{"id":308259,"date":"2025-11-25T18:42:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T18:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/308259\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T18:42:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T18:42:11","slug":"clean-up-bill-for-asbestos-scare-at-sa-schools-tipped-to-exceed-1-5m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/308259\/","title":{"rendered":"Clean-up bill for asbestos scare at SA schools tipped to exceed $1.5m"},"content":{"rendered":"

The cost of removing coloured sand products from South Australian public schools amid asbestos contamination concerns is expected to exceed $1.5 million, and the state’s education minister wants retailers to help pay the bill.<\/p>\n

SA Minister for Education Blair Boyer said the clean-up was the “biggest decontamination effort South Australian schools have ever undertaken”.<\/p>\n

“The specialised removal, cleaning and waste handling required comes with a massive price tag, and those costs are already piling up,” he said in a statement.<\/p>\n

“South Australia is stepping up to quickly and safely remove this sand from schools, but the simple point is this: the clean-up bill is enormous, and the money will come from education budgets to pay for it.<\/p>\n

“Today, I’m calling on the retailers to help fund the clean-up.”<\/p>\n

\"Blair<\/p>\n

Education Minister Blair Boyer says the clean-up bill for removing sand from schools in SA is “enormous”. (ABC News: Che Chorley)<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) issued a national recall notice for various coloured sand products<\/a> after laboratory testing detected traces of chrysotile asbestos \u2014 a type of naturally occurring asbestos.<\/p>\n

The products were sold at several retailers around the country.<\/p>\n

More than 500 SA public education sites had reported having items linked to the sand recall.<\/p>\n

The recall closed dozens of schools interstate, while in SA, two Catholic special schools were closed temporarily to allow for deep cleaning.<\/p>\n

Mr Boyer said that, according to advice from SafeWork SA, licensed cleaning services were required to conduct the clean-up while air monitoring was also taking place.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

More than 500 public education sites in SA reported having items linked to the sand recall. (ABC News: Mark Moore)<\/p>\n

Sites with loose sand also require lab-certified testing to be completed before students and staff can return to affected classrooms.<\/p>\n

Mr Boyer told parliament that the effort to remove the products was “slow, meticulous and specialist work” which “can’t be rushed or done cheaply”.<\/p>\n

“The public deserve to know how a banned product was allowed into Australia in the first place and who is going to pay for the consequences,” he said.<\/p>\n

“States shouldn’t be left alone to carry the burden for a failure of regulation federally and of product testing by multi-billion dollar companies.”<\/p>\n

Mr Boyer has previously called for an urgent national inquiry into how asbestos-containing children’s sand products were allowed into Australia <\/a>and widely distributed.<\/p>\n

That demand was echoed by ACT Education Minister Yvette Berry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The cost of removing coloured sand products from South Australian public schools amid asbestos contamination concerns is expected…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,13884,97923,99,12607,175202,60587,41262,175204,7971,117711,175201,175203,114785,101986,80988,4211,13441],"class_list":["post-308259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bill","tag-blair-boyer","tag-business","tag-clean","tag-cleanup","tag-contamination","tag-cost","tag-decontamination","tag-kmart","tag-officeworks","tag-play-sand","tag-precaution","tag-removal","tag-retailer","tag-sand","tag-schools","tag-target"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308259","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=308259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}