Sunday, April 26, 2009

Asbestos HUB

Asbestos HUB

UK Teacher Gets Cancer From Asbestos In School

Posted: 26 Apr 2009 09:03 AM PDT

Ok so it’s a UK headline, but horrifying nonetheless. A teacher, not an asbestos worker or family member, or anyone else you’d expect to get mesothelioma.

After being exposed for 30 years to asbestos in schools, Carole Hagedorn was diagnosed in June of last year. At age 58, the secondary school languages teacher has had to retire due to ill-health. The cancer is virtually untreatable.

She wants teachers to campaign for the removal of asbestos from schools. It should be everyone, not just teachers. What about the kids?

“Why should a teacher expect to get an industrial disease?” she said. “The pain can be worse than lung cancer. It’s too late for me, but it’s not too late to get rid of asbestos.”

A UK government school refurbishment and rebuilding programme – Building Schools for the Future (BSF) – was leaving asbestos in schools that did not require a complete rebuild. She told teachers that schools were being fitted with the latest technology, but asbestos was being left in ceilings.

“There’s lots of talk about the technological innovations that can be brought into schools, but surely the government’s basic function is to protect the lives of its citizens.”

In the last 25 years, at least 178 teachers have died from mesothelioma.

Hank Roberts, a former teacher from Brent, London, said some schools had been built to have a lifespan of 20 years.

“Thirty or 40 years on, these buildings are in decay. They are leaking and crumbling, but we, the teachers and our children, carry on working in them – day in, day out.”

The Health and Safety Executive says it is safer to leave undisturbed or undamaged asbestos in place and carefully manage it, rather than risk damaging it by removal. Not in Ms. Hagedorn’s case apparently.
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