The asbestos-filled and abandoned Fitz student bar in Palmerston North was burning, black smoke billowing on Thursday, around the same time that work safety experts were nutting out submissions on a Government move they warn will erode controls around the dangerous substance.
"We don't want a watered-down system," said Helina Stil, president of the Demolition and Asbestos Association. "We told them [WorkSafe]."
The Fitz fire was out just after midnight but several nearby schools kept children home on Friday, and were testing for any asbestos fibres that might have been released into the wind, and settled aroundabout.
A text alert sent out widely on Thursday read, "STAY INSIDE."
Schools even on the far side of the city and upwind flooded the fire station with calls, needlessly alarmed.
But experts will tell you that aside from an emergency like this one, it is often difficult to get people to care about the 'invisible' threat - asbestos fibres can be too small to see - that takes long years to kill a person.
The law though is clear on the danger. It states that "workers and other persons should be given the highest level of protection".
High protection requires high thresholds. But those are now changing.
'Downgrade to guidance'
If the Fitz had been demolished before it was burned, asbestos removalists would've had to follow a tight approved code of practice, or ACOP, and any breach of the code would have clear legal consequences if the regulator chose to crack down.
So Mike Cosman acted quickly last week when he realised that WorkSafe wanted to drop that code.
"To my contacts with an interest in asbestos," the work safety consultant, veteran of many official reviews, wrote on LinkedIn. "Very short consultation on this major proposal to revoke the ACOP and downgrade to guidance."
Work safety lecturer Dr Chris Peace saw Cosman's post.
He rushed in a submission. "Revocation of this ACOP will downgrade this 'highest level of protection' to mere guidance documents," he told WorkSafe this week.
"Our Health and Safety at Work Act should be supported for serious issues by approved codes of practice," Peace told RNZ on Friday.
"You can't get much more serious about asbestos and how it kills people slowly."
Industry consultant Terry Coleman said when it came to the few ignorant or disreputable operators who put others at risk, legal heft was essential: "The ACOP has more bite."
'Greater reliance on ACOPs'
The move to dump the code comes when the tide is going all the other way.
For months the Government has been underway with "a shift to greater reliance on ACOPs".
Workplace safety minister Brooke van Velden has issued a series of statements about new codes coming in for construction, farming and where firms have overlapping safety duties. Forestry just got a new code after years of talks.
"My health and safety reform will see a shift from a reliance on regulations to greater use of ACOPs," she said in April.
"I am making a change to the ACOP model to reassure people that if they comply with an ACOP, they have done enough to meet their health and safety duties."
Legislative changes expected next year would mean a business that met a code would have a sure shield against prosecution.
She would approve each new code, van Velden said.
But asbestos was different.
"However, in this specific case, feedback from industry has indicated a preference for GPGs [good practice guidelines], so it is appropriate for the regulator to listen and test it through wider consultation," van Velden told RNZ on Friday.
She was waiting on the current consultation to end to get a final steer on the fate of the nine-year-old code.
'Overwhelming feedback' – but industry balks
However, WorkSafe perhaps preemptively talked of overwhelming feedback so far in favour of guidelines, and how it had signalled for years this move.
"We have worked alongside an industry reference group since December 2022. Their overwhelming feedback to date has been that the existing ACOP no longer reflects best practice, and GPGs are preferable as they are easier to update for evolving technologies and practices," it said.
Yet the main industry body, the Demolition and Asbestos Association, has balked.
President Stil was personally against dropping the code, she said, and the association's submission has questioned whether the asbestos regime would end up with fewer teeth.
"In case stuff goes sideways - it doesn't happen that often - but it gives assurance to the community that whatever is in the ACOP is followed through on," Stil said.
Why not keep the code, or renew it, and add the guidelines, she asked.
WorkSafe said it anticipated the three new guidelines could become an ACOP "in the future as technology and industry practices stabilise".
It added that when it came to enforcement, the courts could consider both a code or guidelines.
Chris Peace regarded this as mischievious: Guidelines could elaborate and update, he said, but "for something dangerous like asbestos" the code was more powerful. Amend it if need be but keep it, he urged van Velden.
He has also protested to WorkSafe about giving just a week for the consultation; that has now been extended to next Friday, 7 November.
'Dumb it down'
Terry Coleman is the Demolition and Asbestos Association's secretary who worked on its submission.
He believes WorkSafe needed to make a case backed by documentation that its move was not taking the country's workplace safety backwards.
"We're not against change", and regulations could be too unyielding, Coleman said.
"But asbestos is ... one of the most highly regulated industries that we have. So to dumb it down to a suggested good practice guidelines could be problematic."
Parliament recognised the code, the regulations cited it.
"If it's just guidelines, it lessens the standing of the regulations and the Health and Safety at Law Act."
Ordinary danger
Dramatic fires like Thursday's one at the long-empty Fitz can twig people afresh to the risk of asbestos and staying safe.
But as one Palmerston North firefighter told RNZ after the blaze, people become blasé quickly.
That is especially so when the risk is much more ordinary, such as when it's sealed up and encapsulated in the materials of many homes more than 20 or 30 years old.
Coleman recently went through five electricians at his North Shore rental until he found one who knew how to safely drill holes overhead in the old fibrecement sheet under the eaves, without a risk of breathing in the dust.
The first sparkie had told him, "'Look, I do 20 of these a week. Nobody ever asked me things like that'.
"So he had no training to keep himself safe when working around asbestos," said Coleman.
The sixth tradesman who turned up knew what to do, spraying foam on the sheet so any dust from drilling was caught in it.
"Then he wiped the foam off, put it in a plastic bag and dumped it in an appropriate receptable.
"Very simple stuff," said Coleman
"Still dangerous enough that WorkSafe has a set rules and criteria around it."
Correction: In an earlier version of this story an Industry consultant said ACOP appeared to have been removed from WorkSafe's website. This is incorrect and has been removed.
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