National inquiry needed to prevent sand repeat

South Australia’s Education Minister Blair Boyer will today write to the Federal Government calling for an urgent national inquiry into how imported children’s sand products containing asbestos were allowed into the country, after products were recalled from major retailers across Australia and New Zealand.

The recall has led to costly specialised removal and cleaning in thousands of buildings right across the country.

It has also likely affected hundreds of thousands of families who would have this sand in their homes, given it was readily available at Target, Kmart, Woolworths, Officeworks and a range of educational and art supply stores.

The Federal Government needs to establish an inquiry to give families confidence that this will not occur again.

The imported sand is brightly coloured and designed for children to play with and for educational purposes and, as set out in the recall, is labelled as Kadink Sand (1.3kg), Educational Colours - Rainbow Sand (1.3kg), Kadink Decorative sand (10g) 6 pack and Creatistics - Coloured Sand (1kg).

The products were recalled because they may contain tremolite asbestos, a naturally occurring asbestos, which was detected in some samples after laboratory testing. Importantly, respiratory asbestos has not been detected in any of the tested samples.

A ban and import prohibition for asbestos in Australia has been in place since 2003.

Quotes

Attributable to Blair Boyer

How on earth does this happen in this day and age?

It is completely unacceptable.

There needs to be an urgent inquiry so we can understand how these products were allowed to be imported into Australia.

This has affected thousands of schools right across the country, let alone the countless families who may have the product in their homes.

While the risk to children this time has been low, we need to make sure there are stringent regulations in place to ensure this never happens again.

Attributable to Andrea Michaels

Families need to have confidence that the products they buy are safe when they are imported into Australia.

There is no room for error in importing products, the safety of consumers must always be paramount.

It’s important an inquiry occurs to get to the bottom of what happened and ensure it doesn’t happen again.