News
Lancashire Woman - Youngest Victim? - March 2007
A Failsworth, Lancashire woman is the youngest recorded sufferer of a rare asbestos-related cancer. Leigh Carlisle has baffled doctors by catching the fatal disease mesothelioma – a form of lung cancer normally contracted by breathing in asbestos. And the 27-year-old believes she may have caught it on her walk to school as a child by passing a factory yard where asbestos sheets were cut up. Leigh said: "I used to take a short cut across a yard in Failsworth on my way to primary school. "I know that men working there cut asbestos sheets and handled asbestos materials in the yard, but I had no idea that by walking through the yard I could have inadvertently got cancer."
Leigh, who was diagnosed with mesothelioma at the age of 26 after suffering from severe abdominal pains, said: "It took several years for doctors to diagnose me with mesothelioma. I was passed from pillar to post between various hospitals until they realised what was wrong with me." Now she wants to raise the profile of the condition, which attacks a thin membrane coating the lungs and abdomen and is one of the most aggressive forms of cancer. In the majority of cases the cancer takes between 20 and 50 years to develop after exposure to asbestos. Once diagnosed, patients usually survive for only up to 12 months. Leigh has welcomed an announcement by the Department of Health that they intend to organise better NHS services for mesothelioma sufferers.
Adrian Budgen, from law firm Irwin Mitchell, which represents Leigh, said: "Mesothelioma is a very cruel disease, for which there is no cure. Ms Carlisle’s case shows that mesothelioma cannot be regarded as an ‘old person’s disease’ any longer. "We are aware of a growing number of people who have developed mesothelioma after being exposed to asbestos dust on their loved one’s work clothes." It is estimated there are about 2,000 deaths a year from mesothelioma in Britain. This number has doubled since 1992 and is predicted to rise further. Despite the use of asbestos being banned in Britain, past exposure to the mineral fibre means this number has not yet reached its peak. Professor Julian Peto, of Cancer Research UK, has called the use of asbestos in Britain an "extraordinary industrial error". He believes 90,000 more people will die from mesothelioma in Britain and a further 90,000 from other lung diseases related to asbestos exposure. He claims mesothelioma has already killed twice as many people as cervical cancer and those at risk are people born in the 1940s who worked as carpenters, laggers, shipyard workers, metal workers, electricians and in other areas of construction.
Sheffield School forced to close - March 2007
A Sheffield primary school was forced to close, and books and equipment were destroyed, after workmen disturbed asbestos leading to widespread contamination of the buildings. Children from St Catherine's Catholic Primary School in Pitsmoor had to change schools while a specialist asbestos removal contractor was called in to decontaminate the buildings.
Two workmen damaged asbestos firebreaks above a ceiling, and deadly asbestos dust and debris fell on to ceiling tiles, which they then moved, causing widespread asbestos contamination in the school, it is alleged. A writ has been issued in the High Court in London with Worksop company Firbeck Construction, the main contractor for a new heating and lighting system at the school, suing the men's employer Acumen Engineering Services, of Bestwood Village, Nottingham, for damages of more than £83,000.
The company had planned for any asbestos items to be removed by a licensed asbestos removal contractor, and subcontracted Acumen Engineering to install boilers, pipework and electrical supplies, the writ says. Acumen Engineering should have carried out the work as required by Firbeck's method statement, and complied with instructions, the court will hear. Firbeck's site foreman Larry Edwards put up signs saying "Asbestos - Do Not Disturb" on July 23 2003, and a map showing where asbestos was located, the writ says.
After some asbestos had been disturbed, he repeated his warming, the writ claims, but the two workmen continued to damage the asbestos firebreaks, which led to the school being contaminated with asbestos dust and fibres, the writ says.The school could not re-open after the summer until asbestos had been removed, and school books and equipment had to be destroyed as they too had been contaminated, the writ claims.
The Potentially Huge Cost of Asbestos Removal - March 2007
The cost of removing asbestos can be enormous. The former London Stock Exchange building in Threadneedle Street is being renovated. As part of the asbestos survey, some asbestos panelling was found in a riser. The riser was one metre square in cross-section and went up the entire height of the building; twenty-eight stories.
Three quotes were obtained and the cheapest, and winning quote, was £550,000! In this case the work was necessary, as apparently it was impossible to encapsulate the area, but often work is uneccessary. Here as AsbestosGuide.co.uk we have no asbestos removal business so all our quotes are totally independent. Not all contractors can say this!
Secondary Asbestos Exposure - February 2007
Exposure to asbestos in the workplace has been recognised as a danger since 1955. But there has also been a steady stream of cases that show risk also extended to the home. This has included wives who washed their husband's dusty overalls and children who helped are being diagnosed with the asbestos linked mesothelioma, a cancerous tumour that attacks the lung lining. There was a recent £75,000 pay-out to the daughter of a Royal Navy boiler fitter. She had been exposed to asbestos fibres from her fathers overalls in the sixties, now she has mesothelioma.
Another Huge Asbestos Payout - January 2007
George Barnes worked as a shipfitter at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard for 25 years, from 1967 to 1992. In 2005 he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, a condition he blamed on exposure to asbestos at the yard. A San Francisco jury agreed and awarded Barnes and his wife, both 60 years old, $10.3 million.
The jury attributed 15 percent of the legal responsibility for his illness to the Thorpe Insulation Co., the only defendant to go to trial in the case. It assigned a further 25 percent to other companies not present in the courtroom, and 5 percent to Barnes himself. And it found the predominant share of the blame-55 percent-to rest with the U.S. Navy, which operated the Long Beach Naval Shipyard from its wartime origins in 1943 through its closure in 1997.
The Navy may have been the most blameworthy party, but it was not in danger of having to write a check to Barnes or his widow. As it had done in thousands of other asbestos cases, it avoided any legal or financial responsibility through what is known as sovereign immunity-the government's freedom from being sued except in cases where it consents to let a suit go forward. Barnes was not legally barred from suing various private companies that supplied the shipyard with asbestos-related products, but many of them were defunct, often bankrupted by earlier asbestos suits. The Thorpe Insulation Co. happened to be one of the remaining still-solvent companies, but a lawyer for Barnes said the Thorpe firm would probably not have the assets left to pay even its 15 percent share of the verdict.