Diseases of the Dust

This week at work I was given a new product to take charge of, which has been handed over to us from the Attorney-General’s department. We all chuckled in the meeting at the name of it: the “Dust Diseases Reports”. I actually put my hand up because my work load at the moment is quite manageable and this one sounded like a small, obscure project. I went away and did some research and found out that there exits the Dust Diseases Tribunal, and that the vast majority of cases that they deal with involve Mesothelioma, directly linked to exposure to Asbestos (but distinct from Asbestosis). I did some more research and found out that this disease is one of the deadliest cancers known to man, and many of the cases in this Tribunal have to be heard quickly because the applicant is rapidly approaching death. It was quite a saddening afternoon. Here is a fatal disease, directly caused by humans, yet created out of our ignorance of the environment we live in and the impact of the resources we generate and of our own bodies - though then perpetuated long after ignorance was gone. This is indeed a disease of the dust. And so we set up a Tribunal to alleviate the consequences as best it can.

I have also been dealing with a number of Family Court cases lately, as part of the Federal Law Reports, which is my other product. Most of these are tragic tales of relationship failure and its bitter outcomes. The dust is everywhere. A mess is made, and then attempts are made to make the best of it with justice, and the hopeless wrangling in court with its unsatisfactory results that do nothing for the real heart of the problem reminded me of this quote from Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, regarding the Court of Chancery:

This is the Court of Chancery; which has its decaying houses and its blighted lands in every shire; which has its worn-out lunatic in every madhouse, and its dead in every churchyard; which has its ruined suitor, with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress, borrowing and begging through the round of every man’s acquaintance; which gives to monied might the means abundantly of wearying out the right; which so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope; so overthrows the brain and breaks the heart; that there is not an honourable man among its practitioners who would not give – who does not often give – the warning, ‘Suffer any wrong that can be done you, rather than come here!’

The justice system can only do so much with the dust.