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- [00:01]
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- [01:28]
Tom White
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:32]
Dr. Miranda Belcher
Hello, and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Belcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Tom White about his book titled Bad Dust A History of the Asbestos Disaster, published by repeater in 2025. Now this is a very helpful book that takes us honestly, not even that far back in time. That's part of what's fascinating here, because we don't have to go back centuries to get to a point where asbestos was used in all sorts of buildings, in schools, in hospitals and housing. And then again, fast forward not that far and that becomes a massive problem. This is actually a relatively recent disaster, in fact, as we're probably going to discuss ones in which we're still living with. And so this is both going to be a discussion about history, but also about the present and maybe even about the future. So Tom, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [02:28]
Tom White
Hi Miranda, thanks for having me.
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Dr. Miranda Belcher
Could you start us off by introducing yourself a little bit and telling us why you decided to write this book?
- [02:35]
Tom White
Of course, yeah, I Don't think anybody has a happy story to associate with asbestos necessarily. And mine is also quite an unhappy one. So my granddad was a carpenter and he breathed in asbestos fibers probably some point in the 1950s when he was doing his apprenticeship. And then he was diagnosed with an asbestos related cancer in the mid-1990s. And as we might talk about, the cancer that he had is particularly sort of aggressive. So he was diagnosed in sort of November 1994 and then passed away in May of the following year. And I was only very young at the time, but, but I remember sort of even as a kid, kind of intuitively understanding that something really sort of awful and tragic had happened. And then when I was a bit older, I spoke to my parents about what happened to him and it was this thing called asbestos that had killed him. And my sort of day job at the moment I work in education and I'm a writer as well. And for a long time I sort of wanted to write something about asbestos. And it wasn't until kind of a few years ago that I finally sort of got around to doing it.
- [03:49]
Dr. Miranda Belcher
Yeah, that is, I think, unfortunately all too relatable a story, but definitely speaks to kind of why a book like this is important. And I think a really fascinating starting point then for the rest of our discussion is a really simple question that despite the prevalence unfortunately of stories like yours, is actually maybe not something that we all know the answer to, which is, what actually is asbestos?
- [04:12]
Tom White
Yeah, I mean it is a good question. And I say in the introduction of my book that when I talked to people about my book whilst I was writing it, that was the question that people often ask. You're like, look, you know, most people, nearly everybody had heard of asbestos, but people kind of said to me, yeah, but what actually is it? Or like, where does it come from? I think there was a kind of presumption that it's a kind of man made substance. You know, like lots of the really sort of malign materials in our sort of modern lives are man made. So thinking about like opiates and various types of forever chemicals, but asbestos is actually naturally occurring. So it's this sort of generic name for a group of minerals and there's several types of them, but there's three that have been used on a kind of commercial scale around the world. So there's chrysotile, what's commonly referred to as white asbestos and then amosite, brown asbestos and crocidolite blue asbestos. And they're naturally very sort of abundant and they often occur in mineral seams that are quite close to the earth's surface. So they're kind of, they're relatively easy to mine and to sort of, you know, people to get their, get their hands on and have been used for, you know, thousands of years in sort of various small scale applications. And asbestos is a kind of amazing material. Its kind of properties are very, very weird. It's a mineral, but it's also kind of fabric, like. So it's composed of all of these, like, very long strands that can be sort of peeled apart and sort of then sewn into fabric or kind of mixed with lots of other types of materials. So it really kind of lends itself to being incorporated into lots of other types of things. But the kind of properties that make it so kind of combinable and useful are kind of also what makes it so dangerous. So this idea that it can sort of spin out into all of these smaller and smaller fibres, that process goes on for kind of long after, long after those little merts become invisible to the human eye. The thing that was kind of known relatively early on in human history and then sort of became the kind of central part of the asbestos, the modern asbestos industry, is that it's a really, really good insulating material, so very good fireproofing material. And it's also something that can, you know, be incorporated with things like cement to give them extra tensile strength, but also to, to make them lighter. So there are kind of various uses to which it was. To which it was put.
