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Firstly the main reason for our complaint is that 4000 deaths [or up to 5000 as claimed by the TUC] do NOT occur each year from asbestos related disease in the UK. The basis for the HSE to make this claim is a series of calculations contrived from a theoretical model based on a linier extrapolation that includes totally wrong data. The formula below is used by the HSE to justify the basis for the 4000 estimated deaths and 90% of the information in this formula is grossly inaccurate or just plain wrong.
The expansion of this flawed calculation is explained below
HSE Death Stats Mesothelioma:
Mesothelioma:
The likelihood of contracting Mesothelioma depends on a variety of risk factors:
- the age at which exposure to asbestos first occurred
- the number of fibres breathed in
- the frequency of exposure
- smoking in conjunction with asbestos fibre exposure
- to which type of fibre exposure occurred
In estimating the total of future Mesothelioma deaths in the UK, the HSE understood that contracting the disease depended largely upon some of these risk factors.
It is not necessary to know exactly what each parameter stands for but the above formula can roughly be translated as the following:
Mesothelioma total in any given year = [ Age-specific exposure potential (as a relative figure (cohort of 20-29 yrs = 1)) * general exposure level (ie. total asbestos fibres to which exposed that year) * cumulative exposure risks since risk year minus the time lag of onset of the disease * the half life of asbestos fibres in the lungs ] * all adjusted for by the proportion of Mesothelioma cases properly diagnosed and all the summation of the figures for each age cohort.
As can be seen, the first 3 risk factors listed form the basis of the HSE’s equation. Men exposed to asbestos throughout their life are split into different age cohorts, and different general exposure levels have been calculated for different years of asbestos production.
Smoking, the fourth risk factor, is a hard variable to account for. Although undoubtedly confounding the disease, it is arguable that surrounded by asbestos fibres, smoking would not have brought on Mesothelioma, merely exacerbated it.
Instead, it is the fifth risk factor that has brought the credibility of the HSE’s formula, and all associated statistics drawn from its application, to its knees. The formula does not account for the very different toxicities of the two major types of asbestos fibres.