ASBESTOS FACTS

What organ does asbestos damage?

The asbestos fibers irritate and scar lung tissue, causing the lungs to become stiff. This makes it difficult to breathe. As asbestosis progresses, more and more lung tissue becomes scarred. Eventually, your lung tissue becomes so stiff that it can’t contract and expand normally.

How long does it take to get sick from Asbestos?

Generally, those who develop asbestos-related diseases show no signs of illness for a long time after exposure. It can take from 10 to 40 years or more for symptoms of an asbestos-related condition to appear.

Do you have to declare asbestos when selling a house?

If the seller of the house you’re buying knows asbestos is present, they must declare it during the sale process. If they’ve had an asbestos survey because of building work, they must provide it to you.

Asbestos can cause the following fatal and serious diseases

• Mesothelioma. Mesothelioma is a cancer which affects the lining of the lungs (pleura) and the lining surrounding the lower digestive tract (peritoneum).
• Asbestos-related lung cancer.
• Asbestosis.
• Pleural thickening.

Can Asbestosis be cured?

Asbestosis cannot be cured.

HSE

• The Health & Safety Executive advises that any building constructed prior to 2000 could still contain asbestos.
• The number of UK buildings that still contain asbestos is estimated at 1.5 million. This includes homes, commercial buildings such as offices and factories, and public buildings such as hospitals and schools.
• Asbestos is still present in about 75% of UK schools.
• Asbestos is generally only dangerous if disturbed, for example during building work or DIY
• There is no UK register of buildings which contain asbestos. This means that firefighters or people carrying out repair and demolition work may be exposed to asbestos without warning at any time.
• Anyone else in the vicinity when asbestos is disturbed is also at risk.
• The HSE estimates that 1.3 million tradespeople are at risk of exposure, and they could come into contact with asbestos on average more than 100 times a year.
• While controls on the use of blue asbestos were introduced by 1970, the dangers of brown asbestos were not appreciated until well into that decade. The heavy use of brown asbestos is a key reason why the UK, along with Australia, has the highest mesothelioma rates in the world.

Asbestos was used as fake snow in the Wizard of Oz

• Yep – believe it or not, this one is true. Amosite asbestos has the appearance of fluffy white snow, and was sold as a Christmas decoration from the 1930s right up into the 1950s.

The UK was at one point the largest importer of asbestos in the world

• The breadth of its use in the 20th century means that we still have the highest death rate from asbestos-related diseases.
• Those millions of tones of asbestos still haunt buildings and brownfield sites, and we owe it to ourselves and future generations to deal with it accordingly.

Over 3000 products in the UK contained asbestos

• You may be aware that asbestos was used as wall insulation, brake pads, or even Artex wall and ceiling textures.
• What you may not know is that this barely scratches the surface of the products that once contained asbestos, either in number or scope.
• As a ‘miracle material’, asbestos was added both for practical and fanciful purposes to all sorts of goods

• Asbestos was used in aprons, tablecloths, cisterns, floor and roof tiles, mattresses, pipes, rugs, tape, twine, carpets, partitions and cigarette filters.
• In fact, it’d be tough to list every use of asbestos, as there were over 3000 products in the United States that contained one form of the substance – many of which made their way to the UK.

Some of the most unusual uses are:

• An old brand of toothpaste used to contain asbestos to help abrasion on the teeth

• An emperor had a tablecloth woven out of asbestos It was thrown onto a furnace to burn off the food and grease leaving the cloth intact

• Frequently used as Insulation for rocket engines on space shuttles

• Asbestos has been used in Cigarette Filters

• Old hood style hair dryers contained a layer of asbestos inside the hood to stop customers getting burnt as did ironing boards

• Thermo plastic components such as telephones, toilet cisterns and fuses

• Chlorine for bleach, cleansers and disinfectants is produced using asbestos products

• Makeup and talcum powder

• Wall paper & paper lining

• Heart & lung surgeons used asbestos thread to close incisions

The first published case of death by asbestos was in 1924

• Modern asbestos law – and potentially thousands of lives – have Nellie Kershaw to thank. The unfortunate textile worker died in 1924 at the premature age of 33, with the coroner initially suspecting tuberculosis.
• An autopsy however found asbestos crystals and significant scarring in her lungs, and on comparison with asbestos samples, ruled that the asbestos was to blame.
• Although Kershaw had been declared unfit to work in 1922, her employer dismissed the diagnosis of ‘asbestos poisoning’, which her doctor claimed to have seen in dozens of patients each year. Stating that no evidence for such a disease existed, the company would not pay her again before she died.
• The case would go largely unnoticed until 1927, when the trial pathologist published a paper on the subject in the British Medical Journal.
• The paper prompted a Parliamentary enquiry in 1930, and led to the UK’s first asbestos controls.
• The Asbestos Industry Regulations of 1931 required that a mechanical exhaust be used to extract asbestos dust, and that asbestos work areas were isolated from neighbouring workshops and rooms.

There is a town in Canada called Asbestos

• Situated in Quebec, you could think of Asbestos as the deadly equivalent to Bournville: a town set up entirely to mine asbestos from the nearby Jeffry mine, previously the world’s largest producer of asbestos.
• The mine and neighbouring refinery were the main employers in the town, and produced enough money that a famous artist and ceramicist were hired to decorate local buildings.
• The remaining residents of Asbestos have petitioned to change the town’s name in recent years, but for now, it remains a cultural and historic curiosity.

It’s naturally occurring

• Given that it was widely touted in the 20th century as a miraculous new material, you might have assumed that asbestos was synthetic. In fact, asbestos has been mined and used for hundreds of years, with records going back as far as Ancient Greece.
• There’s even evidence to suggest that asbestos was used on a small scale in the Stone Age, as a way to reinforce ceramic pots.
• Asbestos is a naturally occurring silicate mineral which forms when certain types of rocks are exposed to high pressures and hot water.
• The fibrous crystals form in veins under the ground, often in proximity to other valuable minerals.
• This is why asbestos sometimes contaminates talc, used in talcum powder,
• Several Persian kings as well as the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne are reported to have owned ‘magical’ asbestos cloths; these would be cast into the fire to be cleaned and withdrawn intact, to the amazement of guests.
• However, it wasn’t until the 19th century that asbestos began to be mined on an industrial scale, and made its way to the wider public.