- [06:43]
Dr. Miranda Belcher
We're going to get into those uses in a moment, but while we're on the topic of kind of what makes this so dangerous, can you just explain a bit more about kind of the fact it can be combined makes it dangerous? Like what, what's the harm here?
- [06:55]
Tom White
Well, each fibre of asbestos can be sort of teased apart into these smaller and smaller strands. So that makes it kind of useful for mixing it into things like cement or incorporating it into fabric to make sort of fireproofing materials or kind of using it in insulation materials. But as I say, that process sort of continues for kind of long after it becomes invisible to the human eye. So whenever you sort of use asbestos or whenever it's kind of disturbed, it produces all of these kind of unseen fibres that can kind of float in the air and then if they're inhaled, you know, they don't get caught at the back of the throat like lots of other larger particles do. They just sort of glide down into your lungs and the body kind of can't metabolize them, so they sort of stay there. Or they can cause traumatic damage to the lungs if inhaled in large quantities.
- [07:46]
Dr. Miranda Belcher
Okay, that doesn't sound great. We're going to come back to that. But we didn't know that as a general kind of population for a while, at least long enough for a modern asbestos industry to develop. So you mentioned that this has been known as a useful building material for quite a long time. But when, why? And how do we get kind of a big, modern industrial scale industry going?
- [08:08]
Tom White
Yeah, it's a good question. And really it's to do with the kind of the industrial revolution and in particular the use of steam engines. So there's this real sort of incentive in the 19th century to find materials that are good insulators and that can enable the transfer of heat. So asbestos industry really sort of comes out of that imperative. And the first asbestos mines, so commercial asbestos mines are in. Are in Italy, northern Italy, and they're kind of open in kind of 1850s, 1860s, and they're supplying like a relatively small market, really. And then a sort of big moment occurs a couple of decades later when chrysotal deposits are found in Quebec. So kind of a couple of hundred miles away from Montreal, this huge mining operation sort of begins on this land that's, you know, been sort of taken over. And that kind of inaugurates what we come to think of as the modern asbestos industry. And companies that have been investing in things like rubber and cotton insulation switch to asbestos. And like I was kind of saying earlier, because it's so abundant, there was like a clear kind of economic imperative to do so. Right. Because it was cheap, relatively cheap to mine and process, and there was a very large supply of it. So you have the mines in Canada and then kind of, as we might come on to talk about as well, the south of Africa, there's quite abundant asbestos deposits there as well. And then in the Urals, in Russia. So there's this kind of from the late 1900s, this real sort of expansion of the industry.
- [09:54]
Dr. Miranda Belcher
Yeah, I do want to talk about the southern African aspect of this, specifically South Africa, because as we're going through the 20th century and this becoming, you know, this continuing to be a really big industry, we obviously have apartheid South Africa where there's all sorts of countries that don't want to import things from that country anymore. And yet they're really important to this industry. So how central was South Africa to this asbestos industry?
