Horrifying extent of NHS asbestos danger exposed

Last week, the Mail launched a landmark campaign against the scourge of asbestos in Britain's public buildings by highlighting the plight of our schools. 

Today, Steve Boggan reveals how the increasingly dilapidated state of our hospitals – 90 per cent of which contain asbestos – means that healthcare staff are three times more likely to develop the asbestos-related cancer mesothelioma than the general public. 

Just as people of a certain age know where they were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Dr Janet Leese always remembered exactly where she was during the Great Storm of 1987.

That was the night that howling winds tore away plastic sheeting covering renovations at the hospital where she worked, showering her with dust that contained asbestos fibres.

'The dust was everywhere,' recalls her husband John Blunt, 64. 'Back then, it wasn't unusual for junior doctors to work three nights on the run, and I would visit her, taking her something to eat or just cheering her up.

'The dust was so thick that I could draw lines on the windows with my finger. And then the cleaners came along, sweeping it all away in clouds. I was only there briefly, but Janet was exposed for days. Of course, we can't be completely sure that was the single incident that would go on to kill her, but it seems very likely.'

Dr Leese died aged just 57 in 2014 from mesothelioma, a cancer affecting the mesothelium, a membrane surrounding the lungs, heart and intestines. In the vast majority of cases, the lungs are worst affected. It can take 20-60 years between exposure to asbestos fibres and the appearance of symptoms – usually chest pains, coughing and breathlessness caused by a build-up of fluid on the lungs.

Once diagnosed, most victims die within a year. There is no cure, only treatments such as chemotherapy and immunotherapy that can slow down the spread of the cancer. Not everyone who is exposed to asbestos develops mesothelioma, but in those who do, it is always terminal.

Asbestos-related illness is the biggest industrial killer in the UK, with at least 5,000 people a year dying from it, more than half from mesothelioma. Others suffer from asbestosis, a hardening of the lungs, or from lung cancer.

To put that number into perspective, the most recent tragedy involving building materials – sub-standard cladding – was the Grenfell fire disaster in which 72 people died.

For decades, the official policy of successive governments has been to leave asbestos where it is if sealed in voids, painted over or not degraded and shedding fibres.

But since tens of thousands of hospitals, schools and other public buildings are now being used beyond their intended lifespans and are in a poor state of repair, campaigners argue this policy should be abandoned. The UK has the highest mesothelioma mortality rate in the world with

60 per million in men and 13 per million in women. In the US, the rate is less than nine per million.

The result is a death toll equivalent to one Grenfell fire tragedy every five days.

The Daily Mail has launched a campaign, Asbestos: Britain's Hidden Killer, demanding that government inaction end now. A national digital database should be established encompassing all non-domestic buildings so that we know where the substance is located, and what condition it is in. This register should then be used as a tool to enable a phased removal of asbestos, starting with the worst-affected hospitals and schools.

Around 90 per cent of the UK's hospitals contain asbestos, resulting in healthcare staff being three times more likely to develop mesothelioma than the general public. According to the latest NHS figures, the backlog of maintenance required in hospitals amounts to a staggering £11.6 billion, up by over 13 per cent since 2021/22 and following 14 years of neglect and mismanagement.

So dilapidated are many of Britain's hospitals that the NHS Confederation, previously known as the National Association of Health Authorities and Trusts, said capital spending in England and Wales should be almost doubled, from £7.7 billion this year to £14.1 billion.

Many hospitals are also thought to contain reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC), which has been associated with building collapses. RAAC was typically used in conjunction with asbestos until the latter was banned in 1999.

'There are considerable amounts of asbestos in hospitals, and it is managed, but many of these buildings are now occupied way beyond their intended life spans, making that management more difficult and precarious,' says John Richards, senior representative of the trade body Asbestos Testing and Consulting.

'It can't be managed in perpetuity. It would be best for all concerned if we began a phased programme of removal as a matter of urgency.'

Dr Leese trained at the East Birmingham Hospital, now known as the Heartlands Hospital Trust, between 1984 and 1988. She later went on to be a GP in Cheswick Green near Solihull – where a street has been named after her. The trust later admitted liability, paying out damages, which her family donated to the charity Mesothelioma UK to pay for a specialist nurse.

'After Janet died, I received more than 1,500 letters from patients telling me how wonderful she was and what a positive impact she had had on their lives,' says John. 'She was such a kind and loving person. Her death was a real loss felt by the whole community.'

John and Janet had just returned home from celebrating their silver wedding anniversary in Hawaii in October 2013 when her first symptoms emerged – breathlessness and fatigue. She was diagnosed with mesothelioma in the November and two months later she was dead.

'We felt we were at the pinnacle of our relationship and everything in our lives was going so well,' says John. 'To have your life laid out beautifully before you like that, and then to have it all burned down was devastating. It took a great toll on me, our son, Richard, and daughter, Katie.'

John went on to become a trustee of the charity Asbestos Support Central England and is a staunch advocate of the establishment of a national asbestos database.

'The Government simply has to stop ignoring the problem,' he says. 'At least if we had a register of buildings, we would know where it was and we could begin doing something about it.'

Lawyers with long-term experience of representing victims say they are now seeing fewer people who worked with asbestos and more who were simply working in surroundings containing it.

'Although it was banned in 1999, people are still being exposed to deadly asbestos,' says Harminder Bains of Leigh Day solicitors. Her father Hari died from mesothelioma after he was exposed at the naval dockyard in Chatham, Kent.

