Nearly 70 Canberra schools will be closed on Monday due to asbestos contamination concerns after additional coloured sand products were recalled.

The ACT’s education department closed 16 schools and six preschools, and partially closed eight other schools, on Friday after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) issued a recall notice for coloured sand products when testing detected traces of asbestos.

Kmart and Target have since issued a product safety recall for four additional products, and the ACT Education Directorate has decided to close 69 schools on Monday in response.

ACT Education Minister Yvette Berry said, unfortunately, the latest recalled products were used even more widely in Canberra schools than the initially identified products.

“That means that while we would have been able to reopen many schools from Friday, we are now in a position that we need to close additional schools tomorrow,” she said.

Ms Berry said 23 public schools that “have had no sand” or have been cleared to reopen would be fully open tomorrow, three of which would be relocating some classes within the schools.

She said families and staff would be updated via email. 

The only ACT public schools to open on Monday are: 

Alfred Deakin High SchoolAunty Agnes Shea High SchoolBelconnen High SchoolBirrigai Outdoor SchoolCalwell High SchoolCampbell High schoolCanberra CollegeCanberra High SchoolCharles Conder Primary SchoolDickson CollegeErindale CollegeGungahlin CollegeHawker CollegeLake Ginninderra Senior Secondary CollegeLake Tuggeranong CollegeLanyon High SchoolLyneham High SchoolMelba Copland Secondary SchoolMelrose High SchoolNarrabundah CollegeNarrabundah Early Childhood School (including Koori Preschool)Shirley Smith High SchoolWoden SchoolCleaning and clearing of impacted schools ‘could take days’ 

Ms Berry said visual inspections were being conducted in every school that might have the products. 

“We’ve had SES volunteers, as well as school staff, doing those visual inspections today,” she said. 

“This means people [have been] walking through classrooms, corridors and store rooms looking for coloured sand, and mapping what they see.”

Licensed asbestos contractors would then be called in, Ms Berry said, to “test, remediate and clear the spaces for use again”.

“Unfortunately, this could take days,” she said.

Ms Berry reiterated that the risk to staff and students remained low. 

“All of the air testing that our contractors have done across public schools so far has been negative to airborne asbestos,” she said. 

“Health officials yesterday confirmed that the risk is very low, and they do not recommend any clinical assessment for people in contact with these products.”

Despite the low risk, Ms Berry said the ACT had strong work health and safety laws that required them to “eliminate risk as much as reasonably practicable”. 

“For asbestos, that means isolating the space, testing and remediating — all required to be done by licensed asbestos contractors,” she said. 

“If we suspect it could be asbestos, we must treat it as asbestos.”Loading