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The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) advises that
asbestos is the greatest single cause of work-related
deaths in the UK.
The HSE warns that 1000 people a year who had worked
in the building industry, such as plumbers, heating and
ventilation engineers, electricians and joiners die from
asbestos cancers.
The three main types of asbestos are blue (crocidolite),
brown (amosite), and white (chrysotile). Unfortunately,
during most of the 20th century there was a widely held
belief that white asbest
os was a safe material and not harmful. The
scientific view is that there is no recognized threshold
of exposure to white (chrysotile) asbestos below which
exposure could be said to be safe. Blue and brown
asbestos are regarded as being even more hazardous to
health than white asbestos.
The courts in the UK now hold that from the 1960s at
the latest employers in the UK should have known of the
dangers of
asbestos dust, and were under a duty of care to
their workers to take steps to eliminate the risk to
workers from exposure to asbestos dust. Even before the
1960s there was knowledge that asbestos dust was
dangerous, and at the time it was not known what
constituted a safe level of exposure.
Consequently, a reasonable employer would have taken
precautions to avoid its workers inhaling asbestos dust.
This is the law applied by the Court of Appeal in
claims for compensation on behalf of
victims of
asbestos diseases, such as in the case in 2001 of
Jeromson v Shell Tankers (UK) Limited.
Please
also read:
Asbestos
compensation case studies
Compensation for dermatitis or skin complaints
If your employer has failed to prevent or
safeguard against your injuries then you may be entitled
to make a claim.
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