Why are people still being diagnosed with asbestos disease?
The UK has a long history of asbestos use, dating back to the early 20th Century.
Asbestos became hugely popular because it was a cheap and versatile material with a wide variety of industrial uses. Indeed, Edwardian era engineers believed, in asbestos, they had discovered a “wonder material”.
Asbestos had effective heat resistant properties, which made it a perfect material to use for insulation.
This fibrous mineral was imported from countries such as South Africa by the shipload, and it arrived at the UK ports, including those along the east coast of England, in powder form, usually in large hessian bags.
A whole industry built up around the manufacture of asbestos products such as asbestos cloth, which was used in various industries, such as shipbuilding, boiler making, construction, heavy industry, and railway engineering works.
Asbestos was used or present in the docks, power stations, and mines. Workers in these industries were at high risk of exposure to the fibres being given during everyday use of asbestos, as were electricians, carpenters, plumbers, laggers and even firefighters.
The dangers to health caused by asbestos exposure
Useful and effective it undoubtedly was, but asbestos use has a downside – and a massive downside it is too.
Asbestos dust consists of tiny fibres, which, when breathed in, settles on the lungs where they remain, causing scarring and thickening around the air sacs. This would gradually start shrinking and hardening the lungs, which eventually led to a diagnosis of asbestos disease many years later for many of its victims.
Whilst the dangers to health caused by asbestos may not have been widely known when it was first used on an industrial scale, it’s been established that they became more widely known well before the first ban on certain types of asbestos came into force. Despite this, few workers regularly exposed to asbestos were ever provided with masks or other forms of breathing protection.
There were three main types of asbestos; blue asbestos (crocidolite) and brown asbestos (amosite) had a dangerous effect on the health of those exposed to their fibres. For this reason, the government decided to ban them in 1985. White asbestos (chrysotile) was prohibited from being imported and used in 1999.
How do we know that many people are still being diagnosed with asbestos disease?
To answer that, we need only check out the Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) report on Asbestos Related Disease Statistics 2021, which covered data for 2019. These show that there were over 5000 deaths in the year from asbestos related diseases. The majority of these were from the two asbestos related cancers, mesothelioma and asbestos lung cancer.
During the same period, approximately 400 deaths were thought to be caused wholly or in part by asbestosis, a severe asbestos-related illness.
Deaths from asbestos disease have remained around the current level for approximately ten years, as the graphs in the HSE report for 2021 confirm.
The average life expectancy for people diagnosed with mesothelioma and asbestos lung cancer is less than two years from diagnosis.
Why does it take so long to get a positive diagnosis of asbestos disease?
The period between exposure to asbestos and diagnosis of an asbestos-related illness is called the ‘latency period, and it can last anything from ten to forty or more years. During the latency period, the person might only start to feel unwell shortly before a diagnosis of asbestos disease gets made.
Will asbestos disease soon become a thing of the past?
As we move further and further away from the days when asbestos was a regular feature of everyday working life for many, logic dictates that the number of deaths from asbestos disease should start to go into decline soon, though experts are cautious about saying when precisely they expect this to happen
For anyone recently diagnosed with asbestos disease, help is at hand. Specialist asbestos disease solicitors can help bring asbestos disease claims against former employers who were responsible for exposing their employees to asbestos, even if that were many years ago and even if the employer no longer exists. You can find further information about making asbestos disease claims and asbestos disease in general by visiting the Asbestos Awareness website.
