makes this application at Ravenhall “really timely”.
“One of the issues about asbestos awareness is that people aren’t aware, they think this is something that is a problem from a long time ago.
“But we’ve all just got to be really vigilant about exposure because small exposure can cause mesothelioma which has really grave consequences for people and their families.”
Mesothelioma is a rare but extremely violent cancer which asbestos can be the cause of. It happens when asbestos that has been destroyed or dumped incorrectly causes dust to be released which contains fibres that are too large for human lungs to handle.
“I think one of the misconceptions about asbestos is that it is yesterday’s problem,” Ms Keays said.
“But as we can see from this example, there is still a lot of asbestos in the community and there are still issues about asbestos.“
