By Zoe Reynolds
Half of Jakarta’s 10.7 million homes are made with asbestos. Either side of the 550 kilometres of railway east to Yogyakarta in Central Java, asbestos roofing flashes past. People use the roofing to dry their prawn crackers and clothing.
Asbestos fibro is a potent danger even when undisturbed. Yet, Indonesia sits on the Ring of Fire, with earth tremors every four hours. On average, 2052 earthquakes of a magnitude 4 or over on the Richter scale rock the archipelago each year.
“Asbestos is shattered in earthquakes. It is a real danger. Earthquakes magnify the risk it poses,” said Surya Ferdian, director of LION, the Local Initiative for Occupational Safety and Health Network, a partner organisation of Union Aid Abroad–APHEDA.
This was proven in Japan after the Hanshin earthquake of 1995. Air samples by the Ministry of Environment showed large concentrations of asbestos dust. Cases of mesothelioma spiked in the years that followed.
The most recent large quake in Indonesia, measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale, flattened the township of Cianjur, West Java, in December 2022, killing 600 people. When the LION team arrived on the scene four days after the quake, they found thousands of people knee-deep in the asbestos rubble of their homes, searching for their possessions.
Darisman, coordinator of the Asbestos Prohibition Network (INABAN), an adjunct of LION, led the team.
“When I first got there, I felt sadness because there were so many victims, because all their homes were wrecked, and because there was so much shattered asbestos everywhere,” he said. “I was frightened. They survived one disaster only to find themselves in the midst of another.”
Eighty per cent of housing in the town used asbestos, according to LION. Yet even the rescue workers seemed unaware of the dangers. They were bulldozing asbestos, creating a greater hazard. People were picking up broken asbestos with their bare hands.
One of the team’s first tasks was to ensure workers knew how to handle asbestos safely and what protective clothing to wear.
The LION team collaborated with the community and government to make the work safer and stop people from using asbestos for temporary accommodation.
Union Aid Abroad – APHEDA has helped fund LION in its frontline work to campaign against asbestos. It also helped fund the work of Dr. Anna Suraya from Binawan University to develop a model for frontline workers and volunteers.
“We now have a grant from the government so we can develop a curriculum to train volunteer workers on how to protect themselves from asbestos exposure after an earthquake,” she said. “We also give information to volunteers to pass their knowledge on to the community.”
Indonesia’s National Centre for Disasters has also adopted the policy of not rebuilding with asbestos in the aftermath of an earthquake.
“Instead of talking about asbestos as a public health issue, we now talk about it being a danger during a disaster,” Dr. Suraya said.
She has enlisted her students to research and develop a map based on earthquake risk so the government can know where the greatest asbestos exposure is and prepare if disaster strikes.
“Asbestos becomes more dangerous in the event of a disaster,” she said. “That’s why we are making an asbestos danger map along the Ring of Fire.”
The mapping overlays asbestos roofing above high population density on top of fault lines where earthquakes are likely at any time.
Dr. Suraya returned to Cianjur in August to assess the aftermath. Nearly four years had passed. She was surprised to see that the town was being rebuilt again with asbestos.
Elsewhere, educating people about the dangers has been more successful.
“We have a commitment from Bandung to stop using asbestos,” she said. “We got a commitment from the North Sulawesi government to stop using asbestos roofing after the 2018, 7.5 magnitude earthquake and tsunami struck Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, resulting in 1.5-metre tsunami waves, and we have a government commitment not to use asbestos in government buildings.”
Half of Jakarta’s housing has asbestos roofing, she said. However, since the National Development Agency introduced a new requirement in 2022 for buildings to use asbestos-free material to classify as habitable, the Jakarta government is also trying to ban asbestos.
In May this year, Indonesia’s Supreme Court ruled that asbestos building material must be labelled as a danger.
The Asbestos. Not here. Not anywhere. campaign receives support from the Australian Government through the Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP).
