Australia's Secret Chernobyl

This is Wittenoom. It's a place in Northwestern Australia in the middle of the outback. Once, Wittenoom was the largest city in the region. Today, the houses are empty. On paper, this town no longer exists. The Australian government has removed it from official maps. The soil, the bushes, and even the dust in the air are highly carcinogenic. Every breath can be toxic. Wittenoom is Australia's Chernobyl. Except that it’s not radiation that makes this place so dangerous. What happened here? Places like Chernobyl and Wittenoom show us how fragile our relationship with our environment can be. It’s important to deal with limited resources consciously. Holzkern is the leading brand for watches and jewellery made from natural materials. Holzkern uses FSC-certified wood and residual wood from the furniture industry. That’s why every Holzkern product is unique. There are many different items to choose from. Along with watches Holzkern offers chains, wristbands and even rings. The products feel premium and are very well made. They also make great gifts. Through the link in the description below and with the code "FERN" you can get an exclusive discount of 15% on your first Holzkern order. Thanks to free express shipping, it will be with you within 2-5 days. If you don't like the products, you can return them within the first 24 days and you'll get your money back - no questions asked. Go ahead and get your unique personal piece from Holzkern. It all starts almost 100 years ago, with a mine. In the mid-1930s, a small company begins to mine a blue mineral in these two gorges. In 1943, a larger corporation called CSR takes over the operation. The company wants to increase production. In 1947, with the support of the Western Australian Government, CSR establishes a worker settlement 10 kilometres from the mine. Wittenoom is born. It’s a typical town with everything you'd expect: a school, a hotel, a hospital, a post office, a bakery. The town grows rapidly. At the time many people flock to the Northwest of Australia in search of employment. By the 1950s, 20,000 people live in Wittenoom. The blue mineral in the gorges is in high demand. Within a decade 161.000 tonnes are extracted. The mine is Australia’s only supply. The fine grained tailings of the mine are put in these dumps close by. But the inhabitants are smart. It’s a waste if the tailings are just left lying around. They use the residues for constructing roads and buildings or as insulation. The fine blue granules are excellent for mitigating the extreme heat of the outback - the people spread them on the ground, on the sidewalk, around the houses, on the schoolyard, and on playgrounds. But there’s a problem. This mineral is asbestos. Blue asbestos, the most toxic kind. Asbestos gets into the lung when dust containing microscopic fibres of the mineral is being inhaled. The asbestos particles are sharp, so they damage the pleura. That’s the protective tissue of the lung. Prolonged exposure scars the organ and completely reks it - the result is shortness of breath, a persistent, dry cough and a lot of pain. This is called asbestosis and it’s clear asbestos causes it since the 1930s. Since then there have been attempts in various countries to regulate the use of the mineral. Nonetheless after WW2 it’s becoming immensely popular. Soon asbestos is a staple in construction around the world. After all, it's strong, cheap, insulating and widely available. The market is booming. Kent micronite cigarettes proudly advertise their asbestos filters. It’s a wild time. Lobbying organisations across the world will twist the truth about asbestos in the coming decades, even as the science is becoming crystal clear. The concerns of health professionals are largely being ignored. The same rings tragically true in Wittenoom. Eric Saint is a flying doctor. He travels to remote parts of Australia to take care of people. He visits Wittenoom in 1948, one year after the town's inception. He worries about it right away. He finds the dust concentration in the mine to be extremely dangerous. He informs the mine management about the extreme risks of asbestos. He also shares his concerns with the head of the public health department in Perth and predicts “the greatest crop of asbestosis the world has ever seen”. Nevertheless … no one takes action. A few years later. Dr. Jim McNulty also starts to focus on the health of the workers on-site. McNulty repeatedly informs CSR about the dangers of asbestos. The mine management does not respond. In 1960, Dr. McNulty diagnoses the first case of a weird, rare cancer in Wittenoom. The patient had worked in the mine for two years in the late 1940s. You see: Since the asbestos fibres are so fine and sharp, particularly the blue ones, they don't just damage the pleura - they get stuck in it, often forever. They irritate the tissue and cause mutations. This leads to mesothelioma, an untreatable form of cancer. It usually appears with a delay of 20-50 years after the asbestos has been inhaled. Within 5 years after McNulty's first mesothelioma patient, more than 100 additional cases appear in workers and former employees of Wittenoom. At the time, that’s more cases than in all other mines in Western Australia combined. Throughout all these years, the town’s residents are not informed about the dangers of asbestos. They continue their everyday lives in Wittenoom - completely unaware - surrounded by deadly blue dust. In 1966, CSR finally closes the mines in Wittenoom. Not because of health risks though, but due to economic reasons. Many residents leave and the population shrinks rapidly. In 1978, the government starts to close the town and urges the remaining residents to leave for their own protection. At the same time, the health consequences for former miners and residents of Wittenoom become increasingly apparent. More than 2,000 of them die from asbestos-related diseases. The town is not radioactive, like Chernobyl, but being there for too long is deadly nonetheless. Today, Western Australia has the highest recorded mesothelioma mortality rate in the world. Some former citizens lost almost all of their family - one slow, agonising death after the other. In the 80s, CSR begins to lose major lawsuit against former workers and residents. Courts establish that “the company knew that asbestosis and cancer were extremely likely results of working in conditions such as those they permitted in Wittenoom.” CSR ends up paying millions of Australian dollars in damages. In December 2006, Wittenoom finally loses its town status. The power grid is disconnected. The town is removed from official maps and road signs. The blue dust remains. CSR left behind 3 million tons of asbestos tailings. They are at least 40 metres high and are located in the gorges near Wittenoom. The fibres continue to spread through wind and water. This is the WAMA - the Wittenoom Asbestos Management Area: It covers over 46,000 hectares and is the largest contaminated stretch of land in the southern hemisphere. Yet, despite all of this, some people did not want to leave the town and their homes. In 2022, The New York Times visited the last residents. An Austrian man named Mario Hartmann and Lorraine Thomas. Both ignored the government's orders to leave. Officials had to ultimately escort Thomas out of her house. Now the last residents are gone, and the town is being demolished. But there are still people in Pilbara. The Banjima are indigenous people who inhabited the land around Wittenoom long before the mine was ever set up. The area has great cultural significance for the Banjima. This is Maitland Parker, an elder of the Banjima people. He grew up in the vicinity of Wittenoom and played in the gorges as a child, with serious health consequences: For more than 10 years, the Banjima people have urged the government to clean up the area. Already back in 1994 an official report warned the situation would “only get worse and strongly recommended the asbestos tailings dumps be cleaned up or stabilised, and that the road into the gorge be removed.” But no action was ever taken. It would be too expensive. Disposing of all the asbestos could cost an estimated $100 to $600 million Australian dollars. Until then the aftermath of Wittenoom continues. The blue particles continue to be taken up by the wind that blows through the ruins, the tailings continue to crumble into the once magnificent gorges, into river streams. The sharp fibres are still in the lungs of people who played on the town's playgrounds and walked its streets. A great number of these people will die a painful death.