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An ongoing investigation by the Socialist Equality Party |
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Return to Record of the Workers Inquiry An Open Letter to NSW Premier Bob Carr From Committee
for a Workers Inquiry Convenor The following open letter has been addressed to NSW Premier Carr by Peter Stavropoulos, the convenor of the Committee for a Workers Inquiry into the Wollongong leukaemia and cancer crisis. Stavropoulos, a member of the Socialist Equality Party, has worked in the BHP steelworks at Port Kembla for eight years, where he is a union delegate in the hot strip mill. The son of a BHP worker, he is also a longtime resident of Cringila, which lies just to the south of the steelworks. Premier Carr, Following BHP's announcement of its closure of the Newcastle steelworks you were quoted by numerous media outlets as saying: "You think of the workers who got up in the early hours of the morning to do dirty and dangerous work. You think of the workers who carried cancer in their bodies because of exposure to dangerous chemicals in this place." This is a staggering admission on your part. It confirms that you and your government are aware that for years BHP steelworkers have been working under dangerous conditions and have contracted cancers from toxic chemicals. A number of questions are raised. What information do you and your government have about the exposure of workers to cancer-causing chemicals and the dangers of working in the steel industry? Why have you never made this information available to workers and their families? To be more specific: What is the incidence of cancer among steelworkers? How many have been affected and when will you release the statistics? You said that these cancers are a result of "exposure to dangerous chemicals". Which chemicals are you referring to and how are workers being exposed to them? If you know of a connection between these chemicals and cancer then what has been done about this intolerable situation, in which workers are dying a slow death? Why have successive Labor governments, in which you have served as both Premier and Environment Minister, done nothing to protect workers? All of BHP's operations, including its toxic emissions, have been licensed by government agencies such as Worksafe Australia and the Environment Protection Agency. Why have you and every other Labor leader allowed this to go on? The issue does not stop there. If steelworkers are being exposed to dangerous chemicals then doesn't this mean that residents in the surrounding suburbs are also being exposed to leaks and emissions of the same chemicals? Yet the NSW Cancer Council, supported by your government, still refuses to make public a postcode breakdown of the statewide cancer statistics. This is essential to examine the distribution of cancer cases in relation to basic industry. Last September your government was forced by the evidence presented by Melissa Cristiano, a young leukaemia victim, to admit that the rate of leukaemia among young people is at least five times the state average in the suburbs ringing the southern perimeter of BHP's Port Kembla plant. Seven young people have already died. Benzene, a by-product of coke ovens production, has been known for more than 50 years to be a cause of leukaemias, but for decades no government had even monitored the emissions of benzene from BHP's plants. Now the EPA is refusing to release the raw data of the benzene monitoring that it conducted in the Wollongong and Port Kembla area between September and January. This data is essential to examine the pattern of benzene emissions in the region in relation to the times of the day, the operations of the coke ovens and the prevailing wind patterns. Coke ovens workers have reported that BHP has deliberately modified its operations during the monitoring period to rig the results. The EPA's refusal to make its results available is allowing the management to issue utterly false advertisements and employee newsletters claiming that there is no proven link between occupation exposure to benzene and leukaemia. Will your government now compel the EPA to hand over its data? Since the revelations of last September,
steelworkers, ex-steelworkers, their families and other residents
of the suburbs near the steelworks have begun to come forward
with evidence of unusually high concentrations of cancers, child
birth defects and other serious health problems. The Health Unit has also refused to release any figures showing cancer cases according to individual postcodes. Even where it has produced statistics showing that Wollongong men have a 30 percent higher incidence of bladder cancer and that women in the Warilla area suffer double the average lung cancer rate, it has ruled out any investigation. The historical recordOther questions emerge from an examination of the historical record. * In 1980 a
report handed to the then NSW Labor government's Health Minister
Kevin Stewart on coke oven emissions at Port Kembla showed that
the government, BHP and the South Coast Labor Council had no
doubt about the dangers of coke production causing cancer. "The
risk to health by induction of cancer was accepted as a reality
without question," the report stated. When BHP refused to meet their concerns, the coke ovens workers walked out on strike for a week in May 1981, only to have Nando Lelli, the secretary of the Port Kembla branch of the Ironworkers Union urge them to go back to work so that the issue could go to the Industrial Commission. The judge later ruled in BHP's favour and to this day toxic emissions continue, particularly from the ancient Number 3 battery. * In 1987 you, as the NSW Planning and Environment Minister, became the latest in a long line of ministers to reject calls by residents for the relocation of the Corrimal coke works in Wollongong's northern suburbs. Writing in reply to surveys of air pollution and the ill health of local school students, you stated: "I am advised that it is not financially viable for the works to relocate in another area." In other words, you placed the dictates of profit-making firmly above any consideration of the health and lives of working class residents and their children. * Last November your government approved the reopening of the former Southern Copper smelter in the centre of Port Kembla, overriding the overwhelming opposition of local residents and their demands for a comprehensive health survey. Your decision was championed by every local Labor MP, including Gerry Sullivan, and the trade unions, which had already signed a productivity agreement with the new owners. The decision was also endorsed by the Illawarra Public Health Unit, together with every other government agency. An obvious contradiction arises. How can the Health Unit carry out an impartial "investigation" into the leukaemia cases when it supports the reopening of the smelter? Apart from the steelworks, the copper smelter is the next most obvious likely cause of the leukaemias, with an admitted record of pumping out a noxious cocktail of sulphur dioxide, lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury, antimony and other carcinogens. * Last year when Workers News asked South Coast Labor Council secretary Paul Matters what he knew about BHP and cancer, he revealed that the unions have helped the company cover up cancer deaths. He stated that BHP has secretly paid cash to widows, on the condition of confidentiality, where there was medical evidence linking a worker's death to his work in the coke ovens. Matters said he had been personally involved in cases where the company offered a settlement on the proviso that nothing be divulged publicly. We said then that BHP workers and the entire working class had the right to know: How many more such cases have there been? How long has the cover-up been going on? Your statement in Newcastle indicates that you know the answers to these questions. I therefore demand, on behalf of the Committee for a Workers Inquiry, that all the information that your government has at its disposal be made available to the working class. I challenge you to reply to this open letter. I can assure you that thousands of my fellow steelworkers and their families and the other residents of the steel cities will take a keen interest in your reply. Peter Stavropoulos |