Wittenoom, Australia

Asbestos used to be valuable commodity but, as we know, it also brings with it a host of dangerous illnesses. Wittenoom was once home to the only blue asbestos mines in Australia and they shipped over 150,000 tons of the toxic material across the world when productive. Eventually the health hazards became a priority and the town was abandoned; I mean properly abandoned. With six confirmed inhabitants today, even those now decades removed from the small settlement are being attacked by fatal illnesses such as mesothelioma, a brutal cancer which affects the lining of the lungs and chest wall. Asbestos was used in gardens, school and just about anywhere they could find a use for it. The end result is that everyone living there was invariably exposed to its brutal toxicity and it’s estimated that 25% of people living there will eventually die because of it sooner or later. Much like the Pennsylvania ghost town, Wittenoom was once a mining town and has been all but completely abandoned. Unlike Centralia, there was no accident or disaster that triggered the downfall of this town because the dangers were inherent in its product. Wittenoom was Australia’s only blue asbestos mine. It’s arguable that during the early days of the Wittenoom mine, in the 30s and 40s, the mining companies weren’t aware of the mineral’s toxicity. However, by the time the mine shut down in 1966 the company which owned the mine, CSR Limited, not only knew the rock was poisonous but deliberately ignored repeated advice from medical and governmental authorities to shut down the mine. The mine was a living hell. Miners descended claustrophobic paths through the rock to mine out thin veins of blue asbestos. In the process of grinding down the rock to extract its fiber the asbestos essentially became aerosol and entered the lungs of the miners as they worked. Blue asbestos is considered the deadliest form of asbestos; in Wittenoom it filled the air. Attempts were made to regulate the mine in the early 1960s, but the company threatened to shut down the operation if additional restrictions were imposed. No changes were made. Reports documenting the miners working conditions is the stuff of nightmares. A publication from the Asbestos Disease Society of Australia describes it: Working conditions inside the mine were appalling. The miners had to crawl around in the hot dark stopes on their knees, bent almost double, working in dreadful conditions gouging out the blue asbestos which was in very thin bands in the hard rock...working conditions in the mill were even more appalling than the mine. Milling was a dry process where the ore was ground down and the fibre then extracted. Conditions were so bad that the men needed flood lights to see through the dust at midday. The men worked in these clouds of asbestos dust for hours on end, when only one minute at such concentrations to blue asbestos fibers would have been enough to cause lung cancer or mesothelioma. Part of what makes the lung cancer and mesothelioma caused by asbestos so nefarious is that it can take decades to surface, which makes it hard to pin blame on any one event or entity. Even so there were attempts to force the company to reduce dust levels at the mine as early as 1944. In 1948, government workers tried to convince the health department of the danger the miners and town residents were facing. After all, even so much as visiting Wittenoom would be enough to induce lethal dose of asbestos—but miners were working in clouds of asbestos dust for months. What was once a bustling mining town of 20,000 workers, tourists, and government officials is now reduced to eight people. Wittenoom is located deep in the middle of nowhere, in the barrens of Western Australia, where dust is a constant problem. Combined with the lingering presence of deadly asbestos the environment is impossible to bear. The Australian government didn't have the ability to force the closure of the mine but in 1978 the State Government began to kill off the city. The State encouraged citizens to leave by buying their property gradually eliminating public services, like airports and police stations, over the course of a few decades. In 1993, after fifteen years of clearing people and attempting to detox the city, contamination in Wittenoom was still so extensive that it was deemed not worth the effort of fixing. The town’s status was revoked in 2006 and in 2007 the name of Wittenoom was stripped from all maps and painted over on signposts. As in Centralia, Wittenoom is afflicted by a deadly environment. The carbon monoxide in Centralia is invisible and odorless; the asbestos dust in Wittenoom could take decades to makes its effects felt. Even so, the Australian government is unequivocal in its approach to quarantining the town. The Australian government plastered warning signs on all routes, and printing out brochures to warn people of the dangers of the blue asbestos riddled town. It’s hard to put an exact figure on the death toll from the Wittenoom mine, but some sources estimate that as many as a third of those who passed through town, when the mine was operational, have some form of cancer. Wittenoom has been compared to massive disasters like the gas leak at Bhopal. Wittenoom was a terrifying confluence of company negligence, medical ignorance, and a dry and dusty climate. All of which led to the horrifying reality of a city blanketed in carcinogenic dust.