Why is asbestos allowed to kill so many teachers? |
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29th March 2009 - Daily Telegraph AT LEAST 272 teachers have died from asbestos-related cancer caused by exposure to the lethal substance which still riddles many of Britain’s schools
Thousands of children could also be at risk from the disease because they are being sprinkled with deadly asbestos fibres every time teachers pin notices to ceilings and walls or when doors are banged shut. The teachers died between 1980 and 2005.
The figures uncovered by the Government’s Health and Safety Executive have prompted Liberal Democrat MP and former deputy headteacher Paul Rowen to campaign for improved asbestos awareness in schools.
Last week he received an assurance from the Government that training for headteachers and school business managers would include information on asbestos, such as how to have tests carried out to detect the substance.
There are 25,000 schools in Britain and about 90 per cent contain asbestos – much of which is deteriorating, releasing the dangerous fibres.
Mr Rowen has seen record numbers of people in his Rochdale constituency develop cancer as a direct result of working at the now defunct Turner and Newall asbestos factory.
“I used to be deputy head of a school in Bradford before becoming an MP and I was in charge of building safety,” he said. “No one told us what to do and you certainly can’t tell if a building is safe just by looking at it. There is no way to tell if asbestos is on the walls or not. It is the filling for a lot of pillars and it was never clear what was and what wasn’t made of asbestos.
“The number of people in different occupations is different, therefore a large number of deaths from mesothelioma in an occupation employing very few people would be more remarkable than the same number of deaths in an occupation employing many thousands of people.
“A system called Proportional Mortality Ratio has been developed to deal with this, and the results for teachers are very alarming. Between 1980 and 2000 male teachers have a PMR almost 10 times greater than would have been expected if they had had no exposure to asbestos.
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