Asbestosis Awareness

I am staggered by this. According to the British Lung Federation:

* Less than a third of tradespeople are aware asbestos exposure can cause cancer
* Only 12% of tradespeople know asbestos exposure can kill them
* Nearly a third (30%) wrongly believe most asbestos has been removed from UK buildings
* Three quarters (74%) have had no training in how to deal with asbestos.

The full report is here. You might want to have a look at the Key Findings, on page 10, in particular.

Insurers have real cause for concern here, particularly when almost half (47%) the workforce say their employers have done nothing to keep them informed about the risks of asbestos and what to do if they encounter it.

At present I am involved in a ‘difference of views’ about a book of business that went into run-off in 1972. It covered employers in the UK against the usual perils and after an initial run of general accident claims, industrial deafness and so on, the big driver has been mesothelioma. 35 years after going into run-off, the claims experience has not yet peaked.

This graphic, from an article in Nature and in turn taken from the British Journal of Cancer (2005) 92, 587-593, shows the rough shape of the loss experience in mesothelioma in general (i.e. not just in the case with which I am currently involved).

Over the years, I’ve done quite a lot of work involving asbestosis. I recall ploughing through some documents one day and seeing a letter from a Name at Lloyd’s, Lord N_____, to his member’s agent mentioning that he’d “heard of something called asbestosis at a drinks party” and was it anything to worry about? This was in 1977. Bland assurances followed and the old buffer didn’t pull out.

And yet industry was aware as long ago as the late 19th century that there was at the very least something not quite right about asbestos. Connections were made with ill-health and sickness between the wars and the government was perfectly well aware of the issues by no later than the Second World War.

So why is it still such a problem now? Why do people know so little? I’ve no answer to this. According to the survey, “Nearly one in five (18%) think asbestos is no longer a serious issue, and more than a third (34%) mistakenly believe most asbestos has been removed.” Yet bizarrely, only “a quarter (26%) consider themselves not very well informed about asbestos”.

Surely it’s time for a campaign of public education, supported and encouraged by the government, to inform workers exposed to the dangers of working with asbestos. Meso, in particular, is a horrible, horrible disease and extremely painful in its final stages. In a civilized information society, with a long experience of dealing with the effects of asbestosis, it must be little short of criminally negligent that this situation should exist at all and it should certainly not be allowed to exist any longer.