In the early 1990s, Rod Heywood had a mortgage and a 2-year-old but no job.
He was a skilled carpenter but it was a desperate time: the stock-market crash of 1987 was still reverberating through the economy.
Heywood, 26 at the time, was offered work at Carrington Hospital. The imposing brick building in Pt Chevalier had been decommissioned as a psychiatric hospital and was being refurbished into an architecture and design school.
Many other construction workers followed him, referred directly from the Department of Social Welfare’s Income Support offices.
Early in the renovation, traces of asbestos were detected in the old hospital. It was sealed off and Carrington Polytechnic hired a specialist team from the UK to remove the carcinogenic material.
Heywood worked at the site for another two years. Occasionally they had to lock the doors because former patients of the hospital tried to get back into the building.
Because of its history - it was originally called Whau Lunatic Asylum - the former hospital still carried a stigma in the community as a place to be feared.
For Heywood, the building held a different threat. He now has strong reason to believe that asbestos dust remained at the site after the removal work.
“We all just took it that it was okay,” he said. “It had been emptied. And back then we didn’t have the experience dealing with asbestos.
“But when you remove asbestos you just make a bigger mess. It’s microscopic, so as soon as you disturb it, you are never going to get it all out, no matter how thorough you are.”
Last October, 30 years after Heywood worked at Carrington, a small shadow showed up in a scan of his lungs. His doctor suspected it was an infection, but a second scan showed the shadow had grown.
Asbestos fibres, lying dormant in his lung tissue for 30 years, had become inflamed. A biopsy later found polyps and nodules in his pleura, the thin elastic membrane which covers the lungs: a telltale sign of mesothelioma.
Heywood has not had it confirmed by a clinician that his cancer was linked to asbestos. But mesothelioma is almost exclusively caused by inhaling asbestos fibres, and the Carrington workplace was his only known exposure to the substance.
He fears he is not the only worker affected. In all, 75 people worked at the site.
Asbestos was first imported to New Zealand in the 1930s, when its health dangers were first becoming known overseas. A naturally occurring mineral, it was used widely in construction materials and textiles because it was strong, heat-resistant and did not break down easily.
Despite concerns from unions, the first asbestos-specific regulations were not introduced until the 1970s. Local manufacturing ceased in the 1980s and all imports were finally banned in 2016, around the time that stricter rules for handling it were brought in.
However, asbestos-related cancer has a long tail. Because of its ubiquitous use last century and the long latency period of related cancers, it remains the top work-related cause of death in New Zealand. An estimated 220 people die of asbestos-related cancers a year, according to WorkSafe.
The timing of Heywood’s diagnosis last year was devastating. He was finally in remission for another cancer, of the throat, which he had been diagnosed with seven years earlier.
He was 56 years old, had no symptoms and was feeling fit. For the first time in years, he had allowed himself to imagine a cancer-free life.
That included his work as a crew member at the annual Dimension Festival, a small electronic music event in rural Northland: “Nothing like dancing for 10 hours on the dancefloor, you know? That’s my gig.”
Heywood had also turned his mind to his future with a new grandchild. In his garage are two 80cc motorbikes for kids.
“I thought I’d be one of the grandads who taught all the kids to ride,” he said. “That’s the worst part.”
Yet as one cancer had all but disappeared, another had emerged in his body.
“I just can’t even explain it, bro,” he said of the moment when his mesothelioma was confirmed a few months ago. “Nothing really does it. The world’s not fair.”
He began chemotherapy last month and is on an immunotherapy trial. Mesothelioma kills slowly and then quickly, with a latency period of between 10 and 50 years and a short prognosis once the cancer awakens.
“What I’m chasing now is just time,” Heywood said. “They gave me six months, but I’m not taking that on board.”
In the Covid-affected hospital system, it took nearly five months after his initial scan to get a biopsy, during which time the lump doubled in size. He was left wondering about those precious months and whether an earlier confirmation of his condition would have given him more time.
The cancer treatment robs him of energy, he said, slouched into a sofa at his Titirangi home. Speaking in a gravelly drawl, he said a good day is when he is not consigned to his bed or vomiting regularly. He has planted native trees and cut walking tracks across his family’s idyllic, 6.5ha property but can’t walk much further than the carport.
ACC handles compensation claims for patients exposed to asbestos at work. Because of a long court fight by the family of Deanna Trevarthen - who is believed to have inhaled asbestos while hugging her father and playing at his worksites - claimants can now also be compensated for secondary exposure.
Heywood received $166,000 from ACC within five days of his diagnosis because his condition was work-related. It left him feeling uneasy.
“It’s death at work,” he said. “My work killed me. It just doesn’t seem right. There’s no rap over the knuckles.”
Unitec/Te Pūkenga, which was previously Carrington Polytechnic, said its records indicated that the New Zealand branch of a UK company was engaged to carry out some of the refurbishment work at the old hospital site. Buildings were not occupied until all of the construction and repair work was completed.
“We understand that a former worker at the Carrington Polytechnic site in the mid-1990s has received a serious medical diagnosis associated with exposure to asbestos. We are very sorry to learn of his illness and understand this must be a difficult time for him and his family.”
Unitec had not been informed of any further asbestos-related cases among workers at the site.
“Far more is now known about the potential risks of asbestos exposure than was known in the 1990s and earlier, and Unitec ... complies with the Health and Safety at Work (Asbestos) Regulations 2016 in identifying, registering, developing and maintaining relevant information,” the statement said.
Heywood’s main reason for speaking out is his deep concern about potential works at other large sites likely to contain asbestos.
He also hoped to alert other workers who were at the Carrington site. Like him, many were in their 20s at the time.
“If I can get it out there and two or three guys who I worked with went for a scan, or if it stops another young guy going into a building paying with their lives, you know what I mean? It’s not worth a life. And I won’t be the only one.”
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Isaac Davison is an Auckland-based reporter who covers health issues. He joined the Herald in 2008 and has previously covered the environment, politics, and social issues.
