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Experts warn of asbestos hazard in home gardens

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Published Date: 08 November 2009
By David Leask
HEALTH experts last night warned they are regularly finding cancer-causing asbestos in private gardens.
Specialists from the Institute of Occupational Medicine (IOM) in Edinburgh said they were uncovering some "disturbingly high concentrations" of the material around homes built on former industrial sites. They fear some homeowners could disturb potentially lethal asbestos fibres when they dig up their gardens.

The IOM, in a warning made to Scotland's environmental health officials, said:

"We regularly find asbestos contamination in gardens in housing estates, often on redeveloped brownfield sites.

"Concentrations can be disturbingly high."


Page 1 of 1

  • Last Updated: 07 November 2009 10:27 PM
  • Source: Scotland On Sunday
  • Location: Scotland
 
1

Charles Linskaill,

Edinburgh 08/11/2009 01:19:53

Asbestos, would be the last thing on your mind, lurking about our gardens, you have the garners gloves, now you will need an oxygen mask.



2

Fifi la Bonbon,

08/11/2009 03:00:32
#1 - assuming that you know anything about this subject, that's a lie.

The Compensation Act 2006, which was extended in short order to Scotland, made sure that workers with mesothelioma arising from exposure to asbestos could claim compensation from all potential parties on a joint and several basis, overturning a contrary decision from the House of Lords.

Why lie? Is your supposed patriotic desire to make a propaganda point for the nationalists so pressing that you would perpetrate a dishonesty and hope not to get caught out?
3

Pattester,

Galashiels 08/11/2009 05:15:21
#2 What did they expect to find you just have to look back a couple of weeks ago when the demolished the three blocks of flats in Edinburgh these building must have been full of asbestos as they were built during the time that it was widely used as a insulation material and what happens they blow them up and all the dust goes where???????? apart from everyone standing watching it goes all over the new houses they have built and all over the existing ones as well and lands in the gardens just waiting to be disturbed by someone digging so it can latch its self into the lungs of the residents.
4

drunken proffet,

Tassy 08/11/2009 06:49:30
You forgot Tetanus. I think that was the name, you cut yourself in the garden, first thing was get an anti tetanus injection. I knew folk who got Tetanus, well only one in seventy years, but the threat is there. Personally I do not dig anything in the garden but I am not adverse to sitting out on the lawn with a bottle of claret and a few ciggies. You can most likely die of that as well.
5

Age of Reason,

Aberdeen 08/11/2009 08:11:00
I'm sure this little anecdote is accurate -as far as it goes - BUT that's not far. As any expert will tell us, asbestos exists in many forms, and it is RAW asbestos which is potentialy dangerous.
BUT again - you have to ingest the asbestos, or worse still inhale the dust or fibres.
So thos e of us who played happily with little piles of asbestos, and made rivulets of Mercury when bored with asbestos, are safe so long as we kept our fingers out of our mouths. And if you've been using pesticides of any form you are well advised to keep garden-dirt out of your mouth.
Lastly, if asbestos IS found. watch the decontamination teams at work. First action is to wet the area - saturate with plain water, whereupon the fibres become virtually immobile in air and can be gathered and dumped. So unless you dig up a whole chunk of boiler lagging on a drydry day and lick your fingers, your risk is small - certainly smaller than that from exposure to a neighbour smoking upwind while you exerrt yourself.
6

Andrah,

Embrugh 08/11/2009 09:02:55
Another opportunity for the media and vested interests to scare the public on one of the so-called "dread hazards".

Asbestos is a mineral, and as pointed out above it does not become a significant risk unless it becomes airborne in a fine fibrous form.

The chances of that happening in a sodden Scottish garden is zilch.

There are many more realistic risks to elfansafety out there.

7

Unimpressed one,

08/11/2009 09:45:23
Are we talking about the lethal blue and brown asbestos or the completely harmless white stuff? I suspect the latter.
8

Beachcomber,

Edinburgh 08/11/2009 10:39:25
# 8 Unimpressed one.

My Father in law died with asbestosis, white asbestos
fibres where found in his lungs.

