The family of a Cheltenham man who died as a result of being exposed to asbestos over 60 years earlier has been awarded £92,000.

William Evans died from mesothelioma, a form of cancer linked with asbestos, early in 2011.

He worked for AW Hawksley Ltd, a subsidiary of BAE Systems, in Gloucester between 1947 and 1950. His job involved drilling into asbestos sheets used in pre-fabricated houses.

Mr Evans’ family sued BAE Systems and the firm accepted liability, making the settlement to his two adult children. Mr Evans had been given no warnings or suitable protective equipment. He in fact wore ordinary cotton overalls which he took home to wash.

The company admitted they had wrongly exposed Mr Evans to asbestos.

Marks & Spencer has been fined over £1m for failing to protect customers, staff and workers from potential exposure to asbestos.

Customers at their Reading and Bournemouth stores were put at risk of exposure to asbestos fibres during refurbishments in 2006 and 2007. The issue has been the centre of an ongoing court case over the past 8 months.

The judge told Bournemouth Crown Court,

“The response from Marks & Spencer was, in effect, to turn a blind eye to what was happening… it was already costing the company too much money,”

“There was systemic failure on behalf of M&S management. There has been no hint of a proper full apology for what happened,” he said.

He went on to say that the “tension” between health and safety and profit had caused the “lamentable problems” which had led to ceiling dust possibly containing asbestos falling to the shop floor when it was open.

Marks & Spencer was convicted of two charges under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 of failing to ensure the health and safety of its staff and others at the Reading store in July. It was fined £500,000 for each offence and ordered to pay a further £600,000 in costs.

Three contractors also guilty of asbestos safety breaches were also fined.

Willmott Dixon Construction Ltd, of Hertfordshire, was found guilty in July of contravening the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 at Marks & Spencer’s Bournemouth store. It was fined £50,000, plus £75,000 costs.

PA Realisations Ltd (formerly Pectel Ltd) was found guilty in July of contravening Control of Asbestos at Work Regulations 2002 at the Reading store. As the company is insolvent it was fined a nominal £200.

Styles & Wood Limited, of Manchester Road, Altrincham, Cheshire, which had pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing in January 2010 to contravening the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 at the Reading store, was fined £100,000 and ordered to pay costs of £40,000.

After the sentencing, Richard Boland, HSE’s southern head of operations for construction, said: “This outcome should act as a wake-up call that any refurbishment programmes involving asbestos-containing materials must be properly resourced, both in terms of time and money – no matter what.

“Large retailers and other organisations who carry out major refurbishment works must give contractors enough time and space within the store to carry out the works safely.   Where this is not done, and construction workers and the public are put at risk, HSE will not hesitate in taking robust enforcement action.”

Long straight carbon nanotubes may be as dangerous as asbestos fibres, potentially causing cancer in cells lining the lung, a pilot study in mice has shown.

Carbon Nano Tubes

Toxicologists say that those manufacturing and disposing of nanotubes – produced in thousands of tonnes per year worldwide – are most likely to be at risk of an asbestos-like illness, though it’s not yet known if workers could be harmed just by inhaling nanotubes at typical exposures. ‘We need more research on the toxicology of these materials, and the exposure to them in workplaces,’ says Ken Donaldson, who led the research at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

Donaldson’s team injected multiwalled carbon nanotubes and asbestos fibres between the membranes lining the lungs and abdominal organs in mice. They found that long straight nanotubes caused inflammation and lesions in membrane cells of the sort that have been shown to lead to cancer – just like asbestos fibres.

The problem, Donaldson explains, is that macrophages, cells which usually swallow up invading objects, can’t stretch to engulf fibres that reach beyond about 20 micrometres. Such ‘frustrated phagocytosis’ leads to inflammation and eventually tumours. ‘Anything that’s thin, long, and doesn’t easily dissolve in body fluids has got to come under suspicion as behaving like asbestos,’ Donaldson says.

Nanotubes under twenty micrometres, and long nanotubes which were tangled up into balls, did not cause asbestos-like problems, the researchers found – although the study was not set up to investigate any other potential toxic effects of nanotubes.

