Executive Summary
The asbestos industry covered up the risk from asbestos exposure when school buildings were constructed using asbestos (1940s-1999). Since then, despite the increasing evidence that staff and students were at a significant risk of developing mesothelioma cancer caused by asbestos, successive Governments have failed to require a measure of the risk from long term exposure to asbestos in school buildings.
Aim
This report therefore aimed to find out the level of past and current risk to staff and students of developing mesothelioma from asbestos exposure in Great Britain school buildings.
Methods
The relationship was investigated between the UK annual import of asbestos since 1940 and the annual measure of teacher mesothelioma deaths since occupational records began in 1980. This included an investigation of the impact of school building life span, asbestos damage, mesothelioma latency period and life expectancy on GB staff and student mesothelioma mortality.
The estimation of the number of teacher and support staff (all ages) deaths from mesothelioma since 1980 was based on the HSE Occupational Mesothelioma and MESO03 Statistics. It was presumed that support staff and teachers had the same lifetime risk and duration of exposure.
HSE-estimated Proportional Mortality Ratios and Robin Howie Associates-estimated PMRs were used to compare school staff mesothelioma deaths with other occupations.
The total number of school staff in schools with friable asbestos was determined using the School Workforce Census, School staff PLASC and data from the House of Commons Library.
The number of mesothelioma deaths according to HSE mesothelioma statistics was compared with the Mesothelioma UK findings based on industrial Injuries disablement Benefit Claims for mesothelioma and lung cancer in people who worked in schools (and hospitals).
The method used by the United States Environmental Protection Agency EPA (1980) investigation of the lifetime risk and predicted mortality of United States staff and students developing mesothelioma was applied to Great Britain schools. The EPA predicted number of mesothelioma deaths findings was then compared with the estimated number of GB staff and students who had died since 1980 from mesothelioma.
The effectiveness of the current asbestos regulations and Cost Benefit Analysis process for the identification and prevention of asbestos exposure from buildings like schools was considered in the light of the report findings.
Findings
The combined effect of this report's findings is that hundreds of thousands of students and staff, exposed to asbestos in their schools since the mid-1990s, are predicted to die in future from mesothelioma.
Unfortunately, the current asbestos regulations do not identify the level of exposure to the potentially substantial amount of disturbed hidden asbestos that can pass unseen via gaps into occupied areas. This has meant Duty Holders are unaware of the level of asbestos exposure in occupied areas and so funding bids are not informed by the lifetime risk of vulnerable children and staff developing mesothelioma in their school(s).
Conclusion
This report estimated that tens of thousands of school staff and students have already died from mesothelioma due to asbestos exposure before the mid-1990s and hundreds of thousands of staff and students in school buildings are predicted to die from asbestos exposure due to exposure after the mid-1990s. Most of the victims will be exposed as children in schools although their cause of death is noted under their last occupation.
Almost all the UK population is likely to have attended a school with asbestos. This disaster is not a preventable accident. It is due to the policy of successive governments that have covered up the risk in order to cut costs and reduce disruption.
The Grenfell Tower inferno, the Post Office Horizon IT scandal, and the contaminated blood transfusion scandal in the 1970s-80s also show governments, vested interests, industries and workplaces allowing lives to be sacrificed in order to cut costs and increase profits.
Recommendations for government
- The remit of the Duty to Manage Asbestos Regulations should include a measure of the lifetime risk and premature mortality of adults and children developing mesothelioma in all buildings with friable asbestos. This should be based on the TEM measurement of the range of prevalent asbestos levels in buildings like schools during normal full occupation.
- Cost Benefit Analysis: Criteria for funding asbestos removal / building replacement should ensure that an imposed risk of 1 per million per year is the limit of ‘acceptable risk’ for children and adults in buildings that contain friable asbestos.