Despite all types of asbestos being banned in the UK since 1999, it still kills thousands of people every year.
One of the UK’s biggest manufacturers of asbestos and the industry bodies that it co-founded historically withheld information on risks posed by the carcinogenic material, playing down the dangers while lobbying the government for product warnings to be moderately tempered.
Asbestos Research Council (ARC), of which Cape was a founding member, from 1966 successfully lobbied the government for regulation of asbestos products to be on a “maximum allowable concentration” basis rather than the “no dust policy” that had been proposed.
Documents also show Cape’s in-house sampling data threw up significantly higher dust counts than industry standards for accepted levels of exposure, but data unfavourable to Cape was withheld. Cape began to label its product in 1976 with a “take care with Asbestos” warning, it said “breathing asbestos dust can damage health”, but made no reference to the risk of mesothelioma. In a 1976 booklet by the Asbestos Information Committee, of which Cape was also a founding member, said: “The normal use of asbestos products should not be a cause for anxiety.”
Harminder Bains whose father died of mesothelioma said she felt “revulsion and anger” when going through the documents.
“They clearly show that Cape knew of the high risk of fatal disease, yet deliberately withheld information and lobbied the government to protect their profits,” she said. “As a result of their greed, many men and women, including my father, have lost their lives."
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