‘Much more work will be required to provide definitive proof [of whether particular types of nanotubes behave like asbestos fibres], and to show if the same effects are seen if particles are inhaled, and whether exposure levels reach the threshold for the development of cancer,’ comments Mike Horton, director of life sciences at the London Centre for Nanotechnology, UK.

But given the terrible effects of asbestos that emerged in the 1960s, researchers are urging caution. ‘Those tubes that resemble asbestos should be treated as though they were asbestos and regulated accordingly. In this way, workers involved in their manufacture, use and ultimate disposal will be protected,’ says Anthony Seaton, a chest physician who annoyed nanoparticle manufacturers by linking carbon nanotubes and asbestos fibres two years ago.

Tough enough

But nanotube manufacturers are unconvinced that the study means that stricter health and safety precautions are needed. Del Stark, the CEO of the European nanotechnology trade alliance (Enta), says companies making nanotubes already take the strictest possible safety precautions, so it’s hard to see how the research will change manufacturing practice.

Steffi Friedrichs, director of the UK’s Nanotechnology Industries Association says that it is not surprising that long insoluble fibres of any material should behave in this way – glass wool has similar effects. Nanotube makers already take measures to minimise exposure, Friedrichs points out.

‘We welcome the study – it gives us a very good insight into the potential problems of some types of carbon nanotubes,’ she adds. ‘But the study needs to be verified, and the researchers have noted important caveats – for example whether nanotubes can actually get to the place in the body that’s going to cause damage.’

It’s unlikely that those using nanotube products right now (such as lightweight composites in sports equipment) will be in danger of breathing in dangerous doses of free nanotubes, but researchers agreed they would have to demonstrate, rather than assume, low public exposure. ‘Even if you took a mallet and hammered a tennis racket, there’s probably no danger because the nanotubes are held in a polymer matrix. So if it turns out there’s no long fibres for the public to be exposed to – that’s great,’ says Donaldson

Aside from the need for more health and safety research, the study flags up that not much is known about exactly what types of carbon nanotubes are used in commercial products, says co-author Andrew Maynard, chief science adviser with the US-based Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies.

‘There are voluntary agreements for reporting in the UK and the US that not too many companies have signed up to,’ he says, warning that the nanotube market might suffer if the public lost trust in the technology because of the stigma of asbestos and because of a lack of transparency. ‘It is up to governments to give industry as much guidance as possible,’ he adds.

Source

Richard Van Noorden

canada

Canada resists efforts to label chrysotile asbestos as hazardous material, despite pressure from environmental and health care advocates.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper rolled into Asbestos, Que., during the recent federal election campaign as the self-declared champion of the industry that gave the town its name.

That name was adopted proudly at a time when asbestos was a miracle mineral, widely used in thousands of applications from coffee pots to home insulation. Then, in the 1960s and 1970s, miners started dying from respiratory diseases and asbestos was linked to cancer.

Asbestos is now banned in the European Union and Australia, and its use is severely limited in the U.S. and Canada. But it is still exported to the developing world where it is widely used, especially in India and China. While the World Health Organization, which estimates that more than 100,000 people die each year from asbestos-related illness, would like it banned, to our shame, Canada still promotes its use.

“Canada is the only Western democracy to have consistently opposed international efforts to regulate the global trade in asbestos,” the Canadian Medical Association Journal stated in a 2008 editorial headlined “Asbestos mortality, a Canadian export.”

Harper and others who defend the practice of exporting a product that is in limited use here because of its deadly properties argue that the form of asbestos we produce is not as dangerous as some others. They say that properly handled, it can be used safely.

But critics point out that the people who work with asbestos in the developing world don’t have all the health and safety protections that apply in Canada.

The asbestos mined in Quebec is called chrysotile or white asbestos. While it is not considered to be as dangerous as other forms of asbestos, it is still considered to be a carcinogen by WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.

