The Monthly Newsletter: February 2007 - Issue 2
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FEBRUARY 2007 - ISSUE
ASBESTOS IN THE NEWS
Institute of Occupational Safety & Health (IOSH) remain silent on invitation to debate
Last month Asbestos Watchdog reported that the Institute of Occupational Safety & Health (IOSH) was invited to an open and honest debate with Asbestos Watchdog about the current interpretation of asbestos regulations and associated health risks. The aim of such a debate was to achieve a consensus view on current asbestos issue within the health and safety sphere and the effects on workers, public and businesses, to protect individuals and stop abuse of regulations for profit.
Unfortunately, Asbestos Watchdog received no response from IOSH officials at the time of publication, leaving it looking increasingly likely this is one debate in which IOSH feel they are not qualified to participate.
Councillor prevented from saving the tax payer money
At the end of last year Councillor Chris Cooke, Independent Campaigner on Tamworth Borough Council, was refused the opportunity to speak at a Cabinet Meeting on asbestos even though he held vital information that could have saved the Tamworth taxpayers hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Councillor Cooke had been trying for months to gain approval to get Asbestos Watchdog's Chief Inspector Professor Bridle to talk about asbestos to Tamworth Council so when the item of asbestos came up on a meeting agenda, Cllr Cooke asked to speak. His aim was to prevent Tamworth Council unnecessarily squandering vast sums of money checking asbestos content in Tamworth's housing stock, specifically the asbestos content of Artex.
A couple of hours later, after receiving a telephone call probing him on his interest in speaking, he was astounded to learn he was not allowed to speak, the excuse given was that 'he should have given 24 hours notice'. This was a rule apparently made up on the spur of the moment and never invoked before.
Following coverage of this gagging order in the Tamworth Herald, Neil Budworth, President of the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH), commented that 4000 people die each year as a result of inhaling these 'deadly' fibres and Tamworth Borough Council were right to be cautious. Furthermore he went on to suggest that 'despite what Cllr Cook has been told, white asbestos is still a class one carcinogen ... a major threat to human health'.
Neil Budworth's comments are not only based on incorrect science, but also emotive and scare-mongering. White asbestos is indeed a Class 1 carcinogen, but so are oral contraceptives, alcohol and sunshine. Indeed the HSE's own Health and Safety Laboratories (HSL) reported in late 2006 that white asbestos content in Artex is so insignificant to pose 'no measurable risk to human health'.
It is strange, therefore, that a councillor speaking out to try to save a council and taxpayers money would generate so much adverse interest. Strange that is, until you remember that any asbestos removal contracts, should asbestos be found on council properties, would generate huge local business entirely at the taxpayer's expense.
Interestingly it is under the rule of IOSH's Neil Budworth that Asbestos Watchdog's Professor Bridle's invitation to speak at an IOSH event in Weston-super-Mare late last year was also mysteriously withdrawn.
Suppressing those trying to instill rational and science based thought into the asbestos debate will only work for so long and already the cracks are beginning to show. IOSH are an institution designed to protect workers, but by refusing to address the issue of risk based protection it is condoning not only bad science, but bad practice and actively encouraging fraudulent activity.
For a full account of Councillor Cooke's struggles to promote rational discussion surrounding the asbestos debate, please click here.
CASE STUDY: THE HEALTH AND SAFETY EXECUTIVE (HSE)
HSE helps spread the asbestos panic
It appears that not only does the HSE have no control over what advice is being dispensed over its asbestos ‘HSE Infoline’, but also has no experts capable of monitoring it; the HSE doesn’t even run its own ‘infoline’.
18 months ago, after success with saving a church in Kent costs of over £100,000 when asbestos surveyors terrified it into needlessly closing its doors and estimated ridiculous costs for asbestos removal, Asbestos Watchdog was invited to a Radio 4 'You and Yours' debate with the HSE to discuss abuse of asbestos regulations.
During this program, the presenter posed the question to the HSE as to how property owners could defend themselves against dishonest asbestos contractors. The HSE representative answered by suggesting that anyone discovering suspected asbestos should call the HSE Infoline.
Only a few mornings before the radio debate, however, Asbestos Watchdog received a call from a terrified mother wanting clarification on the advice she had been given by the HSE Infoline.
Her young son had been kicking a football against a garage containing corrugated asbestos cement sheets and she was worried he may be at risk from such exposure. On telephoning the HSE Infoline she was told she would not know for 15 – 35 years whether her son had put himself at risk and she should get him to a doctor straight away.
After Professor Bridle recounted this story on air, the HSE shamefacedly agreed this advice was inappropriate and irresponsible and they would look into the matter to ensure it did not occur again.
Jump forward 18 months, however, and nothing seems to have changed.
A few weeks ago, a builder in west Wales called the HSE Infoline asking advice about an injury he received from scratching himself on a broken bit of asbestos cement corrugated sheeting; the advice? “Rush to hospital to be examined for mesothelioma” despite the physical impossibility of contracting mesothelioma by such means or material.
