“Potentially hazardous” material has been discovered in a storeroom at NSW’s largest high school, forcing the area into lockdown until specialist contractors can remove the box — which was only noticed after white powder suspected to be asbestos fell onto it.
Castle Hill High School has been embroiled in an asbestos scandal since last year, when news.com.au first revealed that thousands of students and teachers may have been exposed to the deadly building material for years even after a sample of the dust had come back positive.
News.com.au can now reveal that last week, a red box labelled “yellowcake” was discovered inside a locked science storeroom, sending school officials and the Education Department scrambling to avoid another embarrassment.
“Back in the ‘60s they used to have yellowcake which they would use to test radiation,” one teacher explained. “They’d pull it out and the kids would use radiation counters and go, ‘Yeah, that’s radioactive.’”
The teacher said “somehow it got put in a red box and left in the storeroom” where it sat unnoticed for decades. “The red box got left in there forever until some white powder fell onto it,” he said.
“The level of incompetence is staggering.”
In an email to all staff last Monday, principal Georgina Fleming wrote, “Please note that the science chemical storeroom is cordoned off and should not be entered until further notice. School Infrastructure is testing suspected asbestos and other material.”
The white powder was subsequently confirmed not to contain asbestos.
The red box will be removed this weekend and the material inside tested.
The NSW Education Department confirmed in a statement on Tuesday evening that it had “discovered a potentially hazardous material in a locked science block storeroom at Castle Hill High School on August 30, 2023”.
“The storeroom was not accessible to students and the material was in a sealed box and believed to have been used to support science experiments in the past,” a spokeswoman said.
“In line with work, health and safety legislative requirements, the storeroom will remain isolated and secured until the material is tested and removed by an appropriate authorised contractor this weekend.”
The spokeswoman said an occupational hygienist had inspected the science block and deemed it “safe for normal use”. “The storeroom in question is not located within any classroom,” she said.
“Science classes for all cohorts are continuing unaffected. Parents and carers of students were advised by Castle Hill High School via email on August 30. As always, the health, safety, and wellbeing of the school and local community remains our highest priority.”
Yellowcake, a type of uranium concentrate powder, emits very low levels of radiation and poses little risk, but can be hazardous if inhaled.
“From a safety perspective, only basic radiation protection measures are necessary,” a transport safety specialist at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) explained in a 2018 bulletin.
SafeWork NSW confirmed it was investigating the latest find.
“SWNSW has become aware of a potential hazardous chemical risk at Castle Hill School,” a spokesman said. “SWNSW has commenced an investigation. As such no further comment can be provided at this time.”
Last year, news.com.au revealed that a sample of dust from a staffroom had come back positive for asbestos in 2016, but teachers at the time were told the test had come back “all clear”.
It was not until four years later that the department announced “previously unknown asbestos” had been discovered in the roof cavity during a “proactive” inspection — sparking outrage from teachers who said they had been raising concerns about the white dust falling from the ceilings for years, going so far as to “sweep it up into a zip-lock bag” themselves and hand it to the school.
“People were sweeping up dust from that staffroom, the library and other staffrooms and taking it to the [school] asking for it to be tested for years,” one teacher said at the time.
Multiple staff members had logged requests in the school’s internal issue tracking system demanding to see a copy of the 2016 results but “nobody was ever shown” the document.
After the Education Department’s announcement in 2020, multiple teachers complained saying they had raised concerns years earlier — sparking an internal investigation by the Professional and Ethical Standards (PES) Directorate.
The bombshell 2016 test certificate was only recovered last April when PES investigators reconstructed staff email inboxes, after being tipped off to the existence of the test in interviews with several complainants.
The certificate of analysis from Wollongong-based lab Clearsafe Environmental Solutions, provided to the school on July 29, 2016, confirmed the presence of both Chrysotile, white asbestos, and Amosite, brown asbestos — considered one of the most hazardous types.
Although the report referred to asbestos, it did not say whether the material posed an exposure risk. Exposure to asbestos can lead to long-term lung damage and certain cancers, typically occurring decades later.
SafeWork NSW launched an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the test to determine whether the school breached asbestos management policies.
That investigation is ongoing, news.com.au understands.
The revelations sparked outrage from parents and led to a state parliamentary inquiry, which heard last September that while the long-term exposure risk at the school was considered to be low, “errors of judgment” had been made by senior school staff members and the proper procedures were not followed.
“Unfortunately, in this case, the school did not contact the asset management unit when it should have and the AMU’s help and expertise was not immediately enlisted,” School Infrastructure NSW chief executive Anthony Manning told the inquiry, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Parent Elizabeth Madders told the inquiry the community had been left in the dark and met with a “wall of silence” on the saga. “We’ve lost all faith in the school, the Department of Education and school infrastructure,” she said.
“Parents have been asked to accept the unacceptable. Parents send their children to school and think, ‘Is today the day they will breathe in deadly asbestos into their lungs?’”
The Education Department says there are no current asbestos issues at the school.