Educational Colours Rainbow Sand has been recalled. Photo: Supplied / Product Safety NZ
The deputy prime minister says several hundred schools and childhood centres have contacted the Ministry of Education after the discovery of asbestos in a range of coloured play sand.
Rainbow sand from Educational Colours and coloured sand from Creatistics has been recalled because Tremolite (a naturally occurring asbestos in quartz) has been found in samples during lab testing.
David Seymour said as of Monday night, about 16 early childhood centres had closed.
"There's been enormous amounts of phoning and emailing, several hundred early childhood centres have been in touch with the Ministry of Education on suspicion they might have this sand and many more primary schools.
He told First Up instructions had been sent out, advising that the sand should be isolated if possible and to isolate the area if the sand had already been spread around.
There were about 200 asbestos removal specialists staff throughout New Zealand that they could seek guidance from and that list had been provided to schools and early childhood centres, he said.
"We'll continue to assist, you know for a lot of parents this is deeply distressing but what does need to be said is we understand the problem, we've put in place a procedure for dealing with it where there's a suspicion of it."
Seymour said the goal was to clean it up if necessary and to get centres re-opened as soon as possible.
"It's a massive disturbance to people in their daily life when you have a sudden unexpected closure of a daycare centre."
There were millions of products brought into New Zealand and purchased every year, he said.
"We could put in a regime that nothing could be sold unless it had been tested in some way but I think people know deep down that that would not be realistic and chances are we'd miss something totally unexpected."
Sand recall shows lack of due diligence from businesses, Eco Choice Aotearoa says
But a New Zealand product certification organisation said the discovery of asbestos in brands of play sand showed a lack of due diligence from businesses.
Laura Gemmell from Eco Choice Aotearoa told Morning Report there was a high trust model for product safety in New Zealand.
"My own son's school was affected by this so I was surprised to get an email saying his class would be closed today, his whole school will be closed today."
But she said from a professional stand point she was not surprised it had happened.
"We see so many everyday products that New Zealanders buy that have really gnarly ingredients in them and they're none the wiser."
In Australia and New Zealand the importer really had the primary responsibility to ensure their products were safe, she said.
"But it's almost sort of like an honesty system, importers are sort of trusted to verify safety but they're not actually required to prove it.
"So I think this is a really good example of why something like mandatory due diligence for high risk products, like those that are used by children, could potentially be a partial solution."
Although even that would not catch everything, she said.
"I'm a parent and I see people, you know other parents buy things from other retailers, online retailers, and bring things in and you know having no visibility of what's in them."
People did not realise what a big problem that was and it really paid to check, she said.
There were standards that people could look for in terms of toys and art products, she said.
"There's the European toy safety standard which is represented by an EN71 on the side of products, that's a really good one to look at, and secondly they have something called Reach and that sort of excludes chemicals of concern, ingredients of concern."
Gemmell said she would encourage people to work out which standards and certifications they trusted and look for them for products for children or that were used routinely in the home.
In the coloured sand case there was no indication that the asbestos had been intentionally added, she said.
"Asbestos occurs naturally so it could be in a quarry where they got this sand, through equipment or storage containers that were also contaminated."
Businesses really needed to understand their product, "they need to know what's in that product otherwise they shouldn't be selling it", she said.
Several large Australian retailers were selling the sand, but so far Kmart was the only one identified as selling it in New Zealand, she said.
"But these are companies that should know their supply chain, they should know their source, they should be requiring independent testing, they should be auditing their supply chain and they should have things like supplier agreements in place with really clear expectations around health and safety and things like that."
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