It’s still killing people, and the government has yet to act: Britain’s hidden asbestos epidemic | Tom White

HElen Bone was diagnosed with asbestos-related cancer in 2021. She was 38 years old. The type of cancer, mesothelioma, is incurable; the best prognosis is a few years, although most people don’t last that long. “You always think of asbestos as a disease from decades ago – affecting men who worked in heavy industry – so to be diagnosed when I was in my 30s is shocking,” she told the Northern Echo. in 2022. “I want to see my children grow up, but now I have to accept the idea that that might not happen. » Sadly, Bone died in November last year, just three years after her diagnosis.

For most people, the word “asbestos” conjures up memories of earlier eras: dusty factories of the Victorian and Edwardian era; the shipyards of the interwar period; post-war construction sites. Yet asbestos was only banned in the UK in 1999. According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), it still kills around 5,000 people each year. Many anti-asbestos activists believe that this figure is greatly underestimated and that the true total is closer to 20,000. Mesothelioma has a long latency period: 15 to 40 years. Helen Bone could have been exposed to asbestos at school, at the college where she studied to become an intensive care practitioner or at the two hospitals where she later worked.

The bones are part of what is known as the third wave of asbestos deaths. The first wave consisted of those who worked directly with asbestos in mines and factories. The second wave consisted of those who worked with or near the material: shipyard and railway workers, builders and other artisans, engineers. The third wave includes everyone who has been exposed to the deterioration or disruption of asbestos-containing materials, releasing millions of fibers into the air, unseen. If the first and second waves were a horrific professional disaster, then the third wave is a vast environmental and infrastructural disaster.

Around 6 million tonnes of asbestos were imported into Britain between 1870 and 1999. It remained largely hidden behind walls and ceilings, laid in roofs and cement pipes, and was woven into textiles. British companies used two particularly harmful types: crocidolite and amosite, mined in South Africa. British companies, including Cape plc and Turner & Newall, relied on British imperial rule, and later apartheid, to keep mining costs low and profits high.

Thanks to the efforts of anti-asbestos activists and trade unionists, asbestos use declined significantly in the 1980s and 1990s, before it was finally banned in 1999. But the ban was not accompanied by a coordinated elimination program. The start of the new millennium should have been the time to take stock of asbestos. Instead, the material receded from view, its ban making it seem like a solved problem. Much of the asbestos has been removed over the past 25 years. There are several decent companies that follow the law and work safely. There are also many cowboy outfits that cut corners and put their workers and the public at risk.

Much of the asbestos remains in place and has now far exceeded its expected lifespan. The Asbestos Control Regulations 2012 assume that the risk is low if the material is not damaged and is not disturbed. This policy of on site management is bad in theory and worse in practice. A recent audit by the National Organization of Asbestos Consultants and the Asbestos Testing and Consultancy Association found that “of 128,761 buildings…examined over a six-month period, 78% contained asbestos” and that “71% of recorded asbestos items…were damaged”; 30% were in the highest risk category, requiring immediate removal.

The regulations place much of the responsibility on the ‘manager’ who is responsible for monitoring asbestos-containing materials and providing information to building users as part of an asbestos management plan. Yet in many cases, rather than living documents, these plans are left gathering dust in a drawer. The regulations do not differentiate by building type, although studies have shown that the risk of developing mesothelioma and lung cancer increases significantly for those exposed to them when young. There is also no differentiation according to the type of asbestos, although it is known that amosite and crocidolite are particularly dangerous.

Some nations have chosen to take up this challenge. In 2016, South Korea’s Ministry of Education ordered asbestos to be removed from all schools by 2027. The government allocated 2.872 billion won (£1.8 billion) for the program. The Australian Asbestos and Silica Safety and Eradication Agency was founded in 2013 and is coordinating a multi-phase national strategic plan aimed at eliminating future cases of asbestos-related disease in the country.

The HSE does appear to be moving in this direction, although it has not yet set a clear timetable. In June, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Safety and Health at Work published a report on the legacy of Cape plc. As well as calling on Cape’s parent company Altrad to contribute £10m towards asbestos cancer research, the group reiterated the need for the Government to commit to a national asbestos removal programme.

The persistent presence of asbestos in schools, hospitals, housing and various other buildings presents not only a technical and logistical challenge, but also a challenge of political imagination. In the face of worsening social and ecological crises, the call for removal and reconstruction cannot simply be a call to replace what existed before, simply without asbestos. Rather, it involves a different type of society, one with properly funded education and health sectors, mass renovation programs, and well-resourced local councils that train and lead their own asbestos removal teams.

Given its self-imposed fiscal rules and the general absence of a substantive, positive vision for the country, it seems unlikely that the Labor government will succeed in developing such a program on its own. If Britain’s asbestos disaster is to be reversed, then coalitions of activists, trade unionists and tenants’ rights groups will be vital. In the 1970s and 1980s, similar coalitions took on a powerful industry and succeeded in redefining asbestos as an urgent public health risk. Today, like yesterday, change will come from below, or not at all.

• Tom White is a writer and education worker. Bad Dust: A History of the Asbestos Disaster, his first book, is published by Repeater