A couple believe they’ve unknowingly signed their own death warrants by working with potentially asbestos-contaminated doors.
The pair, who wanted to remain anonymous, run a small business installing hardware into doors. They have had one worker quit after finding they’ve been drilling into doors that may contain the deadly fibre.
They also fear their adult son may not see his children grow up after the country’s biggest fire door manufacturer discovered an unknown amount of their product was contaminated.
Pacific Door Systems (PDS) is at the centre of the nationwide scare after discovering some fire door core – imported from an overseas third party – has asbestos contamination. The scale and timeframe of the contamination is not yet known, but dates back at least one year.
WorkSafe was notified of the problem on June 30 and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) was officially notified a month later, but the general public was not told until PDS put a safety notice on its website on August 22.
The business owners who spoke to the Herald said people were still unaware of the risk, including workers at other businesses who, even yesterday, hadn’t heard the news.
For themselves, they believe they’ve drilled into about 70 possibly contaminated doors since the issue was discovered, putting them and their staff at risk of inhaling asbestos.
They’ve booked a doctor’s appointment to lodge an ACC claim for future illness. At 60, they say they’re less focused on themselves – if they reach 70, they’ll have lived a good life.
They were more concerned for their son, who is in his 30s and has small children. They now feared he was “not going to see his children grow up”.
“That, to me, is scary. That makes me want to cry.”
Their other employee had taken the news hard.
“This sent him over the top,” the man said.
“He went for a week and he wouldn’t talk, he was just really upset,” the woman said. She said he was in a “dark place”, wondering how much asbestos he might have inhaled and how much it might have shortened his life.
He quit his job last week because the asbestos stress became too much.
“He is worried for his life,” she said.
The man said they were positive people, but this revelation “does make you kind of wake up at night and think about it”.
He spoke to WorkSafe central manager Nigel Formosa a week ago, questioning why the agency hadn’t warned members of the industry.
“We know that we drilled out probably at least 70 of these fire doors [since the issue was discovered by PDS]. If we had ... known, we wouldn’t have touched them,” he said.
“We are the guys on the coalface ... we’re working with this product. No one’s telling us anything, we don’t know how bad it is.”
The woman said it felt like “we’ve signed our own death warrants”.
Formosa told the Herald on Tuesday that the agency was notified of the potential health risk from the doors on June 30 and immediately launched a “targeted health and safety response”.
“WorkSafe inspectors conducted urgent assessments at two companies – one of which was Pacific Door Systems.
“As a result, PDS sites in Wellington and Timaru were closed temporarily while they safely removed any asbestos-containing material ... They have since received independent clearance certificates and [are] deemed safe for workers to return,” Formosa said.
“Since then, we have conducted a number of site visits with different companies where we have been notified of similar concerns.”
A WorkSafe spokesperson said PDS was given advice on “supporting workers who may have been exposed to asbestos, and on the safe handling, management and disposal of asbestos”.
“We encouraged them to share this information with their customers.”
MBIE’s head of building system delivery and assurance, Simon Thomas, said the issue was under an “active investigation”.
The ministry was working with multiple agencies and suppliers to “gather further information and determine the next steps”, he said.
For products with safety concerns, MBIE expected the relevant business to carry out a recall. However, MBIE “does not have the power to force a manufacturer to publish a public notice”.
“On August 12, Pacific Door Systems initially advised MBIE that a recall was not needed,” Thomas said.
“On August 22, PDS advised MBIE they had published a public notice on their website, but still did not believe a recall was necessary.
“Since then, MBIE has sought further information from PDS, who confirmed today [Wednesday] that they intend to initiate a voluntary recall for installed fire-rated doors and supplied fire-rated doors that have not yet been installed.”
He noted that installed doors are safe if undamaged and unaltered.
PDS business unit manager Sean Crowley said in a statement yesterday that the company initially thought the contamination issue had impacted only more recently imported FRB core, and it contacted customers it believed at the time were most likely to have been affected.
“As further information became available, primarily through additional testing, we issued a public statement via our website. We will continue to update our website as further information becomes available.”
Crowley did not say how many doors or sites were believed to have been supplied with doors in the affected categories.
Melissa Nightingale is a Wellington-based reporter who covers crime, justice and news in the capital. She joined the Herald in 2016 and has worked as a journalist for 10 years.