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The following is submitted by Elizabeth O'Brien of the "Lead Information Group" [correctly called the Global Lead Advice and Support Service (GLASS)]. It's about one of the most tragic cases we have dealt with - an Aboriginal scrap metal recyclers appalling lack of training and equipment and showering facilities and workclothes laundering etc and the impacts of that on his family. Does anyone have a good tale to tell about safe mixed scrap metal recycling?
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| Chemical reactions | ||||||
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| Greg Ray | ||||||
| Carolyn and John Dederer's family is sick. The couple and their four children have an array of unusual illnesses which they fear have been caused by John's workplace exposure to heavy metals and toxic chemicals. Compensation laws and the State Government offer no help. Greg Ray reports. JOHN Dederer's job was melting scrap metal and turning it into nice, neat ingots for his employer to sell. Each day he'd travel from his Maitland home to the furnace at Tomago where, during the hours of darkness, he'd throw everything from old gearboxes, outboard motors, gas meters and electrical components into the gas-fired melting pot. According to Mr Dederer, he fed old transformers and all sorts of unfamiliar metals into the furnace. Plastics, paints and oils were also burnt off the scrap during the process, he said. When each firing was finished and the furnace was cool, he'd climb inside and sweep out the ash and residue. "It was a very hard, very dirty job," Mr Dederer said. "But I needed money to support my family and I wasn't qualified to do much else." Shifts were long and he often worked seven days a week. He said he was given no protective equipment or training and wore regular clothing at work. He also said there were no shower facilities available to him. At the end of his shifts he'd drive straight home in his soiled work clothes, transferring the ash, dust and other contaminants into his car and house and onto his furniture and family members. He said he never considered that the materials he was working with might be dangerous. Towards the end of 1997 he fell sick. "I was throwing up, getting dizzy spells, headaches: all kinds of stuff," he said. He didn't associate these symptoms with his work, even when he went to a doctor complaining of chest pains in early 1998. According to John's wife Carolyn, she and John became suspicious about the safety of the workplace when Environment Protection Authority inspectors visited in 1997 apparently in response to complaints by members of the public and issued a range of clean-up orders. In January 1998 she read about blood lead testing of residents near the Pasminco smelter at Boolaroo and contacted the Lead Information Group for advice. The group urged John to have a blood test and this returned a result above accepted health standards, requiring notification of health authorities. Mr Dederer accepted a $150,000 lump sum commutation payment from WorkCover in 2001, but he asserts that he thought his claim related only to the lifting injuries he received on the job. He says he did not realise that documents relating to his claim had been drawn up to cover "any condition associated with metal or lead exposure". Significantly, another former employee at the furnace received a workers compensation payout specifically as a result of toxic exposure. Analysis of soil and other samples provided by that employee prompted toxicologist Dr George Crank, an expert scientific witness, to write that the man had been "personally contaminated with dangerous amounts of toxic metals". That employee's symptoms were "consistent with chemical poisoning, especially lead poisoning". Mr Dederer wants his right to pursue compensation over chemical injury reinstated and he also wants help with the medical expenses for family members. The Dederers are not well-equipped for complicated arguments with bureaucracies. Mr Dederer, whose work career was spent in labouring jobs, is on an invalid pension and his wife receives a carer's pension. Nevertheless, they have spent time and money making Freedom of Information applications for documents from the EPA and having soil samples from the former furnace site analysed by industrial laboratories. Thanks in part to a persistent campaign by the couple, the NSW Government has "blitzed" similar recycling yards around the state, clamping down on hazardous work practices. The Government has ensured closer co-operation between the EPA and the WorkCover Authority to ensure that hazards identified by one are brought to the attention of the other. That's small consolation for the Dederers, however, when their own requests for help remain unanswered. ACCORDING to Dr Mark Donohoe who has a special interest in environmental toxicology the Dederer family's illnesses bear the hallmarks of exposure to heavy metals and toxic chemicals. "In my opinion, had Mr Dederer not been exposed, his family would be in reasonably good health. The link between the exposure and the problems the family has is plausible, reasonable and well-documented," Dr Donohoe said. "The endocrine disturbances, the growth abnormalities, the rashes and psychological symptoms are typical of chemical injury." Dr Donohoe said he had ordered scans of the brains of five family members and had taken the scans to the US for opinions from specialists in environmental toxicology. "All the scans were abnormal four significantly and the specialists who reviewed them said the abnormalities of brain perfusion [liquid diffusion] were characteristic of those generated by toxic exposure," he said. "Mr Dederer was exposed to toxins at levels thousands of times higher than anybody should encounter without a full protective suit. "He was bringing home these toxic dusts and liquids on his clothes, in his vehicle and on his body. These would have accumulated in his house. They would have been in the washing machine, the carpet, the furniture, the bedding. "The children were young and would have been particularly susceptible to exposure. It is commonly accepted that children are between 10 and 100 times more sensitive to chemical exposure than adults. "After this length of time during which the responsible authorities have avoided doing any tests or taking any care of this family it is virtually impossible to provide perfect proof of a causal link. But you would not find many families with a father