Discussion Paper
Prepared by the Asbestos Working Group:
Andrew Huszczo, Peter Martin, Siddharth Parameswaran,
Craig Price, Andrew Smith, Donna Walker,
Bruce Watson (Chair), Guy Whitehead
Presented to the Institute of Actuaries of Australia
Accident Compensation Seminar 28 November to 1 December 2004
This paper has been prepared for the Institute of Actuaries of Australia’s (IAAust) Accident Compensation
Seminar, 2004. The IAAust Council wishes it to be understood that opinions put forward herein are not necessarily those of the IAAust and the Council is not responsible for those opinions.
2004 Institute of Actuaries of Australia
The Institute of Actuaries of Australia
Level 7 Challis House …show more content…
Note that the time scale is not uniform. The data are snapshots for each of the years rather than cumulative amounts for the time band. There is further data in Leigh and Driscoll [2003].
From the above graph, two peaks are noticeable in the production of asbestos. The first peak in
1960 corresponds to the production of blue asbestos at Wittenoom. The second peak in 1980 corresponds to the production of white asbestos in Baryulgil and Woodsreef mines in NSW. Not surprisingly, the export of asbestos follows the production pattern. In the 1950s and 1960s, most of the asbestos was exported to the USA and Italy. In the 1970s and 1980s, most was exported to
Japan and Thailand.
Consumption was driven by imports and to a lesser extent production net of exports. Consumption peaked in 1975 whereas production peaked around 1980. The earlier peak in consumption of asbestos products can be explained by the fact that most of this production was exported.
In regards to imports, most of the white asbestos was imported from Canada while the blue and brown asbestos were imported in much lower quantities from South Africa. The decrease from …show more content…
Ongoing environmental exposure
5.
Removal and demolition
These stages in the asbestos life-cycle happened (and are still happening) at different times, some are perhaps quite closely related and others far apart in time. In addition, the levels of exposure and hence the asbestos related disease incidence rate, latency period, etc. may vary.
The following graph provides an illustration of the asbestos life cycle showing that the exposures in some stages (such as mining) are short but very intense but others (such as environmental exposures) are low in intensity but occur over extended periods. The graph illustrates that there is a strong link between the nature and intensity of the underlying exposure to asbestos and the potential disease and compensation claim emergence from that exposure. Claims incidence is discussed in more detail later in this paper but we feel it is important at this point to draw attention to the links between different exposures in the life cycle and claims emergence.
IAAust Asbestos Working Group – Discussion Paper (December 2004)
Page 4
Figure 2-2
Conceptual diagram of ARD claim emergence
The Asbestos