The Multinational Monitor website September 2000 has an article by Laurie Kazen-Allen, extracts of which appear below:

At its peak, Cape’s operations were worldwide and large enough to make it a major player in the asbestos industry. In the mid-1970s, the company boasted that it was “one of the principal producers of crocidolite and the world’s chief producer of amosite asbestos.” Cape and its subsidiaries had holdings in South Africa, Italy, France and Germany.

At Cape’s facilities in London, Hebden Bridge, Uxbridge, Manchester, Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool, Belfast and the Isle of White, asbestos from its South African mines was turned into a wide range of products including asbestos yarn and cloth, millboard, webbing, insulation mattresses, pre-formed thermal insulation, sprayed asbestos thermal and acoustic insulation, filtration materials, asbestos cement flat sheets, corrugated sheets, pipes, molded products, slabs, packings and rope lagging.

Extracts from 1929 reports by C. Leonard Williams, the medical officer of health for Barking Town Urban District Council, are illuminating: the presence of asbestos dust in the lungs produces a definite disability decreasing the expectation of life that the conditions under which certain of these cases have been working have been such as to permit the inhalation of asbestos dust, with consequent pulmonary disability. That year, Williams reported three cases of asbestosis from the Barking factory.

Sixteen years later, he sadly reported, I am firmly of the opinion [that] it [asbestos] is a deadly and dangerous commodity, and that unless those who are charged with the responsibility of safeguarding the health of the people in the industry can give positive assurances that they have now after all these years removed every possible danger, the processing of asbestos, except so far as its products are essential to the national economy, should be barred.

Laurie Kazen-Allen who has campaigned tirelessly for many years for an asbestos ban, also produces the British Asbestos Newsletter.

In an article “Late lessons from early warnings : the precautionary principle 1896 – 2000”

“Asbestos: from ‘magic’ to malevolent mineral” by David Gee and Morris Greenberg - (Full article can be downloaded as a pdf document - a great deal of information is catalogued as to events showing that asbestos was dangerous from 1896 to 2000, including:

Looking back in the light of present knowledge, it is impossible not to feel that opportunities for discovery and prevention of asbestos disease were badly missed. Thomas Legge, ex Chief Medical Inspector of Factories, in Industrial Maladies 1934.

…The earliest account of the health hazard of working with asbestos was provided by Lucy Deane, one of the first Women Inspectors of Factories in the UK. Writing in 1898…

…From 1964 to 1975 the media in both the United States and the United Kingdom kept asbestos high on the political agenda (Sunday Times, 1965). The ITV programme The World in Action in 1971, and the BBC Horizon in 1975, about conditions at Cape’s Acre Mill asbestos plant in Yorkshire, United Kingdom, helped to initiate action by authorities, such as a Parliamentary Ombudsman Report into asbestos regulation enforcement at the factory. This report was initiated by local MP Max Madden, who lodged an official complaint against non-enforcement of the asbestos regulation of 1931. The report was very critical of the Factory Inspectors, and the government responded by appointing a government inquiry, the Simpson Committee, in 1976.

Meanwhile, the 1931 asbestos regulations had been updated in 1969, and a limit for factory asbestos dust exposure of 2 million fibres per cubic metre (m³) of air was to be gradually introduced. Unfortunately this ‘hygiene standard’ did not include consideration of the lung or mesothelioma cancer hazards. It was later to be strongly criticised and associated with high asbestosis levels (one worker in 10 would get the disease) by Julian Peto in evidence to the Simpson inquiry (Peto, 1978).

…Yorkshire TV screened a two-hour documentary at prime viewing time, featuring Alice Jefferson, a 47-year-old who had contracted mesothelioma when working for a few months at Cape’s Acre Mill asbestos plant. Alice, a Fight for Life had an immediate impact, even though some, like Sir Richard Doll, criticised the programme for being unscientific and emotional. The government responded to the programme by implementing the Simpson inquiry recommendations and, in 1984, by introducing the asbestos licensing regulations and a further lowering of the exposure limits to 0.5 million fibres/m³ (0.5 f/ml) for white and 0.2 million fibres/ m³ (0.2 f/ml) for brown asbestos. A voluntary labelling scheme was introduced for some uses. Pressure for further improvements continued to come from local MPs, some trade unions and people representing victims, such as asbestos widow, Nancy Tait. She helped reveal that the Turner Brothers’ asbestos compensation arrangements, such as £1 a week for the widows of workers with asbestosis, had been largely unchanged since the 1930s. Her work helped to force Turner Brothers to improve their compensation awards. New regulations were introduced in 1987 and tightened further in 1989. In 1998 the government adopted a ban on all forms of asbestos, which was implemented the following year…

Asbestos and Health

Extracts from — London Hazards Centre website : Asbestos: Chapter 3

Asbestos and Your Health: Why is asbestos dangerous?

