You are here: Home Cancer Research British Safety Council Declares Need for Asbestos Audit
  • Increase font size
  • Default font size
  • Decrease font size
Search

mesothelioma

British Safety Council Declares Need for Asbestos Audit

London, England - July 12, 2009

The British Safety Council is urging a national audit of asbestos in schools all over the United Kingdom. In the UK, 16 teachers die each year from mesothelioma or other asbestos-related illnesses, and many other people in other professions also succumb to the disease. In the US, mesothelioma kills between 2,500 and 3,000 people each year.

Brian Nimick, the chief executive of the British Safety Council, stated that it was unacceptable that no risk assessment of the problem in UK schools had been completed. The National Union of Teachers agrees with the British Safety Council. Mr. Nimick spoke at a conference on corporate responsibility, and informed his audience that there had been 228 asbestos-related deaths among teachers in the UK over the last 14 years. Nimick is urging UK officials to conduct the asbestos audit, which will catalog and eventually remove asbestos. "It is unacceptable that the UK...has not yet undertaken a national audit of asbestos in schools and has not comprehensively assessed the risks that teachers and pupils in each and every school face; and has not allocated appropriate resources to take urgent remedial action," Nimick said.

Nimick continued, in hopes of driving his point home. "In 2009 it is estimated that more than 4,000 people will die from cancers caused by past exposure to asbestos in the workplace - making it the greatest single cause of work-related deaths in the UK...In the short-term school heads and chairs of governors may want to ask themselves this question: 'Would you allow members of your family to attend a school or college where the asbestos risk had not been assessed?'"

Christine Blower, the General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, will support Nimick's call for an audit, and has promised to take up the matter with Prime Minister Gordon Brown. "Teachers, school staff and children need to be in a safe learning environment with no risk to their health or safety...In particular the risk assessment needs to focus on children, who are particularly vulnerable."