Employers must remember their duty of care

The recent RTE Prime Time investigation which alleged that a major asbestos company which operated in the Republic knew about the risks of asbestos but chose not to tell its workers serves as a timely reminder of employers' serious duty of care to safeguard their workers' health.

Prime Time acknowledged that the Tegral plant in Athy, Co Kildare, no longer used asbestos and that its Drogheda plant was now closed, but alleged that while Tegral was co-owned by the British asbestos giant Turner & Newall, it failed to pass on information about the health effects of asbestos to its workers.

Tegral Building Products Limited is now under new ownership and a spokesman declined to comment on the allegations contained in the programme. He said the company was "trying to deal responsibly with a legacy from the past and they did not think it would be responsible to make comments or involve themselves in a public debate".

Asbestos can lead to serious diseases, which are caused by asbestos fibres getting into the lungs. For instance, with asbestosis, lung tissue becomes scarred, damaging the lung's elasticity. This results in reduced lung capacity, restricted breathing and an insufficient absorption of oxygen into the blood.

Mesothelioma is a rare cancer the only known cause of which is exposure to asbestos but, as Prime Time reported, this rare disease is less so in Athy. Diagnosis "even in the hands of experienced pathologists, is not easy", says Margaret R. Becklake in Asbestos-Related Diseases in the International Labour Organisation's recent edition of the Encyclopaedia of Occupational Health and Safety. It is possible that more people have died from the disease than we realise.

Other asbestos-related diseases and conditions are lung cancer, small airway disease, pleural plaques and cancer of the larynx. Other cancers for which asbestos has been implicated are cancers of the stomach, oesophagus, colon, rectum, ovary, gall bladder, bile ducts, pancreas and kidney, according to Ms Becklake.

Asbestosis has a latency period of 15 to 30 years after exposure to asbestos, while mesothelioma can remain latent for 30 or 40 years after exposure. Doctors in the Athy area have reported an increase in the number of people presenting with asbestos-related conditions. Worldwide, it is expected that the number of people presenting with asbestos-related diseases will increase dramatically in future years, an expectation related to the peak world production of some six million tons of asbestos in the mid-1970s.

Britain's Health and Safety Executive has recently published a 44-page booklet Working With Asbestos Cement. Describing asbestos cement and explaining where it can be found, the booklet provides practical advice on precautions to take in order to prevent or reduce exposure to asbestos fibres. It is aimed at employers, managers, builders and contractors involved in construction, maintenance, refurbishment or demolition.

It explains why asbestos is dangerous, what asbestos cement is, what asbestos cement has been used for and how to identify and work safely with it. The booklet does not deal with asbestos insulation, asbestos coating or asbestos insulation board for which specialist asbestos contractors must normally be engaged.

Working With Asbestos Cement, price £7.50 sterling (€11.17), is available from HSE Books, PO Box 1999, Sudbury, Suffolk CO10 6FS. Telephone: 0044 1787 881165. Fax: 0044 1787 313995.