A former New South Wales environment official reveals a crisis in asbestos contamination due to regulatory failures.
Lisa Cox reports for The Guardian.
In short:
- Jason Scarborough, a former senior officer at the NSW Environment Protection Authority, criticized the regulator and the industry for ignoring a decade of warnings about asbestos contamination risks.
- Despite evidence of industry-wide noncompliance and contamination risks, proposed regulatory reforms for waste recovery were abandoned in 2022, favoring less stringent education and monitoring approaches.
- Scarborough bemoaned the missed opportunity to address asbestos risks in 2013, highlighting the current asbestos-contaminated mulch crisis as a result of regulatory and industry shortsightedness.
Key quote:
"I’m loathing the missed opportunity back in 2013 to deal decisively with those issues.”
— Jason Scarborough, former senior waste compliance officer at the NSW Environment Protection Authority.
Why this matters:
Environmental safety and industry cost-saving measures collide again. Derrick Z. Jackson wrote for EHN about how the asbestos contamination crisis continues to pose significant health risks to communities and challenges the effectiveness of regulatory oversight in protecting public health.