Every week Asbestos Watchdog receives many such stories; therefore it is perhaps not surprising to discover the infoline is not run by the HSE but by a member of the Asbestos Removal Contractors Association (ARCA).
The HSE fund this service handsomely and not only can the advice be wildly inaccurate and scare-mongering, but the Infoline also provides the perfect opportunity to trawl for business, often resulting in advice to conduct unnecessary and expensive removal.
It is time for the HSE to provide an adequate explanation for its disturbing level of partiality concerning its asbestos advice line. Fortunately for both homeowners and business owners, it seems that organisations politically more powerful than Asbestos Watchdog are starting to take an interest in seeing this happen; watch this space.
INTRODUCTORY SCIENCE
Mesothelioma death statistics greatly inflated
In the HSE's latest revisions of their Asbestos FAQs, it is suggested around 4000 people in Great Britain die each year from asbestos related disease. This figure has mainly been broken down into those dying from asbestos related lung cancer and those from mesothelioma, and is expected to peak in 2011 - 2015 with anywhere between 3900 - 4900 deaths per year.
This, however, is a wildly inflated estimate.
Firstly, lung cancer deaths caused by asbestos are clinically indistinguishable from those caused by other agents (such as tobacco smoke). As such, the future number of cases can not be determined by direct counting, but instead must be estimated. To do this, the HSE's best estimate is "around one asbestos-related lung cancer per mesothelioma".
This automatically places the success of estimating future burden on correctly calculating mesothelioma incidence.
In estimating the total future mesothelioma deaths in the UK, the HSE accept that contracting the disease depends largely upon several risk factors:
i. age at which exposure started
ii. number of fibres inhaled
iii. frequency of exposure
iv. smoking
v. what type of asbestos fibre is inhaled
To account for these various factors, a complex formula was created. It is not necessary to know each parameter of the formula but the first 3 risk factors have been well accounted for. The fourth risk factor, smoking, is hard to monitor but, although undoubtedly confounding the diseases, it is arguable it would not initiate the disease.
It is the effects of the 5th variable (the type of asbestos fibre inhaled) that have been wildly miscalculated.
To predict the future burden of mesothelioma an estimate of how long an asbestos fibre remains in the lungs once inhaled is necessary. As such, the variable 'the half life in the human lungs' was chosen and set to a mandatory 1000 years, representing the human lungs' 'inability to clear asbestos fibres'.
There is no doubt that the amphibole forms of asbestos fibres (blue and brown) are highly toxic and a half life of 1000 years is a fair assumption. Chrysotile (white asbestos), however, is another matter. In the years since the HSE first used this formula, chrysotile asbestos has been proven to have a half life of around 15 days (0.042 years).
The fact that 90% of all asbestos fibres in the built environment are chrysotile fibres with a half life in human lungs of 0.042 years rather than 1000 years puts a vastly different spin on predicting the future number of deaths attributable to mesothelioma.
The HSE's formula should reflect this latest scientific understanding, setting 90% of the asbestos fibres involved to having a 'half life in the lungs' of 0.042 years, with only the remaining 10% set to 1000 years.
Indeed, when the formula is adjusted for this and all parameters re-calculated, 90% of the asbestos exposure yields no measurable future deaths, with only 10% of asbestos exposure (the amphibole fibres with their half life of 1000 years) contributing to the future risk of mesothelioma.
The HSE desperately need to revise their predictions of future deaths. Whilst projections remain so heavily inflated it allows unscrupulous individuals in the asbestos removal industry, legal profession and media, to convert concern over this fictional 'epidemic' into capital.
For a full discussion of how the HSE's mesothelioma death statistics have been calculated, please do not hesitate to contact us.
FEATURED FEEDBACK
2nd February, 2007
Letter from Sir John Hope, Bt. to Asbestos Watchdog’s Chief Inspector
Dear Professor Bridle,
Now that our house move is complete, I am writing to thank you for the vital contribution you made in sorting out an apparent major problem and getting matters ‘back on the rails’ for everybody concerned.
For laymen like myself the very mention of a possible asbestos problem represents a serious threat. From my own admittedly limited experience I can emphatically confirm the readiness of apparently reputable people in the industry to take advantage of our vulnerability. (One major asbestos removal company, who work for the foreign office at embassies abroad, emphatically confirmed the heavy presence of asbestos in our house, claiming that a brief look at the suspect material was all that was necessary.)
Your involvement and the rigorous testing you arranged, which showed that there was no asbestos at all in the cladding involved, therefore saved me not only a considerable sum of money, but also the additional costs and difficulties that protracted removal of any material would have involved.
Both myself and the buyer have further cause to be grateful to you for the speed, efficiency and effectiveness with which you personally arranged matters to the satisfaction of his mortgage company, particularly given that the loan involved was substantial.
All in all, I can not conceive that matters would have been resolved so satisfactorily without your involvement which brought a highly practical and substantial expertise to clear some pretty murky water.
My thanks once again - and more power to your elbow!
Yours sincerely,
Sir John Hope, Bt.
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