Asbestos surgery fears

A WORKER whose asbestos fears shut down the Craigieburn rail project for a week faces surgery to see if he has breathed in fibres of the deadly substance.
Justin Betteridge believes a chunk was in his car after bits of asbestos were found along 2km of the rail corridor.
Some workers on the $96 million project have also been issued with personal monitoring devices that will show if they are exposed to fibres.
Employees returned to work last week after WorkSafe inspectors lifted a prohibition order, which had closed the site since the previous Tuesday.
WorkSafe is satisfied the site run by United Group Limited Infrastructure has been cleaned, but is investigating how and when the asbestos was uncovered, less than 30m from Roxburgh Park homes.
A spokesman said it was too early to decide whether any charges would be layed under the Occupational Health and Safety Act, which carries fines up to $943,000.
But Mr Betteridge has been unable to return to his job.
He said his employer and the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union had not yet arranged for him to do a compulsory safety course, which other union members on site had completed.
"I've been told there's no course available until Wednesday, maybe Thursday," he said.
"I am wondering what will happen to me because I've alerted people to the danger."
He said he had also received anonymous threats by phone and had been warned of "accidents" on site.
Mr Betteridge said the asbestos was discovered early on November 21 after his group had been working in the area for a fortnight.
He said employees were not notified until the next day after WorkSafe inspectors arrived.
He informed a school and nursing home near the track as WorkSafe inspectors shut the site.
An initial WorkSafe report found a grader had run over bits of asbestos sheeting on an access track. Breaking the material may have dispersed potentially lethal fibre dust in the wind.
Mr Betteridge said a specialist had booked him in for surgery at the Austin Hospital to check if his lungs and airways were free of asbestos fibres, which can cause mesothelioma.
A United Group spokeswoman said the company could not comment.

Best Buy founder gives Mayo $48.9 million

Four years ago, Best Buy founder Dick Schulze's first wife, Sandra, died of mesothelioma, a cancer that attacks the lining of the lungs.
On Friday, Schulze's family foundation gave the Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic $48.9 million — an amount among its largest contributions — to fight mesothelioma and other cancers that do not receive the attention and research funding of better-known cancers. Schulze, in announcing the award, said there is genuine hope for progress in the fight against cancer.
"The prospect of improved treatment and potential eradication of some cancers is closer than some would believe," Schulze, reportedly the richest man in Minnesota, said in a statement.
The contribution will set up the Mayo Clinic Schulze Center for Novel Therapeutics at the medical center's Rochester, Minn., complex.
Besides mesothelioma, re-searchers will target: breast, ovarian and uterine cancers; kidney cancer; glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer; blood cancers, such as chronic myeloid leukemia; liver cancer and cancer of liver bile ducts.
The goal is to discover and develop effective therapies that don't cause the harsh side effects of many of today's cancer treatments, said Lee Aase, a Mayo Clinic spokesman.
"The therapies will likely be genomics based and fit the overall focus on personalized medicine," Aase said.
Schulze, who has since remarried, has said the death of Sandra, his wife of 39 years, was one reason he decided three years ago to step down as chief executive of Best Buy, the Richfield-based consumer electronics giant.
"I came to realize the fragility of life, how short (it is) and how fast it can change," said Schulze in talking about his decision to retire. According to the most recent Forbes magazine listing of the 400 richest Americans, the 64-year-old Schulze is worth an estimated $3.7 billion.
Friday's gift nearly matches the $50 million he gave five years ago to the University of St. Thomas, where Schulze recently agreed to be a guest lecturer on entrepreneurship. About half of that donation went to the law school, and the other half funded the Schulze School of Entrepreneurship which recently opened as part of the downtown Minneapolis campus of St. Thomas.
The Schulze Center for Novel Therapeutics will occupy the 19th floor of the Gonda Building on the downtown Rochester campus of the Mayo Clinic. The gift also will support the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center and endow two cancer research-related professorships — the Sandra J. Schulze Professor and the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation Professor.
Finally, Mayo Clinic will establish an annual symposium on Novel Cancer Therapeutics, which will be organized in collaboration with other leading academic institutions engaged in cancer therapy-related research.

Vale Vern Johnson ( 1923 2005 )

Pleas"Lest we forget"
Vern Johnson will be remembered best in the Euroa district for his contribution to Landcare and the establishment of a Tourism Information Bureau in Euroa.
Described by all who knew him as a gentleman, hard-working and compassionate, Vern was educated at Hampton High School and Brighton Grammar, and was active in war service from 1942 to 1946 as a sergeant in the Australian Infantry. His duties included weapons instruction for the Euroa branch of the AIF stationed in Railway Street at the time.
After the war, Vern took up a position as Country Liaison officer with stock and station agents Permewan Wright Ltd for a while. For seventeen years from 1950 onwards, he went into the building trade as a director of Johnson Bros constructions., then in 1967 he and his wife, Norah, moved to Phillip Island, where they established the highly successful Wildlife Park and were instrumental in restructuring the Penguin Reserve and setting up the Island Promotion Association and Conservation society.
These activities were to Vern’s time for the next nineteen years, as well as beef cattle production on his and Norah’s host farm. When they finally retired, they first travelled extensively overseas and then moved to a 170-acre property in the Strathbogie Ranges, where they combined cattle farming with the restoration and enhancement of the wildflower and native animal habitat on their farm. During the remainder of the 20th century, Vern and Norah conducted bus tours of the local area for visitors, helped to establish a Visitor Information Centre in Euroa, assisted with the Wool Week promotion and the Longwood Market and organised five wildflower exhibitions, three in Euroa and two in Seymour. Vern was publicity officer for the P13 Neighbourhood Watch district and a committee member of the Longwood East Landcare Group, of which he became chairman at the age of seventy-eight, and was a founding member of the Euroa Arboretum. He also worked as advertising manager for the Seymour Nagambie Advertiser.
Moving to Beaconsfield earlier this year for health reasons, Vern succumbed to complications associated with his condition, mesothelioma (an uncommon form of cancer, usually associated with previous exposure to asbestos), on 15 September, and is sadly missed by his wife and three adult children.

WA support for Hardie compo deal

The Asbestos Diseases Society in Western Australia has welcomed James Hardie's decision to sign a multi-billion dollar compensation agreement for the victims of asbestos-related diseases.
The package is expected to cost James Hardie more than $4 billion over the next 40 years.
The society's Robert Vojakovic says about 45,000 people are expected to develop asbestos-related diseases in the next 10 years.
He says many of those will be in WA.
"Usually our portion is about 17 per cent, so it will be ... up to 7,000 people which will develop disease and out of that would be most likely due to James Hardie products," he said.
Mr Vojakovic, who has been lobbying for decades for such an agreement, says there is still more work to be done.
"I still want to achieve medical research, I would like to find a cure for asbestos diseases - I always thought that saving life is more important than the money you know and we just haven't been successful so far," he said.
Mesothelioma sufferer Johanna Ball, whose sister died of the disease three months ago, says the deal is welcome.
"Money is irrelevant when I'm not going to see my grand kids grow up but by the same token you know every time you go to a doctor it costs you big dollars and so you look at it that way, the relief for the family that they're not putting money ...[in] all the time, that's probably one bonus," she said.
"There must be a lot more people around that are in a worse situation than myself - I'm fortunate I've got a husband and we've got a fairly good living but there are a lot of people that are really battling and I think for them it's probably the best thing that's ever happened."