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Asbestos related diseases, principally asbestosis, fibrosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma, are the largest and most costly diseases ever encountered in the UK.

The main health hazard is from breathing airborne asbestos fibres, and the latency period for asbestos related diseases can be anywhere from 15 to 50 years plus. Exposures from the 1950s to the 1970s are still very much an unknown problem.

Once inhaled, asbestos is impossible to remove from the lungs, where it eventually hardens, creates tumours or tissue thickening that eventually disables and then slowly suffocates the victim.

ASBESTOS KILLS

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Asbestos related diseases (mesothelioma, asbestosis and lung cancer) are thought to kill between 3500–4000 people a year in the UK- That is more than are killed on our country’s roads each year- with this figure being expected to increase to 10,000 by 2011.  The vast majority of these victims being maintenance workers / tradesmen who have worked on properties built before 2000. 1 in 17 British carpenters born in the 1940s will die of mesothelioma - a cancer of the lining of the lung caused by asbestos - according to new research published in the British Journal of Cancer. The risks from asbestos must be managed effectively to ensure that such misery and suffering are reduced in the future.