Staff and pupils dying from asbestos in schools

[nobodysdaughternow]

I am completely shocked to discover I have potentially sent two of my children to schools which could potentially kill them.

The Times today detailed the story of Chris Willis diagnosed with mesothelioma (a cancer caused by inhaling asbestos fibres) at 29 years old. He died last year at 34.

Newcastle City Council paid substantial damages to Chris for his exposure to asbestos, which he believed happened at Kenton School between 2000 and 2007.

Schools with asbestos are told not to publish asbestos management plans.

10,000 teachers, pupils and staff who have died from asbestos exposure at schools in the past four decades.

If your child goes to a 'block built' school with asbestos, which is at or past it's design life expectancy, then they are at risk.

I naively believed asbestos exposure ended with my grandparents generation. I am very, very angry.

My middle ds went to a special school which was literally crumbling. It was an appalling school and when my son was distressed, he would throw himself at the particleboard wall which I now know may well have contained asbestos.

I didn't have a choice where I sent my kids to school. I thought poor Ofsted's were my biggest worry.

Aibu to ask if you know about the danger to teachers, staff and pupils from asbestos?

That's a very different thing to dying at 80+ with Mesothelioma on your death certificate because of somewhere you worked in the seventies

Did you miss the ages of the two people named in the article?

It's not even whataboutery. It's flat out denail.

And the flue line? Please. Straight out of the covid threads handbook!

I was always a bit skeptical about political, paid shills. They are everywhere on school thread at the moment saying black is white.

That's fine until it's you or one of your loved ones. And our death rate is far higher than other countries.

Not sure why there's so much denial on this thread - maybe it's just too horrible an idea to contemplate.

As for not knowing anyone at all from your school who has had cancer - I want to know where you live because you obviously all have incredible genes and something in the area that combats it.

I grew up in the US and my high school (erhm 20 years ago) used to print a yearly plan book for us to put our assignments in.

In the front was the guide book, contacts, rules etc. In there they had a section on what areas had asbestos and what was done to mitigate.

I still remember it was in the box over the threatre and in some bricks that were painted each year.

The lack of transparency here is shocking!

So I have just read on the BBC News, coincidentally, about asbestos in original Star Wars film studios...

So.. BBC report on this but I haven't seen any mention about the school issues?!

I don't know if it's denial as such or pragmatism.

It's a horrible way to look at it, but fundamentally it'll come down ro what money the government have and how they choose to invest it. Not quite putting a price on each life but the numbers involved have to be considered.

I.e. is the money better invested in the NHS? in road safety? In pandemic planning? In cancer research? In education about asbestos? In minimising how much the construction industry needs ro handle it? There are a lot more things to factor in than the understandable knee jerk reaction that they need to demolish and replace a huge % of our schools. (And other public buidlings).

And while this story and the associated stats are horrible, the biggest risk of this illness is with the folk who were working with it before the dangers were understood- builders, plumbers, electricians etc etc who handled it at work during their careers. I'd guess the best, and most economical, way to reduce the numbers is to make sure everyone in the construction industry knows not to touch the stuff. People now in their early-mid 40's will have started out in an industry where the dangers are known, but because of the nature of the disease, seeing the numbers involved come down is a long term thing- the rules, processes and education etc that came in 20 years ago will probably need another 20+ years before the outcome is really seen.

They'll also need to consider ongoing risks to workers in plans to remove asbestos en masse- again, a horrible way to look at it, but even it was an affordable project, would their really be a net gain in lives saved, or would we basically be killing more construction workers than the number of teachers and pupils we'd save? Workers now use full hazmat ppe and sites are tightly controlled, but realistically, we probably don't yet have the evidence (in a reduction in associated cancer) to understand whether all of these measures are significantly reducing cases vs preventing them completely, with the latter clearly being the only morally acceptable outcome.

The net result of all of these horrible horrible considerations is "denial". Not so much that people are really denying the issue, more an acknowlement that there just isn't an easy fix, and none of us have access to the data, reports, budgets etc to be able to make these decisions. (And frankly I'm also glad I don't have to make them- regardless of how impersonal it is when people are reduced to stats, fundamentally they are still people).

It scares me. I’ve worked in schools around 19 years and early in my career I just had no idea of the risk. My first school had asbestos ceilings, mentioned but in reality full of staples and drawing pins. Things like projectors and wiring were installed when I was there.
My next school has asbestos floor tiles, walls in corridors, ceilings and outdoor tiles. The floors had bits of damage from heels, and the asbestos containing glue was peeling. The walls weee re-wired whilst I was there, lots of work over the years. Windows has damaged frames with crumbling. I know all these as later all were replaced as found to be unsafe. I know the same in many other schools, replacements only happened once there was potential exposure found.
My DH works in schools too, our risk is high and I’ve read the reports to know this

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-66030635

I’m an asbestos surveyor and analyst. I’ve worked on hundreds of schools over the years. All schools by law will have a register (survey) for all staff and tradespeople to be able to access. Asbestos is schools in incredibly common (pre-2000). It costs thousands to remove it. There’s no money for it. I did a job in a school a few years ago where a kid had put a football through a classroom ceiling. That literally killed their budget.

Sitting in a classroom with an asbestos ceiling all day every day will do nothing to you. It doesn’t spontaneously release fibres. It’s only when it’s damaged or cables/ lighting etc need replacing.

You’d be surprised but actually it’s not the safest thing to do! The risk to a removal contractor (even with full RPE, enclosure, NPU and analyst) is way higher than leaving a perfectly intact panel no one needs to disturb. This is part of the survey assessment. Does removal pose a bigger threat than management?

