NSW: Award for asbestos cancer victim a warning to renovators

AAP General News (Australia)
12-01-2000
NSW: Award for asbestos cancer victim a warning to renovators

A lobby group says Australia's first compensation award for a home renovator whose
contact with asbestos has left her dying of cancer serves as a warning for all home renovators.

Fifty-seven-year-old South Australian woman HELENE EDWARDS was awarded $800,000 yesterday
by the New South Wales Dust Diseases Tribunal after home building products company James
Hardie admitted liability.

She's been given between one and two years to live after contracting mesothelioma while
installing asbestos sheeting in the bathroom of her home 23 years ago.

The payout includes $175,000 for pain and suffering, the largest award of its type
for a victim of mesothelioma.

The president of the Asbestos Diseases Foundation of Australia, ELLA SWEENEY, says
the import of white asbestos and products which contain it should be banned.

One in three homes in Australia built before 1982 has asbestos in it and over the next
ten years, 18,000 asbestos-related cancer deaths are expected.

Lawyer TANYA SEGELOV says the payout will be the first of many to Australians dying
from the asbestos-related disease caused by exposure to the deadly fibre in their homes.

AAP RTV dmc/et

KEYWORD: ASBESTOS (SYDNEY)

2000 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.