New Book: Asbestos in Australia

The team that created the Australian Asbestos Network website has now compiled a comprehensive account of asbestos in Australia with chapters from prominent experts in the disciplines of history, journalism, medicine, law and public health.

The book also features many of the website’s first hand accounts of those whose lives have been touched by the mineral, as workers, asbestos disease sufferers, and lawyers and campaigners directly engaged in the struggle to ban its use.

The book tracks the history of asbestos from the early 20th century when asbestos was mined in Australia to the post-war housing boom which saw asbestos become the material of choice in cities and suburbs around the country.

The book then deals with its controversial legacy: the dire medical consequences from exposure, the cover-ups and the protracted legal battles for compensation, and the ongoing risks to public health from the asbestos that remains in our workplaces, schools and homes to this day.

Asbestos in Australia: From Boom to Dust, edited by Lenore Layman and Gail Phillips,  Monash University Publishing, October 2019.

For more information, go to Monash University Publishing.

For a recent book review, go to https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/current-issue/478-environmental-studies/5883-graeme-davison-reviews-asbestos-in-australiA