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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.”
I found that Gina {Lees, another victim] 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 planThere 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.