Qld: Breast cancer victims applaud ABC studios closure

AAP General News (Australia)
12-21-2006
Qld: Breast cancer victims applaud ABC studios closure

By Jade Bilowol

BRISBANE, Dec 21 AAP - Women who have contracted breast cancer while working at the
ABC's Brisbane studios are "delighted" and "relieved" the broadcaster is abandoning the
site.

ABC management today ordered an immediate closure of the Toowong studios in the city's
inner-west, after an independent study found female employees reported breast cancer at
a rate of up to 11 times higher than the general working community.

TV newsreader Lisa Backhouse, 37, who resigned at the weekend due to her fears about
the studios, said she and other victims were "overwhelmed, stunned, relieved, and delighted"

about closure.

Twelve female employees have contracted cancer in the past 11 years.

"I just want to say how absolutely relieved we are that no one has to get sick in that
building and no one has to go through that horrendous ordeal we had to go through," she
told reporters in Brisbane.

She said the victims had been fighting for almost two years for management to take
serious action to address the unusually high incidence of cancer, which still remains
a mystery.

"The numbers we felt were at a point where we knew there was something wrong with the
building and it did fall perhaps on ears that weren't really quite ready to hear at that
point," Ms Backhouse said.

Fellow former employee Jo Stone, 33, who said she was "certainly looking at my legal
options" following the study, said it was a "shame" management had not acted earlier in
a bid to prevent others contracting cancer.

"I would just hope that now they use this information to find some perhaps answers
for us and for thousands of other women who are diagnosed every year," Ms Stone said.

Asked what the ABC should do with the abandoned building, Ms Stone replied: "Demolish
it. Bulldoze it."

Ms Backhouse also said: "I guess we've all wondered over the years whether if it had
been a men's condition it would have perhaps been taken a little more seriously."

AAP jvb/sc/jt/nf

KEYWORD: BREAST VICTIMS (PIX AVAILABLE)

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