Tram Town
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
| Category: Art (via Tim Blair) Security guards at the National Gallery of Australia appear to have a higher-than-expected chance of getting some form of cancer. All we need to do now is to expose a whole mess of laboratory rats to a whole mess of pictures, jot down a few figures, put Excel to work, and voila, proof! The documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show that health problems among security staff continued beyond February 2002. Guards complained on January 10, 2003 of feeling ill in several public areas, including the Jackson Pollock exhibition area, where the gallery's highest-profile work, Blue Poles, hangs. In February last year, security and installation staff reported having headaches in the Asian art galleries, symptoms that cleared once they left the area.Having watched a film of Jackson Pollock at work, it comes as no surprise that his paintings could be choc-a-block (sp?) with all sorts of extremely dangerous chemicals. |