and three children whose scans exhibit these abnormalities." Newcastle heavy metals consultant Mr Graeme Waller, well-known for his work with the Boolaroo community affected by lead from the Pasminco smelter, said it was feasible that a child could have received the maximum tolerable daily dose of lead simply by touching Mr Dederer after a day working at the furnace. "The tolerable intake is no more than 50 micrograms and Mr Dederer's clothing would have carried thousands of micrograms. They could have got the maximum amount from the contact of a fingertip," Mr Waller said. "There are well-documented cases of children getting lead poisoning from hugging their father each day after he'd been working in a factory recycling lead batteries." But he said he would be more concerned about possible exposure to other toxic compounds such as PCBs and PAHs. "Some of these organics can be very nasty," he said. Retired Newcastle University academic and pharmacologist Professor Alan Boura was consulted about the family's exposure some years ago. He said the toxins that Mr Dederer was exposed to were persistent. "They affect and block so many enzymes that their full effects would be hard to predict. The teratogenic [production of foetal abnormalities] effects reported could without a doubt have resulted from exposure to heavy metals. The developing foetus and young children are very sensitive to toxic effects," he said. The family's lawyer, Mr John Palmieri, said government departments had failed the family and then abandoned them. "They've had promises of investigations and inquiries but no compensation for their loss," he said. "The commutation of Mr Dederer's workers compensation claim has, on the face of things, extinguished his rights. "There would be a lot of problems trying to satisfy a court that the injuries to his wife and family were directly linked to his workplace exposure. But even if it was proven, workers compensation is not available to wives and children of employees. "The public liability insurer of the employer is relying on a clause that specifically excludes chemical injuries and the workplace itself no longer exists. "The obvious way forward if the Government has the slightest interest in seeing justice done in this case is for it to overturn the commutation of Mr Dederer's compensation claim. "It should be clear that at the time the commutation order was made Mr Dederer did not know and could not have known what kind of effects this exposure to toxic chemicals might have on him. "And I think the WorkCover Authority should pay for the family's medical conditions to be properly and thoroughly investigated. If they really cared about the welfare of injured workers and really wanted to know the truth so they could protect other people in future then that is obviously what they would do," Mr Palmieri said. ANOTHER tragedy of the Dederers' case is that it has driven a wedge through their extended family. The furnace at which Mr Dederer worked was owned and operated by Mr Wayne Balcomb and his late brother Graham. Wayne Balcomb is married to Carolyn Dederer's sister. "This whole thing has wrecked our family," Mr Balcomb said. "They think we are the ogres, but I'm not solely to blame. "John was unemployed and I gave him a job.. I don't know about these illnesses. Maybe the kids are sick. I sincerely hope they aren't. But I think what they are saying is unfair to me." Mr Balcomb said he operated the furnace in 1998 in the same way as his brother had done the previous year. "I was not aware I was doing anything wrong. I don't believe I did anything wrong. Similar furnaces are used in the USA at wrecking yards to melt down pistons, gearboxes and so forth for their aluminium and that's what I was doing." Mr Balcomb said his licence was for 200 tonnes a year of metal and that 50 tonnes of that was pure aluminium. The material was supplied by recycler firms and he was paid a toll to melt it into billets for them. He denied melting down any harmful materials, but he acknowledged that one employee had won a workers compensation claim over toxic exposure. "There were showers available at the site and if the men had asked I would have given them a key so they could have access. They chose not to," Mr Balcomb said. He said the furnace mostly operated at night and he asserted that Mr Dederer didn't always shower as soon as he went home (an assertion Mr Dederer denies). "I often saw him finish at night then go home and lie on the lounge, not having a shower until he got up. He was still as dirty as anything hours after getting home. You would assume people in that line of work would have a shower first thing." Mr Balcomb suggested that the family may have become ill from renovating an old house and being exposed to lead paint, or from fumes by burning treated pine logs. Asked about the EPA taking action against the furnace, he said the only time he had been fined was for having scrap material not stored in containers as the licence stipulated. "This has wrecked my family and left me with a pile of debt," Mr Balcomb said. "They took soil samples and tested them and as a result the [Port Stephens] council is making me clean up the site, which is very expensive. I don't know where they got the samples from, but I know they entered the site illegally." Mr Balcomb said he regretted ever operating the furnace, saying it was a mistake for a small business. "The industry at that time was not as regulated," he said. "I don't think this is a type of business that smaller companies would go into these days. "It is more a job for big companies with the ability to meet all the newer emission controls and other rules." | ||||||
Caption: | ||||||
| BLAKE, 11 Abnormal brain scan. Early onset of puberty at age 6, has deformed bones in his feet, behavioural problems, musculoskeletal pain. MELODY, 20 Asthma, rashes, immune dysfunction, impaired memory, low blood sugar, gastric reflux, chronic fatigue, general aches and pains. JOHN, 37 Heart problems, liver damage, digestive problems, ¿spots¿ on brain, bronchial thickening, memory problems, mood swings, depression. CRYSTAL, 7 Abnormal brain scan. Lost a twin sibling before birth. Has speech problems and some cognitive difficulties. CAROLYN, 39 Chronic fatigue, memory disturbances. SAMANTHA, 9 Abnormal brain scan. Born prematurely, genital abnormalities, early onset of puberty at about age 5, sunflower cataracts in both eyes and suffers blindness in bright light. | ||||||
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