Matt Peacock's open letter to former James Hardie worker Jeremy Tear - published on The Drum - reunited the pair 34 years after they first met. The result is an asbestos story with a happy ending.

Last week I wrote about my search for Jeremy Tear, someone I'd interviewed in 1978 about his experience during his university holidays cleaning up the James Hardie factory where Bernie Banton then worked.

I had never played his interview, even though he gave a great description of the dusty conditions there. He told me you could see the dust whenever you looked into the light and he had to wash it out of his hair every night. His clothes turned white with asbestos dust when he was at work.

I put the interview somewhere safe, intending to broadcast it soon.

But it was only earlier this year that I found the interview again, when in preparation for the ABC mini-series Devil's Dust I was looking through an old pile of things I'd saved from my days in the ABC Science Unit.

It was finally broadcast this week on RN's Science Show with Robyn Williams.

The reason why I broadcast it now was that I was worried Jeremy might also have fallen prey to an asbestos-induced cancer, like the mesothelioma that killed Bernie Banton.

Conditions at the Hardie BI factory, which made asbestos insulation products and was co-owned with CSR, were shocking and many if not most of its former employees have contracted asbestos diseases.

Neither Jeremy nor I had thought his exposure for two months would be enough to kill him. But subsequent experience has shown that it would indeed have been enough. I trawled the death notices, electoral rolls and elsewhere in search of his name, but came up with nothing.

So I took to The Drum and The Science Show, hoping either Jeremy or someone who knew what had happened to him would contact me.

The good news is that Jeremy has contacted me.

He's alive and well and living in Adelaide.

On Saturday I received an email, headed "Hello Matt it's the person you're looking for!"

I hadn't been able to find him because he actually has a hyphenated name, Jeremy Davidson-Tear, but had only used the shortened form when dealing with me in 1978.

Some photos were attached of a man nearly my age and a good-looking holiday house.

"As you can see I am still alive, did not develop asbestosis, but the beloved says I should probably go and get checked out - but what can you do?" he wrote. "I'm in Adelaide very happily finishing building a beach house (no fibro) and working in some great jobs."

I called Jeremy on the mobile and we had a brief chat and I plan to have a longer one this week.

He told me that after our interview he actually decided to be a journalist and applied for a few ABC jobs, but they never gave him one - although he did file a few stories for The Science Show, funnily enough.

It was fantastic making contact and I feel extremely relieved he's still alive. For some reason it would have hit me hard, I felt, if he too had succumbed to the James Hardie dust.

I suppose it was because he was about my age - actually younger, it turns out – when we first talked about that factory.

He's right not to worry. There's really nothing you can do if you've been exposed to asbestos...other than wait. There's not much point worrying. You're much better getting on with your life.

There are many other Australians in the same boat, to varying degrees. All of my generation was almost certainly exposed to some asbestos dust somewhere along the way. It was all-pervasive in the urban atmosphere. In many places it still is.

Which is all the more reason why Australia should be doing all that it can to find a cure for mesothelioma.

It's not an impossible hope. Since the mapping of the human genome, it's now possible to crack the code for mesothelioma.

What it requires is people and resources.

Australia, as the country with the highest rate of mesothelioma per capita in the world, has some of the best research into asbestos disease. We lead the world in it.

Yet since the global financial crisis the funding allocated by the Federal Government for this crucial research has more than halved.

Many private sources, including James Hardie and the much-maligned plaintiff law firms, have contributed towards research into a cure.

It's time governments did more.

Millions of Australians, potentially, have been exposed. There could be many more victims. Globally, it's estimated that asbestos could claim up to ten million lives. Cracking the cancer code is an investment well worth making.

Matt Peacock’s book, Killer Company - James Hardie Exposed, is now available at ABC Books. View his full profile here.