Posted By Paul Clarke-Scholes CMIOSH
Can of Worms .......... opened!
I too am in the asbestos industry and have been for longer than I care to admit. Bridle's reputation is suspect whilst the health risks from asbestos are not.
HSE might have been better off pointing out that even by Bridles figures of 1000 deaths per year.....
"Bridle maintains that a more accurate death rate from asbestos-related disease in the UK is 1000 a year"
.....asbestos kills 4 times more construction workers that all other causes every year, and yes, I ignored the point about historic exposure in the quote. It's still a big number and the point is that to date, there is no evidence that the problem is going away. Might we not be "erring on the side of safety" (in a good way) if we assume it isn't going away, for once? Google "Doll and Peto" for the epidemiological studies. And remember how doctors ignored the cancer/smoking link back in the 50's (also Doll's work).
Charlie Brooker has written in the Telegraph on the same point for many years. "Chrysotile does not cause Mesothelioma" (possibly true from my research, but the raw data isn't really there) and "Canada should be allowed to continue exporting it to the UK". Conrad Black, at the time, owned both the Torygraph and substantial Canadian mining interests. We know where Black finished up.
Seems to me society has a track record of ignoring risks, particularly where the financial interest is overwhelming. Let's face it, if UK plc did a risk assessment, smoking would be banned completely overnight as it kills 120,000 people every year. But who wants to find a replacement for tax revenues equivalent to the budget of the NHS? Smokers don't drain the NHS, they fund it. What happened to farmers' suicide rates and the use of organophosphates? Answer: Officialdom said CoSHH should have controlled the risk (ignoring the fact that the farmers weren't in possession of the necessary information to assess the unknown risk), organophosphates aren't used any more and the story has gone away.
It also seems to me that there are now enough people in officialdom these days who are determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past that, if anything, they might become guilty of being the first to make the mistakes of the future. This is where "Bonkers Conkers" has its origins, regrettably picked up by those for whom a little knowledge is a licence to print money, otherwise known as the insurance industry. Having made the mistake of repeatedly underestimating risk we are now trying to control trivial risk.
Rant nearly over, stay with me........
So then, we already know that Occupational Health is the new Health and Safety. Asbestos is up at the top of the tree and so it should be, along with PM10, asthmagens and others. Road deaths were 6,000 a year when I started in HS. 3000 is still too many and cameras aren't the way to bring it down again, but it was a useful tool while it lasted. HSE are right to fulfil their brief by educating. Isn't the first thing you do with a risk assessment bring the significant findings to the attention of those affected?
DDCCF
Dash, down, crawl, cover, fire!
Paul
PS How many of you know haw many people die each year in the UK? Care to guess? Roughly 750,000 people every year, the majority from natural causes. Natural causes presumably including cancer, dementia, CHF, strokes and all the rest. Now care to estimate how many have an occupational (or lifestyle) component? No, me either.