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Posted By Paul Leadbetter
This has been posted on the UKOH discussion forum by Alex Wilson of Corus and I thought you might be interested in his tale:
4 weeks ago I purchased a gas BBQ from one of the UK's leading supermarkets. It was a self-assembly unit and, like every British male, I didn't get round to building it until the sun had gone and the rain came.
Upon inspection of my contents, I noticed two heat proof washers that were to be used to fix areas where significant heat would be. As my job in the past has allowed me to see enough gaskets to sink a battleship I quickly put my asbestos hat on and tried to have a closer look as they looked suspect.
I finally managed to bring them into work to make up a slide to have a look underneath the microscope. The result confirmed my suspicions.
Yes, ASBESTOS gaskets in a BBQ bought in 2008. Jolly good show.
I did mention this to a few people at the BOHS conference but I had not done the analysis so here is confirmation.
I have contacted the suppliers of the BBQ and informed them of the issue; the technical manager went mad - he couldn't believe it but I assured him that it definitely was asbestos and also made him aware that it has been illegal to do what they did for nearly 10 years eg importing asbestos, distributing and selling in the UK.
He has acted quickly and informed the said supermarket to remove existing units from the shelves. He has contacted the manufacturers in China or Vietnam (where the problem lies) to replace the asbestos gaskets with non-asbestos replacements.
Paul
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Posted By Mitch
Paul,
A more frightening thought is that a company of this size does not have a robust enough Quality system in place to ensure breaches like this do not occur, it makes me wonder how many other products might be 'contaminated'?
Mitch
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Posted By MP
Should someone contact the Daily Mail and have this as a positive H&S story?
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Posted By Robert K Lewis
When one considers that asbestos use is still growing in the Far East then it is little wonder that a manufacturer from the area should not see a problem with using asbestos.
Good news for all those going to the Olympics is that they use asbestos widely for fire protection purposes.
Bob
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Posted By NickW
This is more common than you may think, especially when importing stuff from the far east. Our lab received a sample kiddys thermal flask from a certain high street retailer they had imported from china. We didnt know why they wanted it tested until we took it apart and sealing the base was a nice big pure plug of chryostile (white) asbestos! the flasks didnt make it to shops but it caused a fuss I believe.
A couple of years ago someone (I think British Timpkin who have now gone bust) got prosecuted under the prohib regs for importing some kit from the US that had some of chrysotile gasket in it, which I thought was a bit harsh TBH but I suppose the law is the law.
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