Asbestos "Why and How"

In this article, we learnt that 20-40 years ago people were not aware of or didn't pay attention to the danger of asbestos. They used abestos fibres due to their unique chemical and physical properties. However, later thousands of Australians have died from disease as a result of exposure to asbestos and the incidence of asbestos-related illness continues to rise. We also learnt that home or workplace containing material made from asbestos do not post significant health risks as long as the material is in reasonable condition but when the fibres are released, it posts risk for human health.

Since 31 December 2003 the use of chrysotile asbestos has been banned nationally while other types of asbestos were already banned. The South Australian Asbestos Safety Action Plan has been working hard to increase asbestos safety by raising the awareness of all South Australians; developing knowledge, understanding and skills; and fostering quality education and training; stengthening partnerships with South Australian community through a whole of government approach; monitoring and assisting compliance; and identifying methods for improving collaborative research. Interestingly, in monitoring and assisting compliance, the government tries to strengthen the processes relating to such as the administration of asbestos licensing, ongoing inspection of asbestos removal sites, and requirement for Clearance Certificates for asbestos removal work.

In conclusion, it is more and more obvious that asbestos danger should be paid attention to and action must be taken to prevent workers' health such as control amount of asbestos at the work sites with reliable measurement. In this regards, we hope that the implementation of automation system in helping analyzing asbestos will contribute to reducing error of counting by human, improving efficiency by time which means we will be able to analyse more samples for the same amount of time.