Regularly, I submit questions to the Government requiring a written answer. One of my recent questions asked whether the Government would conduct a national survey of asbestos in public buildings.
According to campaigners, around 4000 people die per year from the effects of asbestos. Some of these are nurses, doctors and teachers who work in buildings which contain asbestos. It concerns me greatly that we are losing people to an entirely preventable assassin. Worse of all, is the potential risk to school children.
A national survey would identify places which had high risk asbestos materials in them. A programme could then be put in place to safely remove the dangerous materials.
I was under the impression that all non-domestic premises were already required to survey their buildings to comply with the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2006. As someone who has undertaken building work in several schools, my company requires that the school provide their asbestos log for inspection before we begin work; we have never been told the school does not have one, though of course some schools’ logs simply indicate that no asbestos has been located.
Lord Taylor,
To follow up Mr Schlackman’s comment above, how would you describe our current knowledge of the asbestos problem (particularly, what the gaps in that knowledge are)? What would you like the extent of a national survey to be?
The fear associated with asbestos significantly exceeds the actual danger. While it is unquestionable that many in industry that handled the raw fibre (did the insulation spray, made products that used raw fibre, etc.) ended up with mesothelioma and asbestosis, the undisturbed asbestos is extremely safe!
As long as you’re not ripping up insulation in the schools or hospitals (which most are NOT), there is no danger at all. It is sad that these “campaigners” rarely share the actual data on how they come up with 4000 death estimate and sadder still that they can dupe representatives into continuing their campaigns for them