Ripping out licensable asbestos without a licensed contractor is illegal anyway.

I rather think the ST's point is that much of it is no longer perfectly intact?

Schools are crumbling.

But a lot of it is? How many surveys do you do of schools? I’m not arguing the damaged stuff doesn’t need to be removed because it does, but removing intact thermal insulation from a riser that gets accessed once a year and isn’t disturbed in the process isn’t a priority. Not all asbestos products are the same.

I haven’t seen any teacher on this thread complaining about intact asbestos. We’re not thick, you know. We do understand that it’s not like sitting next to a lump of uranium and that an undamaged asbestos panel is not going to kill us.

What I have seen is a lot of teachers, me included, reporting concerns about damaged asbestos or crumbling walls/ceilings which are likely to have asbestos content. That’s a whole different situation.

So why The ST campaign, backed by numerous experts, then?

@Tygertiger so if they’re ‘likely’ to contain asbestos, you go to the people who look after your building and look it up in the register. Your school will have regular surveys. Recommendations get made in those surveys for management or removal. You notice new damage, get it reported. Building manager/ estates or whatever has a duty to manage and will have to get it sorted.

Another reason why we're striking. My school has asbestos and as others have said, we have a plan and are not allowed balls in hall etc in case they hit ceiling.

Yes. In theory there’s a system and it works. In practice, teachers and HCPs have much higher rates of mesothelioma than the general population. So it’s not quite going right, is it?

@SquashPenguin why is it worse in the UK than other countries?

Hi OP,

I was diagnosed with mesothelioma a few years back at 23. Many many people seem to think it's the older generation that get asbestos disease and only in the lungs. There is a myth that it takes 30-40 years to come out, that is untrue. It can be as little as 15 years.

Many schools have asbestos in and they have to be thoroughly tested. Asbestos can be anywhere and everywhere and it's not the amount of exposure that causes the disease, it can be one single fibre that is inhaled or ingested. My asbestos wasn't due to my schooling. I just wanted to say, as hard as it is, please don't panic. Mesothelioma is still incredibly rare in the younger generation. I was the youngest to be diagnosed at one point so even though it's not with every case, in most cases it's people of older age. The younger generation stats are rising, slowly, but it's still incredibly rare.

If you have any questions or want to ask anything feel free to PM me.

I’m so sorry to hear about your diagnosis. Do you know what the source of your exposure was? How are you now, health-wise?

The problem is, you have your survey but then things happen. The floor tiles are fine, then during building works someone is careless and damages it heavily. The ceiling is fine, then some idiot drills in holes for new projectors without following rules. The wall is fine, until a fight happens. The PE store is done, until kids play on the roof and fall through it. The floor tiles are fine until they are ripped up and it’s spotted the unseen glue contained asbestos. The external tiling is stable, until high winds. It’s stable and on the register, but without any money for maintenance eventually it crumbles. Sometime while partition walls collapse after years of abuse. It’s not like an office environment. There’s children with needs. Sports equipment. External theft and vandalism is high. Things that haven’t been maintained since the 1970’s fall apart, floor sink and split on clay ground. Sometimes the bill to sort out a known problem is millions of pounds, say every window needs replacing. There’s no money and exposure is known during the time while the budget arguments go on. Our authority used to direct caretakers they had to bag up asbestos roofing in well sealed plastic bags, leaving them to break it up themselves. There’s been some dodgy policy in the last 10-20 years I’ve worked, not a lifetime ago

If the asbestos surveyor is here still. How risky is that floor tile glue? Ive been in several schools where kids spend assembly picking at minor cracks in the tiles.

Floor tiles and bitumen/ adhesive is very low risk. It doesn’t require licensed removal and the asbestos content is typically <1%. Getting asbestos out of it during analysis even with all the tools is very difficult and one of the materials that often requires cross checking the most, it’s has such a small amount and is very well bonded.

Health wise is okay. I had something called CRS surgery where they did a full laparotomy so I'm cut from my sternum to my pubic bone. They removed all of my peritoneum from my diaphragm to my pelvis. I will always have the cancer as they cannot remove the asbestos fibres so it's a little tricker to get into to full remission. After a lot of surgery and chemo I'm currently stable. It's changed my life somewhat and I have a lot of health complications now because of it. (Heart conditions from chemo etc) but from the outside I'm a normal women with a good job and I have a daughter. Married etc. i try not to keep up with the stats but with peritoneal Meso I think it's about 65% get to 5 years, which is where I am now so I'm grateful for everyday. I do know where the source came from, it took a while to figure out.

It's very uncommon for somebody my age to have this cancer and I'm always up for raising awareness without trying to scare people. But it's still very rare for the younger generation to have it. Asbestos is absolutely nothing to mess around with and PPs have said that it was banned in 1999, which is almost redundant. As some of us with the cancer my age may have been exposed after 1999, it's still everywhere. It's getting better, but it's still everywhere.

I'm seriously outting myself here. But I was part of a campaign and here is the video. This was a few years back from where I didn't** know at the time where my exposure came from, which has now changed. if anyone is interested. (Sorry to hijack OP)

I'm married now and I have changed my surname but I have nothing to hide here. At this time we were still searching for my exposure. Also excuse the puffy face, I was very puffy from all the steroids!

You come across as an amazing woman, I’m sorry you’ve had to go through this. Your face doesn’t look puffy, you are somehow managing to look very together and very pretty! I wish you the best of health and happiness. You are articulate in the video I must say, you come across very well

May I ask where you were exposed?