Monday’s compulsory closures in the ACT follow the shutdown of 23 schools and preschools there on Friday after the consumer watchdog warned a coloured sand may contain asbestos traces.

Some school closures could last days as decontamination work continues.

One Brisbane school was also closed on Friday and one school in Tasmania, but others remained open around the nation, though the suspect products were identified at some sites.

Giant Steps Tasmania, a not for profit, independent school and therapeutic centre for children on the autism spectrum in Deloraine, said the closure would allow staff to safely remove the product, deep clean classrooms and seek further advice from specialists.

Asbestos removal contractors worked over the weekend at ACT schools to remove asbestos-tainted sand supplied by Officeworks.

But the ACT Education Department was obliged on Sunday to notify the closure of 69 schools on Monday after Kmart and Target issued a voluntary recall for a coloured sand product that might contain asbestos.

“Unfortunately, these sand products are even more widely used in our schools than the Officeworks products,” ACT Education and Early Childhood Minister Yvette Berry said in a statement.

“We are now in a position that we need to close additional schools tomorrow.”

Families and staff have been informed of the closures by email.

School staff and SES volunteers have walked through the schools looking for coloured sand and reporting any finds.

Licensed asbestos contractors needed to test, remediate and clear the spaces for use again, a process that could take days, Berry said.

The products have been recalled because they may cause a risk to health as tremolite asbestos (a naturally occurring asbestos) has been detected in some samples after laboratory testing. PHOTO: ACCC product safety

“This is a best practice in managing hazardous materials and I am committed to putting the safety of staff and students first.

“All of the air testing that our contractors have done across public schools so far has been negative to airborne asbestos,” she said.

“Health officials yesterday confirmed that the risk is very low, and they do not recommend any clinical assessment for people in contact with these products.”

The ACT is the only jurisdiction to have gone so far as to close public schools while it cleans up the products, mainly because only the ACT had detected products containing chrysotile asbestos, according to ACT Work Health and Safety Commissioner Jacqueline Agius.

“The testing that we conducted and the result that we received last Friday found chrysotile asbestos in the sample that we seized from a stationary store in the ACT,” she told ABC News.

Berry said the ACT’s laws around asbestos removal were “the most rigorous in the country”.

“I can’t talk for or go through the legislation requirements under other states and territories,” she said.

“I understand the requirements of our legislation and those are the requirements that I’m meeting, and that’s based on the advice that was first released by the ACCC around contaminated sand being identified.”

Professor Dino Pisaniello, from the School of Public Health at The University of Adelaide, said all available evidence suggested the risk being extremely low and actions to close entire schools would be predicated on an assumption of widespread contamination.

“Each school would or should have a good understanding of its use/distribution, and so complete school closure doesn’t seem to be justified,” he said.

Agius said the laws in the ACT were more strict partly because of its history of asbestos in homes due to the Mr Fluffy scheme, which led to the installation of asbestos-laced insulation in the 1960s and 70s.

No independent or Catholic schools in the ACT have been closed at this stage due to the current scare.

Safety alerts, meanwhile, have been issued in nearly every state and territory urging schools, consumers and service providers to stop using the sand products.

Products linked to the asbestos scare have been identified at more than 100 sites in South Australia, with hazard alerts issued but no schools closed.

The product found at ACT schools was imported from China and sold as Kadink Decorative Sand in tubes weighing 10 grams, Worksafe ACT said.

It comes after a national recall of children’s sand products sold at retailers including Officeworks, Educating Kids, Modern Teaching Aids and Zart Art.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission issued alerts after asbestos traces were detected in laboratory testing.

(with AAP)