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Former Northern Power Station Boiler Maker Norby Doering says the silence about asbestos in the Port Augusta ash cloud is ‘deafening’. The 68-year-old worked in the station from 1970-1994, working on water tubing and disposing of waste, including asbestos particles. That waste, which Norby said was in the volume of tonnes, was sent down a sluce, into the ash dam where the recent ash clouds have originated from. These memories sparked fear and anger in Norby during the recent Port Augusta ash cloud disaster who said ‘one little (asbestos) particle’ can result in asbestosis. “The health concerns for the town is people in the know, knew that asbestos was put out in the coffer dams but nobody from ETSA, old ETSA workers that have retired, to all the other people that have owned it to the closure … nobody said a thing,” Norby said. Norby said he wants a public inquiry into ‘why nothing was said’ about potential asbestos risks. At a press conference on January 9, EPA Chief Executive Tony Circelli said he was notified of Norby’s concerns recently and said the EPA acted immediately with ‘absolute urgency’. “We had a significant dust sample that we took in October of last year, it was a controlled sample which averaged the dust from the ash dam only, and not from any other environmental sources,” he said. “We analysed that over the weekend and concluded there are no asbestos seen in that sample. “We also looked at samples that we obtained form Flinders Power on new years day and again a number of our scientist have looked at that and have also not found any asbestos fibers.” Mr Circelli said those samples would be inspected by an independent testing team at a special asbestos laboratory in Adelaide and added Flinders Power had advised him that there was “no chance” there would be asbestos in the ash dust. The Port Augusta Asbestos Support Group was contacted but unavailable for comment.

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