Asbestos deaths continue after ban

Region’s industrial past costs 5,000 lives

HEALTH: Stark figures reveal the death toll in Yorkshire from asbestos 20 years after its use was banned. Around 5,000 people in the region have died from mesothelioma linked to the toxic material from 1981-2017.

Death rates among men in the region have increased four-fold over the period and by three times among women.

STARK figures reveal the continuing death toll in Yorkshire from asbestos two decades after its use was banned.

More than 5,000 people in the region have died from mesothelioma linked to the toxic material according to latest statistics from 1981-2017.

Death rates among men in the region have increased fourfold over the period and by three times among women.

Many of the 2,500 lives lost each year nationally are due to exposure decades earlier amid warnings people in the region are continuing to pay a price for asbestos’s industrial past, 20 years after the anniversary of the landmark ban tomorrow.

Latest Health and Safety Executive figures show death rates in the region among men were the fourth highest of 11 regions and nations in Britain between 2015-17 and the second highest in women.

Since 1981, death rates from

mesothelioma in Yorkshire among men have been at their highest in Leeds, York and Doncaster. Rates among women in Leeds are the sixth highest of any local authority area, accounting for more than 250 lost lives.

Helen Tomlin, a specialist asbestos lawyer for Thompsons Solicitors, in Leeds, said people were paying “a heavy price for the region’s industrial past”.

“It may be 20 years since the ban on asbestos was enforced in the UK but the story doesn’t stop there,” she said.

The ban on using and importing asbestos in 1999 put an “explicit duty” on owners of nondomestic properties to find out whether their premises contain asbestos and assess and manage the risks including providing information to anyone likely to disturb affected areas.

But Ms Tomlin said there was evidence this wasn’t happening and people were still being put at risk.

Latest projections suggest deaths will begin to decline in the 2020s among men but will continue to rise in women.

Men who worked in the building industry, where asbestos was used extensively, are now among those most at risk, accounting for nearly half of cases among men born in the 1940s.

Analysis shows women working in teaching, healthcare and cleaning are at higher risk.