By JACK FOSTER
The Defence department has given itself to next year to inspect more than 600,000 unique inventory items in an effort to rid itself of “99.9 per cent” of asbestos-laden material dating back to the early 1970s.
With inventory housed in more than 1000 warehouses, stores and workshops across Australia, director general defence asset and inventory management Ian Donoghue likened the problem to a “trip to the hardware store”.
“What do you do when you need to change a washer at home? You go to the hardware store and buy a packet of washers,” Donoghue said.
“But they don’t come in packets of one; they come in packets of say, five. So you take the one out you need and you put the spares in a drawer for later use.
“We’ve had the same issue in Defence but we have got more than 30 years of this in every unit around Australia.”
Starting at major logistics supply warehouses, inspection teams will then follow the supply chain down to the smaller supply units. Items with asbestos-containing materials (ACM), including gaskets, seals and break pads, will be bagged and tagged for disposal by civilian contractors.
Asbestos inventory project director Colonel Gary Potter said that while his team’s main responsibility would be identifying and bagging and tagging ACM from the inventory, they would also provide advice and educate ADF members on ACM hazards.
“This is not an audit,” Colonel Potter said. “We’re not walking in with a clip board to assess a unit’s hazard compliance.”
The use of and importation of asbestos-containing materials was made illegal in 2001 in Australia, with the prohibition coming into force on January 1 2004.
However, Defence won an exemption to continue using asbestos parts until 2010, on two provisos: that the parts were “mission-critical” and if no non-asbestos replacements could be found.
