A primary school in south-west Sydney has been shut and part of a hospital closed-off to the public after asbestos was found in garden mulch which was supplied by the same company that produced mulch found to be contaminated at multiple locations across the city.
The New South Wales Environment Protection Authority on Sunday confirmed it had found bonded asbestos in mulch at Liverpool West public school, which was followed by the discovery of the contaminant in mulch at Campbelltown hospital on Monday.
The environmental watchdog said it identified the school as a priority site for testing after learning the mulch used there was supplied by Greenlife Resource Recovery – the same company that supplied mulch to Rozelle parklands.
The discovery of bonded asbestos in the park on top of the Rozelle interchange in January prompted a broad investigation by the EPA and the NSW government, which has detected the contaminant at other sites across Sydney, as well as the south coast.
The education minister, Prue Car, moved to reassure parents. She said only one piece of bonded asbestos had been found at Liverpool West and the government had acted swiftly.
The school enacted its asbestos protocol and temporarily shut down, meaning students will be taught remotely on Monday and Tuesday while the mulch is removed and replaced.
Car said “at this stage” the government didn’t believe the mulch in question had been used at any other schools but she couldn’t guarantee it.
The education department secretary, Murat Dizdar, said recycled mulch – which can contain building and demolition waste as well as new organic material – wasn’t “normally” allowed to be used at schools.
“We’re looking into with the builder and supplier … what went wrong here. And we’ll reinforce our standards out there to all the major builders that we engage,” he said.
Dizdar would not name the building company contracted to deliver the multimillion dollar Liverpool West redevelopment because he didn’t think thatwas “for the public domain at this stage”.
The NSW government previously named major builder ADCO Constructions as the company it hired to redevelop the school.
A spokesperson for ADCO Constructions said the company was assisting School Infrastructure NSW and the EPA to “co-ordinate urgent remediation works” of the affected landscaping area at the school, and that the firm’s landscaping subcontractor “is separately assisting the EPA with details related to the supply of the mulch”.
“The recycled mulch material was supplied through our landscaping contractor and we received chemical composition test results for the recycled mulch before its use at the project,” the spokesperson said.
“We are unaware of the supply of mulch by Greenlife Resource Recovery to any landscaping contractors on any other projects.”
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The EPA chief executive, Tony Chappel, said the mulch found to contain asbestos at Campbelltown hospital also came from Greenlife and that health authorities had cordoned off that part of the hospital to the public.
He said the EPA was investigating a “very complex supply chain” to pinpoint the source of the contamination.
“It’s important to understand that it is unlawful and a serious criminal offence to … sell material contaminated in this way,” Chappel said.
A spokesperson for the Department of Education said all but one sample of mulch taken from Liverpool West public school were free of asbestos but it was “exercising an abundance of caution to ensure the health of staff and students”.
A spokesperson for Greenlife said it was concerned bonded asbestos had been found at a school but it was confident that “when its products are delivered to contractors to lay they are free of asbestos”.
“It is unreasonable to hold [Greenlife] responsible for how its products are used once delivered to contractors on a construction site,” they said.
The mulch supplier has hired a lawyer from commercial law firm Fishburn Watson O’Brien, Ross Fox, who said last week it was “too soon to jump to conclusions” about the source of the contamination.
“Greenlife is at risk of being made a scapegoat for failures in complex construction projects on contaminated land,” Fox said in a statement.
The company has insisted its mulch was thoroughly tested and that “all tests verified unequivocally that the mulch was clean of asbestos”.
As part of its investigation the EPA has conducted more than 100 tests at sites across Sydney, with 13 returning a positive result for bonded asbestos, which NSW Health advises is a low risk to public health.
Bonded asbestos is considered lower-risk than friable asbestos because the hazardous particles are bonded in a harder substance, such as concrete, and are therefore less likely to become airborne and be ingested.