'Now I'm seeing more hospital and school staff suffering from mesothelioma, as a consequence of simply working in buildings. Most of them have never smoked or done anything else to injure their health. I'm regularly now seeing people dying from mesothelioma in their 40s and early 50s.'

In the 1990s, Adrian Budgen, of law firm Irwin Mitchell, successfully represented the first claimant exposed to asbestos in a hospital, a renowned plastic surgeon named James Emerson, who was only 46. He had been exposed at the Middlesex Hospital in London.

Adrian says: 'Sadly, we have seen many more healthcare professionals with mesothelioma over the last 25 years or so; asbestos is no respecter of socio-economic status or occupation. This is no major surprise given that around nine in ten hospitals still contain asbestos, as do the majority of our schools.

'Over the years we have represented a great many engineers, plumbers, electricians, joiners and tilers who have installed asbestos in hospitals or who have maintained boilers, service pipes and other apparatus. However, we are now seeing more healthcare professionals who have had indirect, low-level exposures. It is a worrying trend.'

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Andrea Jubb, 53, was a midwife at Barnsley Hospital for three decades before falling ill in July 2022. She died just six weeks later. 'We'd been to Silverstone for a few days to watch the racing, and we'd done a lot of walking,' says her husband, Phil, 57.

'When we got home, she said she was feeling very tired but so was I so we didn't think much of it. She was going through the menopause and, as a nurse, she put the symptoms – fatigue, high temperature and so on – down to that.'

However, Andrea collapsed and was admitted to hospital where mesothelioma went undiagnosed until after she died. Her death certificate records sepsis as the cause, but Phil's solicitor, Nick Woods of Irwin Mitchell, says test results that came in after her death found she had mesothelioma.

'Andrea trained and worked as a nurse at St James's Hospital in Leeds in the late 1980s and early 1990s and we suspect that's where she was exposed to asbestos,' says Phil. 'She lived in the nurses' quarters there for three years and she said they used to use tunnels under the hospital to get to where they were needed.

'There were pipes down there lagged with what we think could have been asbestos. My own research has found other mesothelioma cases involving St James's Hospital.'

Such uncertainty is not uncommon. The latency period between exposure and symptoms appearing can be as long as 60 years, and many victims find it difficult, or impossible, to remember where they were working or what the conditions were like in order to put together a legal claim for compensation.

Irwin Mitchell is appealing for hospital workers to come forward and describe the conditions at St James's Hospital in the 1980s and 1990s.

Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust says: 'We take claims like these very seriously and urge the family of Mrs Jubb and their legal representative to get in touch with us as soon as possible.'

Any future legal action will provide little comfort for Phil. He is more interested in safeguarding future workers than acquiring financial restitution. Before Andrea died, she was put into an induced coma and then on to a ventilator. Eventually, unable to see her suffer any more, Phil and their children, Daniel, 26, and Joshua, 23, had to take the decision to let her go.

'It was the hardest decision I have had to take in my life,' says Phil. 'The doctor said there was nothing more they could do for her. He said we could take as much time as we wanted to say goodbye, and let him know when we were ready. At 10.59 on August 19, 2022 I nodded to him and by 11.02 she was dead.

'Andrea was the kindest person I knew and the world was a much better place with her in it,' he says. 'To lose her so suddenly and at such a young age was devastating and, to this day, I still struggle to navigate life without her.'

Accurate figures for the number of healthcare workers and hospital support staff affected by mesothelioma are difficult to come by for several reasons.

First, the Health and Safety Executive records the professions of people who die below the age of 75 – but 70 per cent of mesothelioma victims are over that age when they die.

Second, only a person's last profession is recorded, which means if they were once a nurse but then became something else, only that last job will be used in official figures. And, third, if, say, a plumber worked in a hospital and later died from mesothelioma, their death would go in statistics for 'plumbers', and not 'hospital plumbers'.

However, Dr Peter Allmark, a researcher at the Mesothelioma UK Research Centre at the University of Sheffield, says deaths due to exposure to asbestos in hospitals are massively under-reported.

According to the Office for National Statistics, 177 NHS staff died from mesothelioma between 2002 and 2015.

But last year, Dr Allmark made a Freedom of Information request to NHS Resolution, which deals with claims of negligence against the health service, and found that between 2013 and 2022, 360 mesothelioma claims were made against the NHS. Given that each mesothelioma claimant will die because the disease is always fatal, this suggests a much higher rate than the official figures imply.

'And the figure of 360 is likely to be much higher, too, because these legal cases are brought by no-win, no-fee lawyers, and they only take on cases where there is more than a 50 per cent chance of winning,' says Dr Allmark. 'When you take that into account – the deaths where it wasn't possible to launch legal action – the figure would be almost double.'

The charity Mesothelioma UK says that, counter-intuitively, many health workers are unaware of the risks associated with asbestos. Kim Sunley, head of health, safety and wellbeing at the Royal College of Nursing, says: 'We've been working really hard to raise awareness of asbestos among our members because we think people believe asbestos, and the diseases it causes, is a thing of the past.

'If you go into hospitals, you will see asbestos warning stickers where ceilings are crumbling, or where there are leaks, near rotting window frames or windowsills. We've been educating staff – especially younger members whose generation may have never heard of asbestos – to avoid it, how to report it, and how to stay safe.

'But we shouldn't be in this position, and until the Government finally sits up and takes notice, hospital workers will continue to die.'