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According to health and safety statistics published by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) 2019, 2,523 deaths are due to mesothelioma in the UK in 2017. Mesothelioma, a cancer that affects the lining of organs and is caused by inhalation of asbestos fibers. , can develop 50 years after the first exposure and it is now thought that the number of deaths reaches its peak.
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Asbestos is a fibrous mineral of natural origin widely used in the UK as an installation material and flame retardant in the 1950s and 1970s. The use of blue asbestos and Brown, considered a more dangerous carcinogen than white asbestos, was banned in 1985. White asbestos was banned in 1999.
As the risks of brown asbestos were not fully taken into account until 1970, the United Kingdom, along with Australia, currently has the highest rates of mesothelioma in the world.
In hindsight, it is now clear that this should have been banned earlier, but specific evidence for brown asbestos has been slower to emerge and it would have been more difficult to see that at the time. "
HSE spokesperson
"People are now paying the price for mistakes made by industry and government"
Mesothelioma carries non-specific symptoms and is often diagnosed at an advanced stage. It is usually fatal and the prognosis is only 12 months. This asbestos-related cancer mainly affects the pleura (the outer membrane of the lung) and the peritoneum (the membrane located in the lower digestive tract).
Men are the most likely to develop mesothelioma, especially those working in construction and construction and shipbuilding.
The long latency period of at least 30 years usually means that most mesothelioma deaths result from previous exposures due to the widespread industrial use of asbestos from 1950 to 1980. "
HSE spokesperson
In 2017, 2,084 deaths were attributed to men, a slight reduction from the increase in the number of female deaths (439). More than half of these annual deaths occur in people over 75 years of age.
Mesothelioma cases in women would be less directly related to occupational exposure. Many women were exposed to asbestos by inhaling fibers left on their husbands' clothes.
Roger Maddocks, a partner at the Irwin Mitchell LLP specialty law firm, said:
"In many cases, people are now paying the price of criminal errors of industry and government, responsible for the inaction of the factory inspection. [the precursor to the HSE]. "
Maddocks claimed that the factory inspection was aware at the end of 19th In the 1970s, high exposure to asbestos exposed people to the risk of life-threatening respiratory disease, and by the 1960s the public was aware that even a low level of exposure posed a risk.
"Despite this, people continued to be exposed, and in many cases, to high exposures, years, even decades after the mid-1960s," he said.
The elimination of asbestos in British schools will result in more deaths
Today, Professor Julian Peto, an expert in oncology UK, said that a campaign to remove asbestos from all schools in the UK could result in more deaths due to cancer. mesothelioma only if asbestos was left in place.
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Indeed, the elimination of asbestos remaining in UK schools and workplaces would only release more dangerous fibers into the air.
It is not clear to me that the exposures are high enough. And in particular, it's not clear to me that doing anything about it would not increase the risk. "
Professor Julian Peto
As the Cancer Research UK Chair of Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Institute for Cancer Research, Peto said the risk of dying from mesothelioma depended on the fact that that someone is working inside or outside and at birth.
The unions are asking the government to spend billions of pounds sterling in an attempt to eliminate asbestos from all British schools.
Peto concluded that the environmental exposure to asbestos fibers in the United Kingdom has been reduced at least a hundred times since the 1950s, an badertion based on badysis of lung tissue samples. The exposure was so high in the 1950s that he thought it would kill one in every hundred men born between 1938 and 1947 in the UK.
With regard to today's children, Peto estimates that their risk of exposure to asbestos is 10 times lower than 50 years ago. This means that 20 to 30 children will breathe the asbestos fibers that will cause their death in old age.
However, Peto's claims have not gone ahead, with President John McClean stating: "There is no central database on the location of asbestos and on his current state, so he presumes what? "
Support groups for mesothelioma are in high demand
Jo Ritson of the Asbestos Victim Support Group, which covers southern Yorkshire and northern Nottinghamshire, spoke about the effects of a mesothelioma diagnosis on patients and the increased demand for services from the group Support. She says:
"For some people, it strikes them lightning and they really have a hard time understanding that what they did in youth or in their learning, is ruining the retreat to which they have been working all their life" .
"But others tend to know that this will happen because they have seen many of their colleagues die as a result of an asbestos-related disease. For many of them, it's like a stopwatch and they do not know if he's going to hit them or not. "
Although the Ministry of Labor and Pensions said: "Since the dangers of asbestos have become evident, governments have, over the years, adopted regulations and laws," and claimed that the risk Asbestos exposure was "extremely low," which has led some people with sufferers to argue that "it's not because it's forbidden that it's gone."
"It's in buildings that are constantly being demolished and redeveloped, which can make them airy."
They emphasize the need to educate young people about the risks of exposure to asbestos, which is still an active risk, although much reduced, nowadays.
The HSE predicts that mesothelioma cases will remain at current levels for the next decade before starting to fall.
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