Men who have lived in a house contaminated with Mr Fluffy asbestos are two-and-a-half times more likely to get mesothelioma than others, an Australian National University health study has found, in a result that demonstrates for the first time a clear link between Canberra's Fluffy homes and the deadly cancer.
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The study found no extra cases of mesothelioma among women and chief investigator Martyn Kirk said the difference between men and women could be because men had more often entered the roof space, where there was loose-fill asbestos, or renovated.
The study, which linked Medicare data, cancer data and death registrations between 1983 and 2013, also found higher rates of colorectal and prostate cancer.
Men who have lived in a Mr Fluffy house have a 32 per cent higher risk of colorectal cancer and women have a 73 per cent higher risk (while the increased risk is statistically significant, the difference between the rates for men and women is not, given the numbers). But the study authors say it is unclear whether asbestos can be blamed. While there is a link between colorectal cancer and asbestos, it has been found in cases of heavy exposure, and colorectal cancer is also linked to diet, smoking and other risk factors, which the study did not control for.
Prostate cancer rates were 28 per cent higher among men who had lived in Mr Fluffy houses - but the authors said that result was unexpected, with a very weak association between prostate cancer and asbestos in other studies. The finding might be due to factors such as former Fluffy residents having their health checked so being diagnosed with prostate cancer in greater numbers.
The ANU study is the first time Medicare data has been used to link people's home addresses with disease, matching national databases rather than individual names.
While loose-fill asbestos insulation was pumped into the ceilings of at least 1023 Canberra homes from 1969, the study only looked at residents since 1983 since that's when Medicare data begins. As a result, anyone with cancer who moved out of a Fluffy house before 1983 is not captured.
The insulation was removed during a clean-up at the end of the 1990s but the ACT government is now demolishing all of the homes after it was discovered that fibres remained in wall cavities and other areas.
The ANU found that of the 1.036 million people who had lived in Canberra in the 30 years from 1983 to 2013, 285 had been diagnosed with mesothelioma (among 60,000 cases of cancer altogether).
In all, 17,248 people had lived in a Fluffy house. Seven of them had been diagnosed with mesothelioma, all men. That was four more cases than would be expected, and a risk of 2.5 times the risk among men who had not lived in a Fluffy house.
Put another way, there are 2.23 cases of mesothelioma over 100,000 person years among men in general, and 8.26 per 100,000 person years among Fluffy residents.
Fluffy residents appeared to contract mesothelioma about 10 years younger than usual, with an average age at diagnosis of 58 among Fluffy residents and 67 among the wider population.
Associate Professor Kirk said it was not possible to compare cancer rates among people who had lived in a house while the insulation was still in the ceiling with people who had moved in since the clean-up of 1989-1992.
The data recorded when someone had registered for Medicare at a new address, not when they had actually moved in.
Study leader Dr Rosemary Korda said of the seven Fluffy residents diagnosed with mesothelioma, five had been living in the home when data began in 1983 - when the insulation was still in the ceiling. One had registered with Medicare in 1993, shortly after the clean-up.
Chief health officer Paul Kelly wrote to Canberra GPs on Wednesday, alerting them to the findings.
"Up to now we've been relying on evidence from other places and now we have evidence that directly links risk with living in a Fluffy house," he said. "It remains a very low risk of mesothelioma, but a real one."
He stressed the low risk, with just four extra cases over 30 years. He did not recommended screening, with no test to indicate risk of developing disease and no advantage in early diagnosis.
Dr Kelly also pointed out that of the 278 cases of mesothelioma among non-Fluffy Canberrans asbestos was the assumed cause - through occupational exposure, such as asbestos mining, defence jobs, construction, and possibly working on Fluffy homes.
Among other limitations of the study, the Medicare database was incomplete for the first two years from November 1983, about 10 per cent of people used post boxes rather than addresses for Medicare, cancer reporting has only been mandatory since 1994, and it doesn't include cases since 2013.
'Every time one of us coughs you think 'Is there a problem?'
Felicity Prideaux's Hackett home may have been demolished but the toxic shadow it cast will hang over her for the rest of life.
The former Mr Fluffy homeowner, whose husband was doing renovations when the loose-fill asbestos crisis came to a head, fears they will be struck down with mesothelioma or cancer decades from now.
"Our whole life plans had to change because of Mr Fluffy," Mrs Prideaux said.
"Every time one of us coughs you think 'Is there a problem?'"
She wants the government to provide voluntary baseline health testing for affected residents, like that offered to people of Wittenoom - the site of a large asbestos mine - since the 1970s.
"Now with the linkages to things like ovarian, laryngeal and lung cancer cancer we need to be looking at really important health going and monitoring going on, particularly for the kids," Mrs Prideaux said.
"Those children who have been exposed, they must be included, they must have the opportunity to be health tested. It's not really that difficult to do chest x-rays and blood tests if people so chose. I can understand people being 60 and not wanting to know about it but there are people who are 25 who do."
Most critically, she wants the Mr Fluffy home list to be expanded to include all homes that had the loose-fill asbestos but were demolished or burnt down.
She said commercial buildings should also be included so tradespeople could know for sure if they'd been exposed at work.
"It's very scary because people are going blissfully along thinking they didn't work on those houses when they worked on 1 Jones parade in Woop Woop and 1 Jones Parade was a Mr Fluffy house but because it was demolished or burnt down they are not aware of it," Mrs Prideaux said.
"We didn't like them publishing the list because of security for seniors who were still in their homes, they went ahead and published it, well publish the whole list, not an edited version of it."
But Adrian Jorritsma, whose electrician father John died of mesothelioma at the height of the Mr Fluffy crisis,said there would be no point now releasing an unedited list and inflicting extra worry on people.
That worry is something Mr Jorritsma lives with every day, having followed his father into the electrical trade, .
His view is it's more important now to educate home renovators and tradespeople about the risk of asbestos and crack down on those flouting the law.
"When the day comes and you go for a test and they tell you you've got mesothelioma and you're going to die, you would pay any amount of money to turn back the clock and change what you did in the past," Mr Jorritsma said.
"There's not a cent you wouldn't spent on trying to turn back the clock if it was possible."
