ACT Parks and Conservation Service head Brett McNamara has moved to reassure families of children attending school camps at Birrigai near Tidbinbilla that asbestos contamination is contained and the camp is safe.
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Mr McNamara was speaking after the head of infrastructure for the education directorate, Rodney Bray, said the asbestos was so extensive removing it by removing contaminated soil would be prohibitively expensive.
Mr Bray appeared at ACT Assembly estimates hearings on Monday, where he said small pieces of asbestos cement sheeting - “generally the size of your thumbnail” - had been found at six sites, and across a large area, possibly hundreds of square metres.
Mr McNamara disputed the suggestion of hundreds of square metres, but said he couldn't put an area on the finds. He the asestos had been found on top of the soil, and might have been washed there. Removalists had been through the site, forming a line and picking up all the visible asbestos, and would be there again after the current rain. As a precaution, the areas had been covered in top soil and fenced off.
Mr McNamara, whose mother died of mesithelioma after the family did bathroom renovations involving asbestos, said Birrigai was safe and he would have no problem sending his own children there.
"I know only two well what horrible stuff this and there's no way that we'd risk anyone's health out there," he said. "I'm confident that ... it’s safe."
The asbestos had probably came from the sheds and houses there before the 2003 bushfires, and been exposed by heavy rains. He had become aware of it about October last year.
Earlier, Mr Bray said the asbestos finds were "so extensive that normal remediation work where you dig it up and take it to a disposal site would be prohibitively expensive".
The asbestos not in the camp buildings. It had even been found in areas well away from the buildings, and it was "hard to know how far it goes".
The fragments were bonded asbestos cement, which was "generally safe unless drilled, sandpapered, broken or handled".
"Unless a child was to pick it up and rub in their hands and breathe it or ingest it, it’s very low-risk material," he said.
The asbestos cement sheeting is not the same as the loose-fill Mr Fluffy asbestos causing distress after being found in Canberra homes.
Canberra Grammar School cancelled a Year 3 camp scheduled for June after news of the asbestos contamination, but other schools are still using Birrigai. Mr Bray said students, staff and parents were being made aware of the risk when they visited.
The remediation work had been finished two weeks ago, and a second official, Stephen Gwilliam, said it was "business as usual".
An information pack went to visiting schools and other groups outlining the contamination and including a map of the areas where it had been found and induction procedures for visitors, Mr Gwilliam, a school network leader for Tuggeranong, said.
A spokesperson for Education Minister Joy Burch said 40 ACT schools had visited Birrigai this year, with only one cancellation. Schools received a letter advising of the asbestos situation, and "may use this to inform their school communities and families of students", she said.
The ACT Government’s Tidbinbilla website has a series of risk management plans covering risks at Birrigai, from strangers on site, to natural disasters, lost students, snake bites and wildlife hazards, swooping birds, and even splinters. Asbestos does not appear to feature.
Radford school, though, has identified the asbestos risk, in a management plan that considers the possibility that students would "unknowingly pick up a piece of bonded asbestos containing material and release the fibres through hammering, drilling, abrasion" - a risk it assesses as having a remote likelihood.
