Speech on Asbestos delivered on 1 July 2016

Asbestos

Thank you for inviting me here today

Firstly can I apologise for the absence of my colleague and friend Mick Antoniw who has been appointed the Counsel General in the Welsh government and is unable to attend today

Mick is a former solicitor with Thomson and an expert on the legal side of Asbestos and as I am sure you know he took through the Assembly the The Recovery of Medical Costs for Asbestos Diseases (Wales) Bill which was then rejected in the supreme court

The costs of treating patients with asbestos disease in Wales will continue to be shouldered by the NHS with negligent employers and their insurers escaping liability after the  Supreme Court ruling,

Decades of employers' negligence has led to asbestos disease becoming a major financial burden on the NHS in Wales. Backed by trade unions and introduced into the Welsh Assembly by Labour Member Mick Antoniw, The Recovery of Medical Costs for Asbestos Diseases (Wales) Bill sought to impose on negligent employers and their insurers the medical costs of diagnosing and treating asbestos disease victims which has until now been borne by the NHS.

The Supreme Court ruled on technical grounds that the Bill fell outside the legislative powers of the Welsh Assembly and would infringe insurers' property rights under the European Convention.

Ian McFall, Head of Asbestos at Thompsons, comments: “Asbestos disease has devastating consequences for the individuals and their families, but also on society generally due to the costs of medical treatment currently paid for by the NHS. We have long held the view that it should be negligent employers - the polluters - who failed to make working conditions safe, and their insurers, who should meet this financial burden.

“The power devolved to the Welsh Assembly to organise and fund the NHS in Wales should have enabled the Assembly to enact this Bill. The principle behind it was sound and just.

The Association of British Insurers (ABI) who opposed the Bill serve only the interests of the insurance industry to protect their financial bottom line, so it’s not surprising the ABI stepped in to argue against insurers picking up the liability for medical treatment, leaving the NHS  with the cost.

“For the Court to protect rich and powerful insurers who make huge profits, pay out billions of pounds to shareholders, by using Human Rights law that the Tories have condemned and ridiculed as meddling from Europe is bitterly ironic.

“We stand firmly by the unions and Welsh Assembly Members who believe the principle that underpins this forward-thinking legislation is consistent with progressive social justice: that the wider costs to society of diagnosing and treating asbestos illnesses should be displaced from the NHS onto the negligent employers caused the disease and paid for by their insurers.”

 

Whilst Asbestos has been known for many years and Pliny the Younger wrote in AD 61–114 that slaves who worked with the mineral asbestos became ill.

The large scale asbestos industry began in the mid-19th century. Early attempts at producing asbestos paper and cloth in Italy began in the 1850s, but were unsuccessful in creating a market for such products The first companies were formed in England and Scotland to exploit asbestos started at roughly the same time..

 

The use of asbestos became increasingly widespread towards the end of the 19th century, when its diverse applications included fire retardant coatings, concrete, bricks, pipes and fireplace cement, heat, fire, and acid resistant gaskets, pipe insulation, ceiling insulation, fireproof drywall, flooring, roofing, lawn furniture, and drywall joint compound.

In 2011 it was reported that over 50% of UK houses still contained asbestos, despite a ban on asbestos products some years earlier.^]

 

In the early 1900s researchers began to notice a large number of early deaths and lung problems in asbestos-mining towns. The first such study was conducted by Dr. H. Montague Murray at the Charing Cross Hospital, London, in 1900, in which a postmortem investigation of a young man who had died from pulmonary fibrosis after having worked for 14 years in an asbestos textile factory, discovered asbestos traces in the victim's lungs. Adelaide Anderson, the Inspector of Factories in Britain, included asbestos in a list of harmful industrial substances in 1902.

Similar investigations were conducted in France and Italy, in 1906 and 1908, respectively.

 So why was it used for so long after it was found to be dangerous to health?

Why was no action taken

If we new the danger  in 1902 why did it take so long for action to be taken

 

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Parliament  commissioned an inquiry into the effects of asbestos dust  and the subsequent report, Occurrence of Pulmonary Fibrosis & Other Pulmonary Affections in Asbestos Workers, was presented to parliament on 24 March 1930

Over 80 years ago

It concluded that the development of asbestosis was irrefutably linked to the prolonged inhalation of asbestos dust, and included the first health study of asbestos workers, which found that 66% of those employed for 20 years or more suffered from asbestosis.

The report led to the publication of the first Asbestos Industry Regulations in 1931, which came into effect on 1 March 1932. These regulated ventilation and made asbestosis an excusable work-related disease.

The term mesothelioma was first used in medical literature in 1931; its association with asbestos was first noted sometime in the 1940s.

On a personal note

I remember using asbestos mats for A level chemistry in Penlan School in the mid 1970s .

 

I also remember them crumbling

 

I remember asbestos gloves

 

I also remember seeing people sawing asbestos panels so that they would fit, although because of the danger they were sawing them outside rather than inside buildings   and I knew people who were involved in decommissioning plant  that involved removing asbestos.

 

If its dangers were known in the 1930s and the 1940s

 

Why was it still being used in the 1970s

 

Many of the people I knew who worked with asbestos were seriously affected by it so I believe it is important for the memory of those who died and for those currently suffering that we support Action Mesothelioma Day Wales.