The top two floors of the Melbourne's RMIT University business school building will be reopened after a medical report found no evidence linking the building to the tumor cases found in the staffs working on the 16th and 17th floors of the building.
The building was closed down in May after a cancer cluster was detected in the staffs working in the top two floors of the building. Seven of the staff members were found to have malignant tumors, while six had benign tumors. Among these four were found to have brain tumors.Questions were raised regarding the safety of the building as people working on the top floors underneath the mobile phone towers had developed tumors. A through investigation found radiation levels in the areas surrounding the building to be safe and ruled out the possibility that mobile phone towers on the roof had caused the tumors.
The report prepared by Dr John Gall of Southern Medical Services, and Associate Professor Tony LaMontagne of the University of Melbourne found the number of malignant tumors among staffs to be consistent with the number expected in a wider population.
Professor Margaret Gardner, Vice-Chancellor of RMIT University, said that staff would now be encouraged to return to their workplace on the top two floors after some of the most comprehensive health and environmental testing found no evidence any risk associated with the workplace.
She said that staffs would be given time to get back to work and also said that RMIT counselors would help the staffs get rid of any concerns they may have about the workplace.
