Cape Asbestos

Barking and Dagenham is the tenth worst place in the whole of the UK for men experiencing the effects of asbestos which has been called the worst industrial killer. The nine boroughs worse than Barking and Dagenham are all in shipbuilding regions.

 

 

Former workers at Barking Power Station (pictured here in the 1950's) are also suffering from asbestos related diseases)

 

The exceptionally high asbestos mortality rate in this part of London is a marker of how hard the area has been hit by the legacy of Cape Asbestos, the industrial killing machine that used to be in Harts Lane.

 

In addition, the most recent Health and Safety Executive (HSE) show that Barking and Dagenham is the worst borough in the country for the numbers of women dying from mesothelioma. The death rate for women from this cancer is usually six times less than men, with women suffering around 15% of the total number of deaths from mesothelioma every year.  

 

· See Sally Moore’s Guardian article on the health risk to families of asbestos workers.

 

· See and download Sally Moore’s article in the New Statesman on the problems facing women with asbestos related diseases.

 

 

Women’s asbestos exposure is often categorised as environmental exposure, including washing dusty overalls of men working with asbestos. But in the Harts Lane Cape factory women worked alongside men. 

 

The two other areas with high asbestos deaths for women also had significant numbers working directly with the fibres in Sunderland, in shipbuilding and manufacturing, and in Blackburn and Darwen where women worked in gas mask factories.