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Chris Willis was just 29 when doctors told him he probably had only a year to live because he had been exposed to asbestos as a schoolboy. “You don’t expect to go to school, get an education and come out with what I’ve got,” he said. “I don’t think schools realise how much asbestos is still dormant in buildings and how much risk it poses to pupils.”
In February 2018, Willis, a PE teacher in London, was told he had mesothelioma, a cancer of the mesothelium, a membrane on the outside of the lungs, heart, intestines and abdomen. There is no cure, although surgery and chemotherapy can extend life a little, and 60 per cent of patients die within 12 months of diagnosis.
Willis is among the estimated 10,000 teachers, pupils and staff who have died from asbestos exposure at schools in the past four decades. And yet there are still 21,500 schools open today which contain this toxic material and many are in a dangerous condition.
Last week the National Audit Office estimated that as many as 24,000 school buildings were beyond their initial design life, and of particular risk were 13,800 “system-built” blocks constructed between 1940 and 1980. Many of these contain asbestos.
Today, The Sunday Times is launching a campaign calling for the government to develop a national plan for the removal of all asbestos over the next 40 years to protect future generations from its dangers.
The UK’s biggest work-related killer
Mesothelioma is caused by the inhalation of asbestos fibres. The period between being exposed to them and developing symptoms ranges from ten to fifty years.
Willis believed the exposure happened at Kenton School in Newcastle, where he was a pupil between 2000 and 2007. The original school buildings, which opened in 1961, were demolished in 2008. Irwin Mitchell, the law firm that represented him in a claim against Newcastle city council, alleged the buildings contained asbestos. Willis sued for negligence, and while the council did not admit liability, it paid him substantial damages before he died last year at the age of 34, leaving behind his baby son, Milo, and wife, Evelyn, 32.
In an interview with the charity Mesothelioma UK before he died, Willis said it took ten months from his first symptoms — stomach pain — to diagnosis of the disease. When he finally received the diagnosis, at St Thomas’ Hospital in London, he was advised not to google mesothelioma until he had had a chance to speak to an oncologist. “Of course, I looked, and the first thing that came up was ‘terminal cancer’ and that 95 per cent of patients die within six to twelve months,” he said. “It spiralled out of control from there.”
In a speech to campaigners, clinicians and fellow sufferers before his death, Willis said he hadn’t known much about asbestos before his diagnosis.
Sir Stephen Timms, chairman of the Commons work and pensions committee, which conducted an inquiry into asbestos last year, said: “When you mention asbestos to most people, they tend to think it was a problem of the past that’s been dealt with. When you tell them it’s still all around us, they’re surprised. When you tell them it’s the UK’s biggest work-related killer, they’re shocked. And when you tell them it’s in most of our schools, they tend to become worried.”
“A tragedy is unfolding as we watch,” said Professor Kevin Bampton, chief executive of the British Occupational Hygiene Society, the leading charity on asbestos control. “We are currently sowing the seeds of a spike in cancer that will hit us in 30 to 40 years if we don’t act now. There is a perception that asbestos is a thing of the past, but it isn’t.”
Dangers of crumbling public buildings
Asbestos is not a problem from a bygone age: more than 5,000 people a year are dying from diseases caused by it, primarily mesothelioma. And because of the length of the latency period before symptoms occur, some people exposed to asbestos in the last century may yet fall victim to it. Others will die of asbestosis — a hardening of the lungs — or of lung cancer.
Asbestos was banned in new buildings in the UK in 1999 but, according to Airtight on Asbestos, which campaigns for its removal, more than 6 million tonnes of it may still be found in as many as 1.5 million buildings.
There is no official figure for the number of schools containing asbestos. However, freedom of information requests and surveys by consultants and the Department for Education (DfE) have established that there are at least 21,500.
Asbestos is not toxic when left intact, but it can become dangerous when exposed or when buildings start to crumble or are renovated. Campaigners argue that, with so many public buildings in need of repair, the risk is growing.
A DfE survey in 2019 found that 81 per cent of state schools in England contained asbestos. In Scotland and Wales the figure is about 60 per cent. There are more than 32,000 schools in the UK, and any built before 1999 are likely to contain it. Among them are 12,000 “system-built” schools, based on lightweight steel and prefabricated designs with large amounts of asbestos. It was used as a fire retardant, insulation, pipe lagging, floor and ceiling tiles and panelling in walls and roof voids. The tiling would be made from chrysotile, or white asbestos, the inhalation of which can lead to asbestos-related illness. Much of the rest was amosite, or brown asbestos, which is a hundred times as deadly.
