James Hardie's Killer Dust Poem by Francis Duggan

A single mum she bought the house when her only child a girl was five about eight years ago
But that a latent killer was within it's walls she was not meant to know
A rodent gnawed through the wall board of her bedroom and the asbestos dust floated out
And the deadly stuff unbeknown to her was in her nostrils and her mouth.

Her only child now in her early teens in an orphanage today
And with the Town's departed in the cemetery she lay
Another victim of James Hardie's killer dust she did not live to grow old and gray
Our destiny is beyond our control some have been known to say.

A woman in her late thirties she seemed so young to die
To see her daughter into Womanhood grow she did not live to enjoy
The killer dust that lay hidden in her walls that a rodent had gnawed through
Was to be the beginning of the end for her though little then she knew

That within eight years she would be dead life can be so unfair
James Hardie's dust is deadly stuff and young or old it does not spare
A good woman her death painful and slow asbestos kills in that way
Though at least of suffering she is now free with the Town dead she lay.