9

Lobo,

Texas 08/11/2009 13:15:20
Are they really worried about asbestos or do they want you to buy that government grown "tater"? Or maybe "soylent green"
Obama is trying as fast as he can for total control in the U.S. Your government is almost there.
Good luck my friends.
10

Richard P.,

Brechin, 08/11/2009 13:57:00
Just another scam to make us paranoid further. Now you can't even hide in your garden from the Moslem terrorists, not forgetting the Irish ones. You'll have to hide in your house wearing your hard-hat, ear and eye protectors, and a gas-mask.
You'd have to use the asbestos like snuff. And it would have to be dry. And who's got a bone-dry garden recently? Haven't we had enough of these government warnings ? Can't drink this, can't eat that, can't smoke. Now you can't dig your garden. But they'll still tax us.
11

Observer,,

Glasgow 08/11/2009 15:04:11
4 Don't be bloody daft they don't blow up multis that have asbestos in them unless it's removed first. There is a wee body called the Health and Safety Executive who get a say in such things. In buildings where the asbestos can't be safely removed they take them down floor by floor with appropriate precautions.

Fifi #1 was putting a spin on things (as he tends to do) but sure as hell wasn't lying. The Labour Govt, as with their Tory predecessors, dragged their feet until the very last minute before agreeing to compensate for damage caused by asbestos. We will never know how many people have died due to exposure to disturbed asbestos because we didn't start counting them until relatively recently even although the cause and effect was established in the early 1980's or thereabouts.
12

livilion,

livingston 08/11/2009 15:20:58

John MacDougall, the former MP for Glenrothes, launched a court action against the Ministry of Defence before he died last year after his request for a £300,000 payout was refused.

He believed that his lung cancer was contracted as a result of working at the Royal Naval dockyards in Rosyth in the 1960s and 1970s when he was exposed to asbestos.

In short, the government might accept your claim for compensation provided you die first.
13

livilion,

livingston 08/11/2009 15:44:51
I was stuck with a 1960s council built flat with fibro asbestos external panels front and back. This only came to light by accident during the 80s.

I couldn't then sell the flat because banks wouldn't lend mortgages on it, couldn't let it because tenants would be exposed to risk, and one neighbour, an old guy dying of mesothelioma, would regularly turn up on tv news to highlight the problem with predictable results, you couldn't give them away - I tried.

The guidance was: undisturbed it posed no health risk, but if it was disturbed, or weathered, asbestos dust/fibres entering the lungs could cause life threatening illness.

You could have said there was radioactive plutonium in the boards, the effect would have been no different, it only takes one micro-thin asbestos fibre to kill, white, blue or brown.
14

Fifi la Bonbon,

08/11/2009 16:03:43
#12 - I think it's shameful the way nationalists are trying to get political spin out of the awful things that happened to people with mesothelioma. Dragging its feet? The Compensation Act 2006 was passed in 2006, and the case of Barker v. Corus which created the injustice that the Act aimed to defeat was decided by the House of Lords in 2006. And it isn't the government that compensates people with the condition, it's the employers. If #1 was aware of this then #1 was lying, and I'm afraid you're spinning.
15

livilion,

livingston 08/11/2009 16:23:17
#11 Richard P.,Brechin
Rutherglem Maternity hospital was bulldozed after it was discovered to have been built on the site of a former chemical weapons factory.
They built the hospital on land that local councillors had to know was contaminated, now decades later it is asbestos from demolished factories they're finding.

I regularly head for the supermarket to buy up discounted healthscare food items because I recognise PhD students' dissertations can overexcite the media, but I certainly wouldn't buy property on contaminated land or knowingly expose my kids to that contamination.

Fifi what's with the 'nationalists spin'?
As far as I can see you're the only one trying to spin this into an independence issue, and frankly you look to me to be shooting your cause in the foot, again.

'Old' Labour were supposed to be on the side of the working man but if this New Labour govt wouldn't even compensate the PM's own long time pal dying of mesothelioma during the Glenrothes bye-election he caused, what chance has anyone else?
16

livilion,

livingston 08/11/2009 16:42:38
From Scottish Nationalist mouthpiece the Daily Mirror:
GOVERNMENT FACES ALMIGHTY BACKLASH OVER PLUERAL PLAQUE COMPENSATION

10/07/2009

"Working people deserve better than token payments from the public purse in a bid to save insurers a fortune.

