Robyn Williams: Devil's Dust premiers on Sunday 11th November. It started in my office many years ago. Matt Peacock:

[Excerpt from Devil's Dust]

Devil's Dust, on Sunday and Monday, ABC1. Now the real Matt Peacock with a request.

Matt Peacock: This is the story about an interview I did years ago, 34 years to be exact, and whether anyone listening to this program now can help me find the person that I interviewed then. His name is Jeremy Tear and he came to see me when I worked here in the science unit in 1978. In those days Robyn Williams was a young man, I was even younger, in my 20s, and so too was Jeremy.

As I remember it, he was going to university and he'd taken a job during his holidays working at the Parramatta plant of a company that was then quite big and extremely respectable by the name of James Hardie. I interviewed Jeremy about his experience at the Hardie factory, Hardie BI as it was called, which made asbestos insulation for places like power stations and navy ships. It was also the factory where asbestos campaigner Bernie Banton had been working.

It was quite a graphic interview that described the conditions there and I knew that it would be of use one day, but the problem was that Jeremy had come to see me just after I'd done a long series of radio programs about Hardie, and I didn't have any other program slots where I could use it anytime then. So I put it in a pile of tapes, basically 'interviews I must play one day', where it sat, and sat.

That's until earlier this year when the director of tomorrow's ABC TV miniseries Devil's Dust, Jessica Hobbs, came to see me to find out what the old science unit used to look like so they could make an appropriate set. I'd managed to find an old tape editing machine that one of the RN engineers has cleverly closeted away. And suddenly when I was looking at it I came face-to-face with that old tape, with the name 'Jeremy Tear' written clearly on the outside. I knew straight away what it was and I opened it up to find inside my notes taken that day. He'd worked at the factory, it turns out, for two months at Christmas 1973, the very same time that Bernie Banton was working there. And his job was to clean the factory and, as you can hear, it was extremely dusty.

Jeremy Tear: It was just amazing how much of the asbestos, the raw material for the fibro sheet, was all over the factory, and we had to do things like take out pipes, and you'd have to take about two inches of the stuff off with the chisel before you could get to what you wanted to.

Matt Peacock: How much exposure to asbestos dust do you think, just from what you could see, you were subjected to? And also, what sort of precautions were taken?

Jeremy Tear: We weren't told to take any precautions at all, except on one occasion in one part of the factory there are a whole lot of kilns which the stuff is sent through and that has got asbestos lagging on it, about four inches, and we had to strip a whole lot of that off, and at that time we were told to wear gloves because the fibres would get up our fingernails and cause a lot of irritation. Other than that, we weren't told anything at all.

Matt Peacock: Did you ever have any idea that asbestos was dangerous?

Jeremy Tear: Not until a good while after I worked there.

Matt Peacock: How much dust did you get on you?

Jeremy Tear: It varied from day to day depending on what we were doing. A few days when we were down in a very small pit under one of the actual production lines when we were shovelling the stuff out, and on those occasions my shirt was completely white with the stuff. You did notice it in the air, you noticed it when you walked in in the morning in the morning sunlight that it was a very dusty place. One of the first things I noticed there was I was washing it out of my hair every night. My hair would feel like straw after a day's work there and you'd have to wash this very fine dust out.

Matt Peacock: Did you wear any protective clothing or anything like that?

Jeremy Tear: No, just wore shorts and ordinary overalls.

Matt Peacock: What about the company itself? Do they have any contact with the team that you belonged to in terms of supervising what you were doing or anything? I mean, was there any opportunity for them to see what you were doing or whether you were exposed to dangerous dust?

Jeremy Tear: Well, we were under the direction of Hardie's foremen, but other than that we didn't see anybody else from the company apart from the odd person who looked like an engineer who would walk through the plant.

Matt Peacock: But there was a foreman who told you what to do and was in more or less day-to-day contact with you?

Jeremy Tear: Yes.

Matt Peacock: And at no stage did he mention 'watch out for the asbestos dust'?

Jeremy Tear: No, never.

Matt Peacock: Well, what do you think about it now, having learnt about the hazards after hearing the program, what do you think..?

Jeremy Tear: I feel pretty angry. I don't think that I have run a great risk because I was only there for a comparatively short period of time, but it makes me angry that I'm sure at that stage Hardie knew the risks and they made no effort, either to tell their own workforce or us as outsiders, the risks, and particularly us outsiders who were exposed to it fairly heavily.

Matt Peacock: Jeremy Tear describing the conditions at the James Hardie factory in 1973-'74, and just how James Hardie treated its workers exposed to a substance the company knew clearly would kill. And Jeremy, I'd love to know what has happened to you since. Although you thought then that your short two-month exposure hadn't put you at risk, in fact it had. It is now 40 years later, about the time that you might develop a mesothelioma.

I know that company you worked for, from my notes, CCR Engineering in Marrickville, is now in receivership. I also know that other employees who worked for it have died from mesothelioma. On the other hand, I know you haven't lodged any compensation claim with the New South Wales Dust Diseases Tribunal, nor, according to my friends at the Genealogical Society, have any death or funeral notices been placed in any Australian newspaper in your name. You don't seem to be on the electoral roll, nor did you graduate from Sydney University.

It's possible I guess that you moved overseas, but right now I'm not sure what else to do to find you. Most of the people who worked at Hardie BI have now died, many from asbestos cancers, including of course Bernie Banton. Before he died he used to go to reunions of his former workmates, but in that last year he just didn't bother. He and his closest mate had a quiet drink together. Too many of the others had already died. Bernie called that factory 'Hardie's killing fields'.

I'm hoping that Jeremy is still alive and well and, if you are, or if you know of Jeremy, please contact me here at the ABC and let me know. I'd love to hear from him soon. And, by the way Jeremy, I'm sorry it took me so long to play your interview.

Robyn Williams: Yes, write to us at the ABC if you know. Devil's Dust on ABC1, in two parts. The science prevailed against the doubters. Well done Matt.

Following broadcast of this story, Jeremy Tear has contacted Matt Peacock. Jeremy is in good health and is busy building a bush house. But, he points out, he is not using fibro, which contains asbestos.