What to know about the coloured sand recall<\/a><\/p>\nSixteen public schools in Canberra are closed today and several others are partially closed due to potential asbestos contamination in coloured sand sold at dozens of stores across Australia. Here’s what we know.<\/p>\n
‘Extremely low’ risk<\/p>\n
Professor Martyn Kirk from the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University said the risk of a person’s health being affected by the coloured sand was “extremely low”.<\/p>\n
“It’s two things: it’s probably unlikely to become airborne, and the second is it’s really a very short-term exposure,” he said.<\/p>\n
“What we are worried about is when they breathe it in, not if they consume it.<\/p>\n
“It’s very unlikely in something like sand that you’re going to get much in the air.”![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ba5cb160174d6495b8cb2290bb55a641\")
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Professor Martyn Kirk says there is nothing to be concerned about.\u00a0 (ABC News: Lily Nothling)<\/p>\n
So far, air testing at eight of the ACT schools involved in the scare has returned negative results for traces of asbestos.<\/p>\n
Professor Kirk said he did not expect any of the air testing at any of the schools to detect asbestos.<\/p>\n
“Parents don’t want to take chances,” he said.<\/p>\n
“If it was my child I would not be concerned.<\/p>\n
“It’s not even something worth worrying about into the future.”<\/p>\n
School’s reopening fast-tracked<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, in Canberra’s north west, the reopening of Florey Primary School was fast-tracked to accommodate the school’s fair today.<\/p>\n
It is the first of the 17 schools cleared by licensed assessors to reopen.<\/p>\n
Parent and fair organiser Latoya Marks supported the decision to close the school.<\/p>\n
![\"Latoya](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/a6007e116ea0b4b20f5b7506143aa709\")
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Organiser Latoya Marks is delighted that Florey Primary School’s fair has been a success. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)<\/p>\n
“They made the decision they had to make, for the safety and well-being of all of our students and families and, of course, staff,” she said.<\/p>\n
But the closure yesterday morning did create a lot of stress for organisers.<\/p>\n
“There was a lot of concern in the morning when the news broke and we didn’t have the answers to give people,” she said.<\/p>\n
“We were worried we wouldn’t get the clearance in time to get the go-ahead [to hold the fair].<\/p>\n
“We waited with our fingers crossed like the rest of Canberra.”<\/p>\n
Ms Marks received an email late on Friday afternoon confirming the school had permission to reopen today in time to hold the fundraising event.<\/p>\n
![\"a](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/d06a92ca3381ff33543ad46658217d7f\")
<\/p>\n
Florey Public School is the first of the 17 schools that were closed to reopen. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)<\/p>\n
What was an empty schoolyard yesterday was filled with stalls, people in costumes, bands playing and families enjoying the stalls.<\/p>\n
“We weren’t sure how the public would feel about attending the school but it’s great to see hundreds and hundreds of people,” Ms Marks said.<\/p>\n
“We hope all our kids can go back to school on Monday.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first of 17 public schools closed on Friday due to fears of asbestos exposure has reopened, as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2666,40659,109612,164875,64,63,99,2667,164879,18679,164880,164878,164877,98077,20637,164876],"class_list":["post-285441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-act","tag-asbestos","tag-asbestos-exposure","tag-asbestos-in-school-playgrounds","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-canberra","tag-canberra-schools","tag-closure","tag-coloured-sand","tag-epidemiologist","tag-florey-public","tag-health-risk","tag-school","tag-schools-closed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}