• Asbestos Surveys Home
• About Us
• News
• Asbestos
• History
• FAQ
• Applications
• Encapsulation
• Contact

Asbestos Survey Types

Asbestos Legislation

Asbestos Management

Contact

Recent News

"The Big Rip Off: LET’S NOT SPEND £8 bn TO GET RID OF THIS STUFF"

→ Posted on 20/12/2005 at 11:27 GMT

A series of new studies by internationally-respected scientists have exposed a scientific blunder which threatens to cost tens of billions of pounds, and which could affect millions of businesses and homeowners. New laws on asbestos introduced by Brussels and the Health and Safety Executive (including the Control of Asbestos at Work regulations which come into force this week) make no distinction between the genuinely dangerous amphibole forms of asbestos and white asbestos or chrysotile, a wholly different mineral chemically indistinguishable from talcum powder.

The resulting confusion, as I have previously reported in this column, is already giving rise to shameless commercial exploitation, on a huge scale. But the new studies confirm that white asbestos cement and Artex paint, comprising well over 90 percent of all the ’asbestos-containing materials’ in some 10 million buildings across the UK, pose no risk to human health whatever.

Furthermore cellulose-fibre materials promoted by the EC and the HSE as a substitute for asbestos have never been subjected to proper safety tests, and have properties which could make them just as damaging to health as the genuinely dangerous amphibole forms of asbestos.

The HSE and the European Commission base their claim that chrysotile is dangerous on the belief that its fibres, like those of the amphiboles, can persist in human lungs for years, causing cancer, notably mesothelioma. But the new studies show there is no mechanism whereby white asbestos cement or Artex can have this effect. The first study, conducted by a team led by Dr John Hoskins, formerly of the Medical Research Council until he set up as an international consultant in 1998, is based on the most comprehensive survey of the scientific findings on this issue ever carried out. Their peer-approved report cites 107 different authorities, whereas the HSE rests its case on only one in-house study by two of its own scientists. The report, by Hoskins and others, shows that white asbestos cement and Artex have never given rise to a single case of mesothelioma (the HSE’s claims are based only on statistical estimates and untested hypotheses).

This is confirmed in a separate study by Professor Fred Pooley of Cardiff University, based on electron microscopy, which shows conclusively that, when mixed with cement, asbestos fibres undergo a chemical change, bonding and coating them with calcium, which makes them non-respirable. A third report, from a team led by Dr David Bernstein, an international toxicologist based in Geneva who has worked extensively for the European Commission, shows that biopersistence in the lungs of chrysotile fibres is only between 7 hours and two weeks, much too low to cause damage - while that of the cellulose-fibres used in asbestos substitutes can be more than three years, making them potentially as carcinogenic as amphiboles.

Yet the HSE admits that no full safety tests have been carried out on the asbestos-substitutes which it and the Commission accept as safe, although one of their chief manufacturers has secretly reserved £50 million to cover legal costs should future studies show them to be carcinogenic.

The practical significance of these findings is immense. Up to 90 percent of the work carried out by the 870 contractors licensed by the HSE to work with asbestos (most of them members of ARCA, the Asbestos Removal Contractors Association) is concerned with white asbestos cement or Artex, a paint used in millions of homes containing minute amounts of white asbestos, yet which, by law, can only be handled by HSE-licensed contractors.

Evidence compiled by Asbestos Watchdog (an organisation set up following earlier reports in this column, to which thousands of Sunday Telegraph readers responded) shows the frightening extent to which many licenced contractors and surveyors are exploiting the officially-promoted confusion over asbestos, both by massively overcharging and by misleading businesses and homeowners as to whether work is actually required, either by law or for safety.

On Artex alone, which even the HSE admits may soon have to be taken out of the legislation, because any release of asbestos fibres is so infinitesimal it cannot be measured, the problem is illustrated on a small scale by the nightmare facing the small Berkshire village of Basildon. Last week villagers learned that they face a crippling bill of £6000 just for the removal of a small amount of Artex from their village hall. At the other end of the scale, a legal row is making front-page headlines in Ireland over the insistence by the Health and Safety Authority (the Irish equivalent of the HSE) that, under EC law, a huge regeneration scheme on the Ballymun flats in Dublin, cannot go ahead until Artex has been removed at a mind-boggling cost of £80 million.

This week, when the HSE’s new regulations come into force, implementing an EC directive, the owners and managers of millions of non-domestic properties, including ’social housing’, must show that they have carried out a survey identifying all asbestos on their premises, with proposals for how it should be managed, The HSE’s original estimate for the cost of these regulations was £8 billion, making it the most expensive item of legislation ever put on the statute book. But even though, under Parliamentary pressure, they have several times reduced this figure, this does not allow for the overcharging by contractors and surveyors which already makes their original estimate seem modest.

This would be bad enough, if it were not for the damage also now being inflicted on thousands of homeowners. Although domestic properties are not covered by the legislation, they are being told by unscrupulous (or just ignorant) surveyors and estate agents that their properties are unsaleable or have been drastically reduced in value, because they contain white asbestos cement or Artex. Although these are harmless, thanks to the HSE-promoted hysteria they are now widely viewed as deadly.

The economic implications of this scare are almost incalculable. One major re-insurance group alone, Equitas, is reported to have reserved £56 billion to cover future possible asbestos claims. Yet so devastating are the new scientific findings (they can be read on www.asbestoswatchdog.co.uk), that there is now an overwhelming case for a full, independent inquiry into this scandal. Previously, in defending these hugely damaging regulations, ministers have merely taken refuge in repeating inadequate and misleading data fed them by the HSE. Now the flaws in the HSE’s science have been so comprehensively exposed, the Government cannot be allowed to continue promoting this shameless scam any longer.

Source: Sunday Telegraph