That was also the conclusion reached by an international panel commissioned by Health Canada to review the safety of the asbestos mined in Quebec. Harper knew all this when he told reporters in Ottawa during the campaign that Canada “will not put Canadian industry in a position where it is discriminated against in a market where sale is permitted.”

Harper is not alone in defending the industry. The Quebec government recently approved a $58-million loan guarantee for an expansion of the Jeffrey Mine, one of the primary producers. All of this is over the strenuous objections of the medical community, both outside and inside the government.

The CBC reported this week that documents obtained through an access request show that Health Canadarecommended in 2006 that Canada support the adding of chrysotile asbestos to a list of hazardous materials under a United Nations treaty known as the Rotterdam Convention.

Listing chrysotile would only be the equivalent of adding a warning label. But even that has been too much for Harper’s government.

Instead of following Health Canada’s advice, Canada worked to keep chrysotile off the list, apparently based on the fear that including it would add weight to calls by the World Health Organization, among other groups, for a global ban on all asbestos products.

On Monday, the countries that are party to the Rotterdam Convention will again consider a recommendation that chrysotile asbestos be added to the list.

John Todd Ltd, of Middletown, Powys, a refurbishment company has been fined over £10,000 and ordered to pay £10,000 costs after a court deemed it had acted negligently during a recent project. This negligence had led to its employees’ exposure to deadly asbestos fibres.The company had been tasked with the refurbishment of a building on an Oswestry industrial estate.

John Todd Ltd were made aware that the building contained asbestos and that HSE licensed asbestos removal contractors had been called in. When the Licensed Contractor arrived they discovered that employees of John Todd Ltd had already begun to dismantle the building’s interior. The director of the company John Todd, had also been involved in the removal of materials from the building. No safety controls had been implemented during removal.

An Health and Safety Executive inspector commented: “John Todd Ltd showed an absolute disregard for the health and safety of workers on the site by allowing work with asbestos to take place fully aware it was present.

“It is well known throughout industry that exposure to asbestos fibres can cause premature death, yet this company chose to expose its workers to this risk.”

Mice inhabiting a northern town of Israel known for its high concentration of asbestos-contaminated dust, have a higher level of genetic somatic mutations, compared with other regions where asbestos pollution levels are lower.

This has been shown in a new study carried out by Dr. Rachel Ben-Shlomo and Dr. Uri Shanas of the University of Haifa’s Department of Biology in Oranim. “This study clearly indicates that there is a link between the higher levels of asbestos in the environment and the frequency of genetic somatic mutations in the mammals,” the scientists said.

 
Earlier studies of asbestos have already shown that the thin fibers, which penetrate the body by inhalation or through consumption of food contaminated with the material, not only cause certain cancers but also genetic mutations in DNA structures. It is also known that asbestos is a material that decomposes slowly, over many years. They chose to probe mutations in mice because their generations are renewed every three months, so it could be assumed for the study that dozens of generations of this sample population in Nahariya had already been exposed to the fibers.

Wild mice from two locations were sampled – one group living close to a factory that manufactured asbestos-based products in Nahariya during 1952-1997, and a second group from a town located 50 kilometers, or 31 miles, from Nahariya and where no known asbestos pollutants are found. Samples were taken from both groups and six sites in the DNA were examined for genetic differences between the groups.

The results indicated differences between the groups’ DNA and that the Nahariya-based mice had higher levels of genetic somatic mutations.
“These findings teach us that the pollutive, mutagenic asbestos increases somatic mutational frequency, which can in turn heighten the chances of developing cancerous growths,” the researchers concluded.

Source: 
Rachel Feldman 
University of Haifa

Perth is known as the asbestos capital of the world with almost every home built before 1987 containing asbestos. As these homes age, many now need to be renovated but many people don’t even know what asbestos looks like.
Perth is often referred to as the asbestos capital of the world because of the building material used extensively after the Second World War. Almost every house built in Perth before 1987 used asbestos materials and asbestos cement – or fibro as it’s often called – can be found in most suburbs in Perth. Not only was the material widely used throughout the state but blue asbestos was also mined in Wittenoom in the State’s North West.

But how much do people know about the material and its risks and how do you recognise it?