A construction industry worker says he’s “disgusted” at the handling of possible asbestos contamination in products from the country’s largest fire door manufacturer and questions why the alarm wasn’t sounded sooner.
The company involved has said it put out a safety notice as soon as it realised the problem was more widespread than earlier believed.
An unknown number of fire doors from Pacific Doors Services (PDS) may have asbestos contamination, the Herald reported this week.
The industry worker, who did not want his name used, said PDS holds 80% of the market value in fire doors and door supply had screeched to a halt since the problem was discovered.
The man, who has worked in construction for at least 30 years, said he was “disgusted” at the way the issue has been handled.
“This is huge on an international level,” he said.
The issue impacts a product known as FRB board or core, which is made by an overseas third party and used by PDS and other Australasian manufacturers.
PDS was alerted after some of the FRB core was tested and found to contain asbestos.
“It is important to stress that FRB core and the potentially impacted PDS fire door categories do not contain asbestos ‘by design’,” said a safety notice on the company’s website.
This was a “contamination event”, PDS said, and it is still seeking an explanation from the third-party manufacturer.
The anonymous industry worker said if the doors had been intentionally made with asbestos it would have been easier to deal with.
In this case, the core was contaminated with asbestos, meaning testing part of the door could return a negative result, while another part of the door might test positive.
This meant it was not easy to know if a door was safe to work with, even if it returned a negative test.
While the doors are not a risk if they are not disturbed by construction work, anybody installing hardware, security components, or installing the doors into buildings may have been exposed to the deadly fibre.
The worker said his company found out about the asbestos issues through rumours about a week ago.
The firm called PDS, which said a safety notice would be going on its website shortly. This was published on August 22.
WorkSafe central manager Nigel Formosa told the Herald on Tuesday 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 and have since received independent clearance certificates and 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.”
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) told the Herald it was notified by WorkSafe of the issue on July 30.
The worker said “this is something that’s been going on for ages”.
“They’ve [PDS] known about it for probably five, six, seven weeks and haven’t told anyone about it... everyone in the industry is not aware of this and there are people still right now cutting into these doors.”
He questioned why WorkSafe and MBIE had known about the issue before August but hadn’t warned the industry of the dangers.
“It’s not right,” said the man. “This is huge, it’s like another leaky buildings.”
For one of his contracts involving affected PDS doors, he said potentially 300 people were on site at one point and could have suffered secondary exposure to asbestos. He expected there would be “hundreds of contracts” around the country impacted by this.
Meanwhile, the supply of fire doors has been halted while PDS decontaminates its plants and when supply resumes there would be an issue rebuilding trust.
“This is going to have a massive impact for the industry further out. I mean, how do you get confidence back?
“I think it’s wrong that a company can sit there and clean its whole manufacturing plant and not tell the whole industry,” the man said.
“[Asbestos] kills people and people are afraid of that, and I think in this instance people feel like the system has let them down.”
PDS’ business unit manager Sean Crowley said in a statement the company initially thought the contamination issue only impacted more recently imported FRB core, and it contacted customers at the time it believed 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.”
He did not say how many doors or sites were believed to have been supplied with doors in the affected categories.
A WorkSafe spokesman said it conducted urgent assessments at two companies, including PDS, and its priority was ensuring the health and wellbeing of workers in the affected areas.
“Our inspectors worked closely with the business to secure the sites first and ensure that remediation efforts, including the removal and disposal of asbestos, were carried out promptly and safely,” he said in a statement.
“Once the sites were independently certified and cleared for re-entry, we provided PDS with 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 it was reliant on the manufacturer to identify where the affected doors were and how many were impacted.
For products with safety concerns, MBIE expects 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.”
The matter is still being probed with PDS and the relevant agencies working to find out the scale of the issue and how the contamination occurred.
PDS said it has since tested a “significant volume” of samples of FRB core held in stock and a small percentage contained asbestos.
However, the company is aware a fire door it supplied about a year ago tested positive for asbestos, meaning the contamination might date back to then.
It is testing previously supplied doors to understand the scope of the problem.
In the meantime, the company recommended handling any doors in the affected categories as if they contained asbestos, “out of an abundance of caution”.
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.