Marela, the killing stone, asbestos’€¦it goes by many names’€¦thousands of people who once mined the fatal mineral have been shunned by the mining sector and are now made to wait in vain for government compensation while fatal diseases linked to asbestos rage through their community.

Professor Tony Davies, former director of the National Centre for Occupational Health has been trying to turn the tide since 1991 and pump some much needed money, in the form of compensation, into the destitute mining communities in the Northern Province.

Davies with the assistance of community volunteers and occupation health nurses employed by the health department, are carrying out thousand of examinations in the community every year and assisting former asbestos miners to apply for compensation.

“These people have been exploited for decades by the mining sector,” said Davies.

Now retired, Davies and his wife Deidre, a registered nurse, spend two weeks of every three months, examining patients and assisting the mostly illiterate and destitute residents to apply for compensation. Every two years the couple stay for six months, examining 20 patients daily.

Of the 770 women who were examined by Davies (between April and September of 1996) and who worked on the asbestos mines between 1929 and 1992, a shocking 741 (96,2%) were clinically diagnosed with pleural and/or parenchymal (lung) asbestosis.

Even more damning is that none of these women had been examined since leaving the mines (some more than 50 years ago).

“This is evidence that there is a large, unrecognised burden of asbestos-related lung diseases among women in rural areas of South Africa who have worked on asbestos mines,” Davies said.

Many of these women started working on the asbestos mines when they were as young as six years.

Most of the women worked as cobbers (crushing asbestos ore) while for the rest, the most common task was employment in the mill or plant as sweepers, cleaners, sorters and machine minders.

A small percentage had done domestic work in the mine compound or in the mine house, while a few were employed packing fibre or stitching up the sacks.

This was despite the fact that the underground employment of women and children under 16 years was legally prohibited after 1911. Although hand cobbing of asbestos by women and children was formally prohibited in 1973, the asbestos mines in the Northern Province continued this practice until 1992.

Davies’€™ research found the average length of service among the women to be almost 11 years.

Known as the Pietersburg asbestos field, the mines lay in the southeastern part of the Northern Province, along an arc close to the middle reaches of the Olifantsriver, about 100km long.

“Occupational lung diseases among men and women have been nrecognised and unreported for about 50 years,” said Davies.

Amosite mining began at Penge mine in 1914, and this became the largest mine in the area and the world’€™s main, and since 1976, the only commercial source of amosite.

It employed up to 7 000 men and women when production was at its peak in the 1960s and 1970s, and the labour turnover was at times close to 100 percent per annum.

Almost all the smaller mines closed around 1976, while Penge (and the associated mines at Weltevrede and Kromellenboog) closed in 1992.

What is alarming is that asbestos mining continued in these areas up until nine years ago, while studies as far back as 1931 pointed towards asbestos-related disease.

Of the 754 women whose marital status was known, 410 were widowed and of these 351 had been married to miners. Of these 351, 274 were accepted, after verbal autopsy, as having died of respiratory causes.

Davies pointed out that women were at a disadvantage on several fronts:

• X-rays are not taken in full inspiration (after a very deep breath). In addition, the breast shadows tended to make the interpretation of the lower zone changes difficult;
• Labour registers of women were not kept by the majority of mines;
• Many of the women are illiterate and unable to carry out a task such as signing their names on the application form (fingerprints are being used by Davies);
• Many women are being misdiagnosed as having a heart disease as inexperienced doctors do not expect asbestosis.

“We are trying to pump as much money into this areas as possible through compensation. This community is carrying a huge load of disability and disease,” Davies said.

“What is clear is that there was no such thing as non-risk work on an asbestos mine.”

The Northern Province health department has trained eight occupational health nurses who are doing benefit examinations across the province. Some doctors are also now starting to do these examinations. ‘€“ Health-e News Service