People raised in the former mining town of Wittenoom in Western
Australia have been hit by a wave of cancers and untimely deaths
many decades following the closure of a nearby blue-asbestos
mine in 1966. The Herald Sun reports that a new Australian study
examining the long-term impact of the mine on the health of town
residents has found that children living in Wittenoom in the
forties, fifties and sixties have suffered from far higher rates
of a broad range of diseases. Girls raised in the town were more
likely to developer asbestos-related mesothelioma, as well as
ovarian and brain cancers, while boys had higher rates of
mesothelioma, leukemia, prostate, brain and colorectal cancer.
Childhood residents also suffered from a higher rate of early
deaths and circulatory and nervous diseases, with the town's
girls 20 – 47% and the town's boys 50 – 83% more likely to die
of any cause compared to Western Australia's general population.
Wittenoom was originally situated only 1.6km from the mine, yet
was shifted 12k