Asbestos Excluded From School Buildings Review Risking Health Of Children And Teachers
Asbestos in schools is an appalling legacy which still kills teachers and puts lives of children at risk every year, yet according to The Independent On Sunday who have seen a leaked Dept of Education email; the Government has deliberately excluded asbestos from the review of the structural and internal conditions of UK schools on the grounds of cost!
It believes that tackling the risks to schoolchildren and teachers could cost hundreds of millions, simply because asbestos in schools has long been ignored.
The Independent On Sunday news item says:
An internal Department for Education email, seen by The Independent on Sunday, makes it clear that pressure to include asbestos in the assessment of the state of schools, which begins in April and will be used to inform future funding, had to be resisted due to "cost implications and the fact that asbestos management should already be carried out under existing legal requirements". The memo, dated September 2011, suggests that the survey programme "might well be able to provide some prompts and checks on that wider process, however".
It goes on:
Critics claim the Government's attitude to the deadly disease is highlighted by comments that Nick Gibb, the Schools minister, is said to have made to asbestos campaigners three years ago. Referring to the potential costs of dealing with asbestos, at a meeting in the Commons, he is alleged to have remarked: "You are telling me that I will have to cripple the education budget to save the lives of a few thousand middle-aged people."
Mr Gibb, an opposition MP at the time of the 2009 meeting, denied the claims yesterday: "It is totally absurd to suggest that I said these things. It is not my view and has never been my view – my view is that the health and welfare of pupils and staff is absolutely paramount and should never be jeopardised."
The problem is a major concern and vast in scale.
It has been known for decades that over 75 per cent of the UK’s schools contain some form of asbestos and that it is in various conditions. Some can be left as it is contained, whilst other forms can be found uncovered in school notice boards for example.
Pinning items to notice boards, and walls containing asbestos can result in it being disturbed and exposing it to the environment; making it more fragile and able to be broken down into fine fibres which can then be inhaled as it floats around in the air.
The HSE recently warned that teachers in schools should refrain from pinning anything to walls and notice boards in case undetected asbestos exists in the structure of the building.
It is of course not disputed that asbestos is deadly when very tiny fibres are inhaled. The health implications are enormous and it can result in mesothelioma, a form of cancer in the lungs, and asbestosis which permanently scars the lungs making it almost impossible to breathe in severe cases.
Exposure to asbestos does not result in immediate health issues and can take several decades for symptoms to appear.
The Government is quite happy to put lives of both teachers and pupils at risk, and this risk is adequately identified in The Independent on Sunday news article:
“There has been a 15-fold rise in mesothelioma deaths in Britain since 1967, with more than 2,300 in 2009 (men accounted for 83 per cent). The annual death toll from asbestos-related diseases in Britain alone is expected to be at least 5,000 by 2015.
More than 228 teachers have died of mesothelioma since 1980, according to the campaign group Asbestos in Schools, who, citing US government research, believe a further nine children will die for every teacher dying from the disease, resulting in more than 2,000 deaths of children in adulthood.”
Read the full article here
Source: Independent on Sunday
