Mike Van Alphen (PhD Student)
University of South Australia

Project Title
The characterisation of fibre bundles and the release of respirable asbestos fibre.

Biography
Mike has had careers in mining and exploration geology, public health and environmental consulting including more recent work on asbestos management. He has a Masters degrees in Geology and Environmental Studies and commenced as a PhD candidate at University of South Australia in 2006.

Start Date
May 2006

Project Details
Asbestos cement in poor condition or with broken edges has exposed asbestos fibre bundles typically up to 1mm thick and protruding 2 to 10 millimetres. The hazard associated with these materials is related to the amount of fibre released from the material and whether these fibres are small enough to be inhaled. Traditional risk assessment of asbestos fibres being blown from an asbestos cement roof would include air monitoring down-wind of a site. The difficulty of measuring asbestos in air at low levels, poor access to appropriate monitoring locations and the effect of the weather on monitoring results, places limits on the conventional approach.

This project measures respirable fibre lost from a selection of asbestos fibre bundles from asbestos cement and scales-up that data to represent the fibre loss of larger areas. Further, the effect of a wide range of wind speeds and climatic factors such as freeze-thaw cycles on the release of respirable asbestos fibres will also be determined. Fibre release data from asbestos fibre bundles can then be input into models with annual wind-speed and other climatic variables so that long-term rates of asbestos fibre emission may be estimated.