When asbestos is separated into very fine fibres, it becomes a serious health hazard. These fine fibres enter the body mainly through breathing. Fibres which cannot be coughed up or breathed out become trapped, causing cancers and irreparable scarring of the lungs. The killer qualities are associated with the length, diameter and strength of the fibres. The risk of disease is dose related. There is no safe level of exposure but increased exposure will increases the risk…

The main types of asbestos diseases:

Asbestosis

A disabling and ultimately fatal scarring of the lungs causing severe breathlessness and chest pains. The term was first used in 1924 by Cook in the British Medical Journal. The destructive effects of asbestos cause the slow replacement of healthy lung tissue, responsible for the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide, by fibrous or scar tissue, which cannot ‘breathe’. Lungs have a natural reserve capacity which means the disease will develop over many years without any symptoms showing. By then the damage is well and truly advanced. The victim will be short of breath, unable to walk very far, will have coughing, general weakness and chest pain. The damaged lungs strain the heart and can lead to congestive heart failure.

X-Rays detect the damage at an early stage: a routine medical examination will not. Often a fine fibrosis is seen at the base of the lungs unlike the effects of other silicas.

This disease is most common among those who have had regular and high exposures to fibres: laggers, asbestos textile workers, and those involved in the manufacture of asbestos products. There are, however, documented cases where relatives of workers have died of asbestosis and where people have worked for only short periods in the asbestos industry. Because controls reducing fibre levels and bringing in respiratory protective equipment were introduced in these high risk areas many years ago asbestosis should now become less frequent.

Lung cancer

A painful and nearly always fatal disease. The evidence that asbestos could cause lung cancer was available in 1934. In the early 1940s there were reports in Germany. In 1949, the Chief Inspector of Factories reported finding lung cancer in 13.9% of UK asbestosis cases. This increased risk of lung cancer was then confirmed epidemiologically in 1955 in Britain by Doll.

Asbestos and smoking

Lung cancer is generally associated with smoking. Recent figures by the Cancer Research campaign show that in the UK almost 40,000 people a year die from lung cancer, the most common cancer in men, and second most common in women. Smoking is assumed to be the main cause, but Peto’s figures show that some 6,000 lung cancers a year may yet prove attributable to previous asbestos exposure.

In 1966 a US study estimated that the risk of lung cancer in a non-smoker exposed to asbestos is five times the expected rate. Smoking alone would increase the risk of lung cancer by a factor of 11. Asbestos and smoking together would increase the risk to 52 times that prevailing in the general population. The International Agency for Research on Cancer has quoted a study of asbestos workers suggesting that asbestos workers who smoke have eight times the risk of lung cancer as compared to all other smokers, and 92 times the risk of non-smokers not exposed to asbestos.

There is an easily identifiable group with an enormous risk of developing lung cancer: smokers who have been exposed to asbestos. A survey by the Liverpool Occupational Health Project involving 2,601 interviews in 1992 found that one in eight men had been exposed to asbestos and of these one third were still smoking. Does this not call for urgent health education campaigns? …

Mesothelioma

A rapidly fatal and painful cancer of the lining of the lung (pleura), the abdomen (peritoneum), or heart (pericardium). Until the 1960s this form of cancer was unrecognised. More than 10 times as many deaths are due to pleural mesothelioma than to peritoneal mesothelioma. Some people develop both.

Pleural thickening

The lung walls thicken because of the scarring caused by asbestos. This is seen on X-ray examination. Extensive thickening may cause severe shortness of breath. It can be described as on one side of the lungs, or both sides (bilateral) or it can be described as widespread (diffuse).

Pleural plaques

Also show up on X-rays. They are dense bands of scar tissue, different from pleural thickening. Plaques are usually seen on both sides of the lungs. People with pleural plaques may run an increased risk of developing lung cancer. The lung cancer rate in a group of shipyard workers with plaques was double that of shipyard workers without…

Environmental exposures

According to Julian Peto, Every single person in the UK has some asbestos in their lungs. It is the level of exposure and the frequency that’s important. All the established cases (of mesothelioma) so far have been due to high and regular exposure. What we don’t know is if the lower levels due to environmental exposure cause mesothelioma. Since the risk to men is six times higher than the risk to women (who are seldom exposed to asbestos at work), environmental exposure is clearly not as significant as occupational exposure.

There is a great deal of resistance to the idea that low level exposure to asbestos is a risk to health. In actual fact people with evidence of lower levels of exposure to asbestos are develop mesothelioma but they then have a harder time gaining compensation because experts go into court and say the environmental risk is negligible.

It is not natural to have asbestos in your lungs. If it is truly the case that everyone now has some, then the prospects are terrifying given the long latency for the diseases.

Environmental exposures have caused disease as the deaths of many women prove. Deaths caused by such exposures are likely to rise in the future because much asbestos in buildings is totally uncontrolled. Asbestos has blighted the lives of whole communities in the industrial centres of the UK, not just in shipbuilding cities and towns…

Asbestos Chapter 3

© London Hazards Centre, Interchange Studios, Hampstead Town Hall Centre, 213 Haverstock Hill, London NW3 4QP, UK

and

Asbestos Chapter 13 "Asbestos: The Evil History"

Catalogues the important dates in history which might have signified the dangers asbestos posed from the 1st Century AD to 1995.

An entry for 1976 says:

1976 The Ombudsman, Sir Alan Marre, revealed the horrors of the massacre at Hebden Bridge. 12% of employees had crippling asbestos diseases. The Government launched an enquiry, the Advisory Committee on Asbestos.