The Asbestos and Silica Safety and Eradication Agency (ASSEA) partnered with a research team from Deakin University to investigate the levels of asbestos fibres in drinking water that has passed through asbestos-cement (AC) pipes. Australia has approximately 40,000 km of AC drinking water pipes, this being nearly 20% of the total length of the nation’s drinking water pipes.
In a 2021 report Asbestos in drinking water: Background document for development of WHO Guidelines for drinking-water quality, the World Health Organization (WHO) noted that based on a weight of evidence approach, there is no risk to human health from the consumption of asbestos fibres in water. Nonetheless, due to the uncertainties and limitations of epidemiological data, the WHO recommended that ‘it is appropriate to try to minimise the concentrations of asbestos fibres in drinking water as far as practical’, and that it would be ‘useful to conduct investigative monitoring to obtain further information on the contribution of older AC pipes to fibre numbers, types, size and shape in drinking-water’. The ASSEA sponsored project gave effect to the recommendations of the WHO.