Asbestos has been illegal to use, reuse, import or sell in Australia since 31 December 2003. More than two decades have passed, a generation of tradespeople has come up never having handled a fresh sheet of the stuff, and yet the NSW EPA keeps putting out the same reminder: the asbestos already in the built environment did not go anywhere when the ban came in. It is still sitting in walls, roofs, eaves and floors across the state, and it still poses a serious health risk the moment it is disturbed.
The figure the EPA leads with is blunt. Around one in three Australian homes contains asbestos somewhere. You cannot tell whether a material contains it by looking at it, which is the whole reason the warning has to keep being repeated. A fibro wall and an asbestos-cement wall can look identical to the naked eye.
Why the message has not changed
The ban stopped new asbestos entering the country. It did nothing about the millions of tonnes already built into houses, factories, schools and shops. Asbestos-cement products in particular were cheap, durable and everywhere through the second half of the twentieth century, so the older a building is, the more likely it is to contain them.
The rough guide the EPA and other agencies use is based on age. A home built or renovated before 1987 is highly likely to contain asbestos in some form. Between 1987 and 1990 it is still likely. After 1990 the chances drop off, and by the time you reach the late 1990s asbestos products were being phased out of the market well ahead of the formal ban. None of this is a guarantee in either direction, which is why testing exists, but it tells you when to be cautious.
The health stakes are what keep the EPA talking. Asbestos-related disease still kills roughly 4,000 Australians a year, more than the national road toll. Those illnesses trace back to exposures that happened decades ago, because mesothelioma and asbestosis take a long time to appear. The exposures happening on renovation sites today are writing the death toll for the 2050s.
When asbestos actually becomes a hazard
Undisturbed, sealed and in good condition, asbestos-containing material is generally low risk. It is dangerous when it is broken, cut, drilled, sanded, smashed or left to weather and crumble, because that is when it releases the microscopic fibres that lodge in the lungs. The single most important thing a homeowner, landlord or tradesperson can do is recognise the moment they are about to disturb something suspect and stop.
That moment turns up constantly in ordinary work: pulling up old vinyl floor tiles and the black bituminous adhesive under them, drilling into a fibro shed wall to hang shelving, ripping out a 1970s bathroom, replacing a corrugated roof, or clearing storm debris from a damaged eave. Each of those is a routine job and each can release fibres if the material contains asbestos.
What to do with an older NSW property
If you own or manage a building from before 1990 and you are planning any work that touches the fabric of it, the safe order of operations is the same one the EPA points people toward.
Assume older materials might contain asbestos until you know otherwise. Before any renovation, get a licensed assessor to inspect and, where needed, sample and test the materials you are about to disturb. For a workplace, that inspection feeds your asbestos register and management plan, which are legal requirements, not optional paperwork. For a home, it is the difference between a controlled job and contaminating the house your family lives in.
If material does contain asbestos, the amount and type dictate who can legally remove it. Small quantities of bonded, non-friable material can sometimes be handled by the homeowner under strict precautions, but friable asbestos and larger jobs must go to a licensed removalist. When you are unsure, the conservative call is the right one.
If you find damaged material unexpectedly, during an emergency repair or after a storm, the response is to stop work, keep people away from the area, avoid disturbing it further, and bring in a licensed professional to assess it before anyone goes back in.
The point of the anniversary
Marking 20-plus years since the ban is not a victory lap. The EPA keeps returning to the milestone precisely because the danger has quietly shifted shape. The risk used to be industrial workers handling raw asbestos. Now it is renovators, tradespeople and DIY homeowners disturbing material that has sat harmlessly in a wall for fifty years. The ban solved the supply problem. The legacy problem is still in the building, and it will be for decades yet. The agencies that work on this can only do so much from the outside. The decisive moment is the one where someone with a power tool decides to check first.