I am currently in the process of moving house. While this is a stressful life event, there’s not normally much to report: Pick up the keys, move your stuff over, notify everyone of your new address and put the kettle on. The stress mainly happens before the actual move.
However, that’s not been the case for me this time round. The property we have bought was previously owned by someone who hadn’t changed anything for 50 years. So, while we actually started work on the house back in November, the work to turn it into a ‘habitable family environment for the 21st Century,’ is still in progress. In the meantime, we’re staying (with two young children) at my in-laws elsewhere in town. This situation could itself become the subject of an entire future ‘Last Word.’
For the first month, the renovation plans went well. Wallpaper and carpet was removed. Electrics were upgraded and a new hot water tank was installed. The bathroom is going in shortly and the kitchen is on order. Even the paint colours have been chosen!
Something had to go awry and then, we found asbestos, that infamous material that haunts a large number of properties from the first half of the 20th Century. We had to undergo a two-week wait while the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) ‘reviewed the methodology’ of the removal process. Then a licenced (and expensive) removal firm came to take it all out at the start of December. Quite a time-consuming and stressful endeavour.
‘Asbestos’ is a term covering six naturally-occurring silicates, mined industrially since the late 1800s. The minerals’ common physical characteristic is their asbestiform crystal structures. This means they are long and thin, with an aspect ratio of around 20:1. In bulk this property leads to excellent themal resistance and fire-abatement properties, hence their use in older gypsum boards, insulating boards, cement / concrete boards and a host of other building products.
However, when disturbed, the fibres separate easily as a very fine dust. They are easy to inhale and ingest, becoming lodged deep in the lungs. Inhalation can lead to a variety of serious and fatal illnesses, including lung cancer, mesothelioma and asbestosis. You know a building material is bad if it has a fatal disease named after it.
The fact that these conditions can take decades to present means that the grim legacy of asbestos, certainly among those who produced asbestos-containing products and installers of the same, continues to this day. The World Health Organisation (WHO) and International Labour Organization (ILO) estimate that around 255,000 lives are lost to asbestos every year,1 30 - 40 years after peak global production. Despite the link between asbestos fibres and these conditions having been suspected since the early 1900s, peak production of asbestos was not until around 1980. The WHO estimates that 125 million people remain exposed on an occupational basis every day. When cheap, readily-available and safe alternatives exist, this is completely unacceptable.
When we received confirmation that there were indeed two types of asbestos in the house - including the particularly nasty ‘blue’ asbestos - I was standing next to the plasterer, who was busying himself with the kitchen walls. “What are we doing now...” he said, “...that’s like asbestos but we don’t know about it yet?” This is an interesting question that only leads to more questions: What exactly are the carcinogenic properties of the dust from the 50 year-old compacted carpet underlay that I’m breathing in? What are the multi-decade effects of the resins from all of our cheap-yet-stylish flat-packed furniture? Why does this plaster ooze more oil than it used to and could that be harmful? Will cement made with certain additives degrade over time, with health implications? Could there be something else as bad as asbestos lurking in the house right now? We started to get quite worried.
As the conversation shifted to the precautionary principle, which states we shouldn’t actually use any material until there is proof it is not harmful, the plasterer concluded, “With that attitude, you’d never even walk past a diesel engine. They are really bad!” He has a point, but given that he’d just lighted a cigarette, the conversation had become a bit hypothetical. Smoking surely has health outcomes far worse than any of the things on our hazards list.
His response when I pointed this out? “Yeah, but at least I know what smoking does!” Like the many manufacturers of asbestos, the plasterer is happy with what he’s doing. Perhaps our attitude to risk is more risky than any material!
