Another 100 former ACT residents - some of whom may be linked to Mr Fluffy homes - who have been diagnosed interstate with mesothelioma, cancer or other asbestos-related illnesses, will be identified as part of a major ACT health study.
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The final stage of the ACT Asbestos Taskforce's health study is set to begin in weeks, a long-awaited effort to combine data from the national cancer database with the ACT's register of 1022 homes that had Mr Fluffy asbestos installed over several decades.
While the ACT Cancer Registry has had 140 mesothelioma cases reported in the ACT to 2014, the health study would show, through de-identified data analysis, how many residents of known Mr Fluffy homes have since moved interstate and been diagnosed with diseases potentially linked to asbestos exposure.
Lead researcher, Associate Professor Martyn Kirk, said the project, due to be completed next year, would "allow us to estimate the risk of developing mesothelioma if people lived in these homes compared with those who didn't [live in them] in the ACT".
"What we'd expect is that there might be another 100 or so cases outside the ACT of people who had ever lived in the ACT," he said. "We are yet to complete the report, but that's what we'd expect to find at this stage.
Dr Kirk said he believed most of those cases would likely be related to people who may have had occupational exposure, but it wuld not be known for sure until the study results were completed.
"We'll finally be able to look at the rates of mesothelioma and link that information to people who had ever lived in those homes, which will be very important given the ACT has had a very mobile population during the past 50 to 60 years.
"They might be people who lived here for five, 10 or 15 years and their diagnosis is reported to the cancer registry in their state of residence, but their residential history has not been seen as important as other information in the past.
"It's just in this instance that we're really interested in where they lived."
But establishing a causal link between living in a Mr Fluffy house and later being diagnosed with mesothelioma or cancer would be difficult, Dr Kirk said, given the courts and scientific community have "different evidentiary frameworks".
The health study last year revealed the ACT's rate of mesothelioma rose 12 per cent every three years over a 12-year period to 2011, although that brought the previously low ACT rate in line with most other states.
Dr Kirk said the team at the Australian National University's National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health was also finishing up the third stage of its work for the taskforce, a survey of residents of Mr Fluffy homes about exposure to asbestos and the stress associated with it, informed by a series of earlier focus groups.
"There are many aspects to [stress], from not being able to have people come and visit, to having to leave the home you've renovated and lived in," he said. "There's a lot of things tangled up in people's sense of stress."
He said the survey was sent to 1022 registered homes and researchers were pleased to get 363 responses from 262 households, the results of which were being compiled into a report to the ACT government expected to be completed in the next few weeks.
The research comes as new figures from the Asbestos Safety and Eradiation Agency showed another 150 people registered with the agency last financial year for exposure in the ACT.
That figure includes people who believe they may have been exposed to asbestos, rather than actual diagnoses of mesothelioma.
Many of those on the federal exposure register in the ACT were tradespeople, tenants of Mr Fluffy homes or owners who had completed renovations or had work down.
That figure fell from 383 new ACT people who were listed on the national register in 2014-15 and, despite the fall in overall numbers, the ACT still had a "disproportionately high" number of cases, compared with the territory's population.
Of the 1560 new registrants nationwide during 2015-16, the 149 who registered in relation to exposure in the ACT represented 9.55 per cent of all new registrants, a high rate considered the territory accounts for only 1.64 per cent of the national population.
The federal agency also warned of growing concerns for younger tradespeople and young home renovators who might be less conscious of asbestos-related safety issues than older generations.
About 4085 people are now listed on the national exposure register, and the agency receives about 130 new registrations each month for the 2015-16 year.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that there were likely to be another 100 cases iof mesothelioma diagnosed interstate that could be linked to Mr Fluffy homes. The article should have reported that some of those 100 cases could be linked to Mr Fluffy, but the total figure related to all such cases in the ACT.