The Government faces an almighty backlash if it tries to wriggle out of commitments made to those diagnosed with pleural plaques.

Should Ministers go ahead with a plan to award limited one-off sums of just £5,000 to employees already shown to have scarring of the lungs, they will betray their party's natural supporters who will understandably feel badly cheated.

Gordon Brown led the country to expect a fair settlement instead of a shoddy deal cooked up after lobbying by an insurance industry scheming to save £1.4billion.

Victims of pleural plaques live under the cloud of developing an incurable illness that means an agonising death warrant.

The honourable course would be to turn the clock back 18 months to when sufferers automatically received compensation and established legal liability.

We cannot help but wonder if this case involved the wealthy and influential, instead of ordinary working people, this Government would be rather more generous."

In the words of the song: Who's lying now?
17

livilion,

livingston 08/11/2009 16:44:55
Isn't 'sorry' so hard to say?
18

Buckfastleigh,

08/11/2009 17:00:15
this subject is too serious to be joked about.

No level or type of amiante/asbesto/salamander is safe to breathe or to ingest, Blue, white or brown in whatever form mineral magnesiom/aluminium silicates comes i fibres of all shapes and lengths which lodge in your cavities and STAY there, where they will at some time or other provide oncological stimuli for which no therapy is effective. A most horrible agony awaits.

We need to know where the stuff is and preferably separate humans fron all traces of it.
19

Richard P.,

Brechin, 08/11/2009 18:42:12
My parents and I lived in a pre-fab that was made of the stuff. Does anyone remember a rawlplug substitute that was pure asbestos ? The idea was to put a small quantity onto the palm of your hand, spit on it, and roll it around, probably whilst smoking, and feed it into a drilled hole using the pointed tool provided. It was good stuff. Did the job, and I don't think anyone died from using it.
'Contaminated land !' There's no hope for you. you're totally paranoid.
20

,

08/11/2009 20:00:49
Comment Removed By Administrator
Reason:
21

livilion,

livingston 08/11/2009 21:20:43
#20 Richard P

I wonder if you'd seen someone die a long and painful death from asbestos in the lung if you'd be quite so cavalier?

You would not necessarily realise how many people you knew suffered due to this material because the symptoms can often take twenty or thirty years to present.

Paranoid? Maybe, but then being stuck with a property I couldn't give away because of asbestos, my best pal working in a lab investigating asbestos contamination, and watching an old Clyde boilermaker neighbour shrivel and die, unable to move without his oxygen cylinder, will do that to you.

If you are insensitive enough to want your family to live on contaminated land I'm sure there are bargains to be had waiting out there, so long as you don't care about your kids future, don't require a mortgage and have no plans later to try selling on.

On the bright side I'm sure you could be in line some day for a coveted Darwin award.
22

livilion,

livingston 08/11/2009 21:30:21
#21 Not available
Being shot with a handgun might relatively speaking be safer than standing in the path of a speeding train, but that is not the same as being 'quite safe'.

FYI
HSE Press Release E010:02 - 5 February 2002

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

HSE confirms white asbestos remains a threat

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

HSE has today confirmed that white asbestos (chrysotile) is a major health hazard.

All asbestos can cause cancer and the vast bulk of scientific evidence in the UK and abroad regards the risk from white asbestos as proven
23

Jimmy Fae the West,

In the Land O' Green Ginger. (HULL) 08/11/2009 22:36:56
#2,

Helen Liddell was the leader of the Labour party Nay-sayers on Asbestos compensation for the victims. Have you really never heard of the struggle of Clydebank Action group on Asbestos ignored for so long by New Labour friend of the businessman?

Have you really never heard of Chester Street Insurance Holdings Ltd which went belly up with the victims money?

I am assuming that you too know sod all about the subject!
24

Jimmy Fae the West,

In the Land O' Green Ginger. (HULL) 08/11/2009 22:38:23
That should read #3 Fifi la Bonbon, who wrote;
assuming that you know anything about this subject, that's a lie.

 

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