In the summer issue of Your Witness Peter Robinson of Bradley Environmental outlined the difficulty of accurately assessing exposure to asbestos in a working environment. As he pointed out, cases arising out of recent events are rare, the great bulk of exposure now reaping its toll having occurred upwards of 20 years ago.
What should be surprising, however, is that there are any prosecutions these days at all. Everyone knows – or should know by now – that asbestos is a dangerous substance when it is disturbed. The law to control the limits of working with asbestos have been long in the formulation and subject to an enormous amount of publicity, both in the trade press (such as Construction National) and on national television.
Most cases reported are of successful prosecutions by HSE. The latest of these was in Birmingham in May, when a building surveyor was fined £4,000 with a further £4,016 costs for undertaking demolition that exposed people to asbestos. This, of course, wasn't a case of quantifying risk to a particular individual: it was a straightforward case of someone flouting rules of which everyone in the aware.
The HSE inspector involved in the case probably expressed best the sense of head-shaking incredulity that the practice continues.
Karl Raw said: "As a building surveyor with many years experience [the defendant] should have been aware of his duty to manage the asbestos risk in a nondomestic property."
Among those even more obviously in the 'should have known better' category is a local authority, Wear Valley District Council, which was fined £18,000 for continuing to operate and do maintenance work in a plant room in which asbestos had been identified in 2001. Maybe most shocking of all, the culprits even included – horror of horrors – a N ational Health Service Trust.
Again, St George's Healthcare N HS Trust in Tooting was repeatedly made aware of its responsibilities and did nothing.
Another HSE inspector, Hazel McCallum, commented: "It is disappointing when large organisations such as the trust put people at risk by not taking a responsible approach. The risks associated with exposure to airborne asbestos fibres are well known and the measures required to control it are easily achievable."
But then, as Peter Robinson pointed out, nobody died and no limbs were lost. Yet!