Health and safety legislation does not require schools to inform parents about the presence of asbestos in schools, though some do provide parents with information to ensure them about effective management. Schools with asbestos are legally obliged to have a management plan, but not to make it public.
The Sunday Times is campaigning for a phased removal of asbestos, starting with schools and hospitals. Government policy is to leave it in place unless it is disturbed and damaged. But with many lightweight prefabricated structures built in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s now in a state of disrepair, this is no longer a viable policy: it could be putting schoolchildren, teachers and ancillary workers at risk. Not everyone who inhales asbestos will be affected by it, but some need to breathe in only a few fibres.
Mesothelioma is responsible for more than half of asbestos-related deaths in the UK each year. According to the National Education Union, about 400 former teachers have died from the disease since 1980, 300 of them since 2001. However, because it is not necessary to state a person’s occupation on their death certificate if they die aged over 75, it is likely that many mesothelioma deaths of teachers have not been formally recorded. According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), two thirds of all fatalities from mesothelioma occur in people over that age.
Nobody knows how many children were exposed to asbestos, and because of the length of time it takes for symptoms to develop, it can be hard to produce evidence on where exposure took place.
Teacher died after decades of exposure
Research by the Environmental Protection Agency in America found that for every teacher dying from mesothelioma, nine pupils would go on to die in middle or old age. The Joint Union Asbestos Committee (JUAC), which represents eight teaching unions in the UK, believes that more than 10,000 people died from mesothelioma between 1980 and 2017 after being exposed to asbestos decades earlier as pupils and school staff.
Gill Reed, a technical adviser to the JUAC, says: “What we can predict with some confidence is that thousands more people will die in the coming decades because of exposure to asbestos that has already happened in the classroom. We should be getting asbestos out of schools now to save future generations.”
After Gina Lees, a teacher, died of mesothelioma at the age of 51, the coroner at her inquest asked her widower, Michael, to try to find out where she had been exposed to asbestos. What followed became a 15-year investigation about the presence of asbestos in schools.
Michael Lees, a former RAF pilot, went on to lobby ministers, challenge best practices established by the HSE and set up the Asbestos in Schools group; a brains trust comprising asbestos testing consultants, medical experts, MPs, trade unions, bereaved spouses of mesothelioma victims and law firms.
In 2011 it produced a report that said amosite was present in most schools, and that because the mostly system-built schools were deteriorating, fibres were being inhaled by teachers and pupils. “I found that Gina and the children in her class had been regularly exposed, sometimes every day,” said Lees, who was appointed an MBE in 2014 for his research.
His wife worked as a teacher for 30 years in about 20 schools. “The children loved her,” said Lees. “She would encourage her pupils to paint and draw, and she’d pin their pictures up on the ceiling so they could look up at them. It turned out the ceiling tiles in at least some of the places she worked were made of asbestos.”
After Gina’s death, Robin Howie, an asbestos consultant and former president of the British Occupational Hygiene Society, conducted an experiment and found that pulling a drawing pin out of asbestos material released about 6,000 fibres. “During her career she must have done that tens of thousands of times,” said Lees.
Gina died in 2000 at their home near Bideford in Devon with her husband of 29 years and their children, James and Natasha, at her bedside. “The policy in the UK is to leave the asbestos in place and manage it,” Lees said. “That might work in an office, but it cannot work in a school — because schools contain children, and children tend to be boisterous, banging into asbestos panels, slamming doors and poking at ceiling tiles. And all of that can release asbestos fibres into the air.”
Officials rejected removal plan
There is evidence that children exposed to asbestos are more at risk than adults. In 2013 a committee that advises the government on cancer found that a child exposed to asbestos at the age of five was five times more likely to develop mesothelioma than an adult exposed to it at 30.
“Mesothelioma is a particularly nasty type of cancer,” said Saranjit Sihota, director of external affairs for Mesothelioma UK. “A person may be perfectly fine for decades, then feel a little out of breath or have a stomach ache. In most cases they’ll be told it’s terminal and they only have months to live. This has a devastating impact on individuals and families.”
