Silent asbestos killer in the classroom

Every day, Isaac Ramrock worries about the health of his two grandchildren, who study in asbestos-ridden classrooms at Noordgesig Secondary School in Soweto.

Crumbling walls are common in hundreds of schools across South Africa, but at rundown Noordgesig the situation is made worse by the fact that 24 of the 36 classrooms are at least partially made of asbestos.

"The classrooms are in a terrible condition," said Ramrock, deputy chairman of the school's governing body.

"The asbestos classrooms have been in existence for around 70 years, since the school was opened. Some of the asbestos classrooms have started to crumble and break, exposing the asbestos."

Ramrock's grandchildren, both in Grade 11, have been at Noordgesig for five years. The classrooms were small, with poor ventilation, he said.

"The air is heavy. The asbestos cannot be good for their health," he said.

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Ramrock's description is in court documents filed by activist NGO Equal Education in a case against the Department of Basic Education in the High Court in Bhisho in the Eastern Cape last week. All nine education MECs are listed as respondents in a case that aims to compel the department to fast-track the implementation of its own minimum school infrastructure requirements.

The basic norms and standards for schools were promulgated in November 2013. They said that schools made of asbestos, mud, metal and wood had to be "replaced" within three years.

Equal Education argued that the department was not adequately or swiftly ensuring that the minimum standards were met.

Citing Noordgesig and four schools in the Eastern Cape, Equal Education general secretary Tshepo Motsepe said it was well known that there was a "desperate lack of adequate physical infrastructure in many South African public schools. The most dire school infrastructure conditions are largely recorded in the former bantustan areas."

One of those schools, Amatolaville Primary School in the King William's Town district of the Eastern Cape, is in such a state of disrepair that, according to teacher Nomathuse Daniel, a snake slithered into her Grade 4 classroom while she was teaching in October last year.

"You pray the snake won't come through the holes in the floor," she writes in an affidavit.

When it comes to asbestos schools - or those partially made of it - Noordgesig was not an isolated case, Equal Education said. Its figures show at least 75 in North West, Gauteng and Western Cape alone. More than 60 schools in the North West asbestos mining belt have not yet been assessed.

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National Institute for Occupational Health expert Professor Jim Phillips said it was likely that many more such schools existed in South Africa.

"It is typical of all buildings over a certain age that the chances are that there's asbestos cement in it," said Phillips.

Sitting next to an asbestos wall is not dangerous, but the substance can be very harmful when released into the air.

"Activities such as cleaning with abrasives or high-pressure water, cutting or drilling can liberate fibres.

"If ... asbestos-containing building materials are damaged, there is an increased risk that asbestos fibres can be released into the air," said Phillips.

At Noordgesig, Grade 11 pupil Austin Behrends said: "Government must please do something about these conditions before a learner dies here."

In Behrends's classroom - so overcrowded that during the Sunday Times's visit a fight broke out over who would sit at a desk - a piece of the ceiling fell down last year.

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Attempts to get comment from the Department of Basic Education and its counterparts in Gauteng were unsuccessful.

Death breath

Inhaling asbestos fibres is potentially fatal, even if death is not immediate.

One risk is pleural plaques, thickening of the lung linings. Asbestosis (pulmonary fibrosis) and lung cancer are among the more severe risks.

These develop years after exposure and are generally fatal; people can die within a year of diagnosis.

- National Institute for Occupational Health

savidesm@sundaytimes.co.za, ndabenik@sundaytimes.co.za