Surviving Blue Asbestos: Mining and Occupational Disease in South Africa and Australia

Australia and South Africa are the only countries to have mined crocidolite or blue asbestos. Crocidolite was mined in the Northern Cape for one hundred years and at Wittenoom in Western Australia from 1944 until 1966. Mining has left a pandemic of asbestos disease in the Northern Cape and although production levels were modest Wittenoom has become the site of Australia's worst occupational health disaster. The labour regimes in South Africa and Australia were very different, yet the rates of asbestos disease among miners and their families were probably similar. The hazards facing miners arose from the nature of the labour process, the technologies of production, the rapacity of employers, and the limitations of state regulation.