Last year the work and pensions committee recommended that the government should embark on a 40-year programme of removal of asbestos from all non-commercial buildings and establish a national register of all those with asbestos in situ, with a record of its condition.
The government rejected both recommendations. The HSE continues to argue that where asbestos is unbroken, painted over or contained inside walls, it is safer left where it is. The proposal for a database was rejected on grounds of cost.
In 2021 the DfE costed the backlog of school repairs in England at £11.4 billion. The following year the department said there was a risk of “the collapse of one or more blocks in some schools which are at, or approaching the end of, their designed life expectancy”.
After the government refused to set up a national database, the asbestos removal industry decided to begin one itself. The National Organisation of Asbestos Consultants (Norac) and the Asbestos Testing and Consultancy Association (Atac), inspected 128,761 buildings over a six-month period and found that 78 per cent had asbestos. They found 710,433 items of asbestos, 71 per cent in a condition that could lead to the release of fibres.
In 2021 Reed made freedom of information requests to 60 system-built schools known to contain the substance to see whether they were complying with HSE guidelines for managing it safely. Only 37 of them said they had an “up to date” survey, and only 17 had identified all asbestos locations. “Leaving the management of asbestos to headmasters and local authorities when they haven’t got budgets to deal with it simply isn’t working,” said Reed. “And that is putting the lives of children and teachers at risk.”
Dr Robin Rudd, a consultant physician specialising in asbestos-related diseases, is one of the country’s foremost experts on mesothelioma. “The most important aspect of exposure is the total number of fibres inhaled,” he said, “so you could have a low level of exposure over a long time or a big dose over a short time. And there is some evidence that a low dose over a long time is more dangerous than the same dose administered quickly.
“I don’t think parents should worry too much, but as a parent you tend to worry about even the smallest risks to your child. In schools it’s a very small risk, but if you expose a very large number of people to a very small risk, you’re going to get a significant number of deaths.”
An HSE spokesman said: “We understand these concerns and sympathise with those impacted by asbestos-related illness. Our approach is based on the best available evidence and, so far, no other approach has been shown to be safer. Asbestos must be properly managed, or removed if this isn’t possible. The key is the condition of any asbestos and if it has been disturbed. The health risk is low as long as the law is obeyed. We carry out regular inspections to make sure this is happening.
“The current regulations have led to a significant reduction in exposure and the number of people developing asbestos-related illness is predicted to fall as we get further from the date asbestos was banned.”
A Department for Education spokesman said: “Nothing is more important than the health and safety of pupils and teachers. Asbestos management in schools is regulated by the Health and Safety Executive and we follow their advice, as well as work with them to provide guidance to schools, local authorities, governing bodies and academy trusts, so they can manage asbestos thoroughly.”
Political figures backing our campaign
Nadhim Zahawi, the Conservative MP and former education secretary and chancellor, said of the Sunday Times drive: “This is an excellent campaign that would help see an end to the blight of asbestos-related deaths.
“Modern construction methods can and should be applied to public sector projects to save costs and deliver the quality Britain deserves, as well ridding us of the blight of asbestos exposure.”
Alan Johnson, who was Labour’s home secretary, education secretary and health secretary, said: “Thousands of people are still dying every year from exposure to this material, and many more risk exposure in the future if nothing is done. Ignoring asbestos is no longer an option given the crumbling state of so many buildings and the need to upgrade them as we face the challenge of a greener economy.”
Matt Hancock said: “As a former health secretary, I am deeply concerned about the ongoing health scandal caused by asbestos in buildings, particularly in hospitals and schools.
“We cannot turn a blind eye to this tragedy any longer. It is crucial we urgently remove asbestos from our schools and hospitals, establish a comprehensive register, promote awareness through digital tools, monitor air quality and enforce training standards. It’s frankly astonishing this hasn’t all happened years ago.”
The five-point plan
1 Draw up a national strategy for the planned removal of all asbestos over the next 40 years, including identifying properties most in need of urgent action and clear guidance on the safe disposal of asbestos.
2 Create a national register of properties which contain asbestos and where it can be found. Owners of all non-domestic properties should be forced to comply with the rules for registration.
3 Develop an app, or digital register, that can be accessed by anyone renovating a property for free to discover if there is asbestos.
4 Introduce regular reporting of air quality around buildings that contain asbestos to monitor fibres.
5 Set minimum standards of training for appointed duty holders who are responsible for monitoring asbestos on properties.
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