- [10:19]
Tom White
Yeah, I mean, absolutely crucial. I mean, the book is about Britain and the kind of British asbestos disaster, that's what I focus on. I sort of. I kind of widened the scope a little bit at points to talk about other places during the world, in the world. But really my starting point was Britain. The thing that I realized kind of straight away and that I hadn't really sort of appreciated beforehand was that it's kind of impossible to talk about the British asbestos disaster without talking about the south of Africa. So a lot of the, you know, the majority of the asbestos that's used in Britain comes from South Africa. And we can sort of date this back to what's often called the kind of mineral revolution of the late 1800s. So the period of kind of new imperialism where Britain has sort of imperial control of large parts of the south of Africa and is importing various types of kind of raw materials back to the metropole. And this sort of South African asbestos industry emerges, as I call it in the book, a kind of side project for the directors of the large diamond mining companies. There's a guy called Francis Oates, who I write about in the book, who was a kind of mining engineer who kind of rose up to become like a very sort of well known figure in the diamond mining industry in Kimberley. And asbestos is this material that can be sort of mined relatively easily and exported. And for the first half of the, the 20th century, that industry is sort of relatively small scale. And a lot of it is done by these kind of small groups of miners who are working in something called the tributor system. So the tributor is somebody who buys the mining rights for a particular area of land, and then he subcontracts the mining operation to sort of various smaller groups. So this was often carried out in the kind of unit of the family. So you would have kind of mentioned doing the kind of rudimentary drilling and explosions to get at the asbestos, and then women and children would be sort of processing it and bundling it into sacks. But as the kind of first half of the 20th century wears on and sort of demand for asbestos increases, that type of mining eventually sort of gives way by the kind of 1940s and 50s to what we would think of now as kind of a recognizable modern mining operation. So kind of deep shaft mines on a compound with people working underground. And in South Africa in particular, the kind of profitability of that system is entirely dependent on apartheid. Right. So the kind of racial segregation and black miners who are being paid very, very small amounts with sort of basically no health and safety sort of coverage at all. No real sort of compensation mechanism. And you know, that material is mined in the south of Africa and then it's shipped back to Britain where it's processed in factories across Britain. So the companies that are operating at this time, companies like Cape Asbestos and Turner and Newell, are vertically integrated, right? So they own the mines, they own the shipping networks, and then they own the factories. So it's a kind of incredibly profitable industry for these, these British companies. And it's the profitability is completely reliant on this. At the first, first instance, the imperial domination of the south of Africa, and then after that, the apartheid government from sort of 19, 1948. And, and really that, that's also kind of part of the explanation why Britain has such a kind of bad asbestos problem is there are particularly dangerous types of asbestos. So brown and blue asbestos are kind of even more dangerous than white asbestos. And those two types of asbestos are mined predominantly in the south of Africa. So there's this kind of perfect storm in the post war period where you have this increasing sort of industrial and consumer demand for asbestos products. You have apartheid sort of enabling these massive mining operations at very low cost. And then you also have the kind of asbestos that's actually being dug out of the ground is these particularly dangerous types.
- [14:44]
Dr. Miranda Belcher
That's not a great combination, but we'll put that to aside for a moment. What exactly are all these British companies doing with this asbestos? Why, what places is it being used for? Why some places more than others? What happens once it gets to Britain?
- [14:58]
Tom White
Yeah, well, there are a range of uses for asbestos. I mean, one of the things that the asbestos industry would always claim is that asbestos is a kind of indispensable material because of its fireproofing and insulating properties. And asbestos does have incredibly good fireproofing and insulating properties. But from the kind of late 1900s, that isn't the only thing that asbestos is being used for. So you have insulation panels, fireproofing materials. You also have asbestos being incorporated into cement. So kind of one of the innovations of the asbestos industry in the 1890s is mixing asbestos fibers with cement and then using that in things like corrugated roofs, water pipes, various of this sort of elements of infrastructure. So you have this kind of, this real expansion of, of the kind of products that are being made from, from asbestos. And part of the perfect storm as well, obviously in Britain, is that after the Second World War, you have this, this huge kind of building and rebuilding operation going on. So you have a very, very high demand for various types of building products and the asbestos industry at that point is really well placed to kind of ride the wave. They've been doing a lot of PR work up to the start of the Second World War and then after it, kind of really positioning asbestos as this kind of miracle material. So this is a period where we get asbestos being framed as what's called the magic mineral. Right. This kind of, you know, this amazing, amazing substance with no drawbacks whatsoever. You know, it keeps you warm, it keeps you safe from fire. You know, it helps build all of these things. So this is why asbestos is so prevalent in Britain, particularly in what we think of as like the public realm. So if you think of like schools, colleges, universities, hospitals, social housing, various other kinds of buildings, it's kind of absolutely in the fabric of that post war rebuilding of the country.
- [17:02]
Dr. Miranda Belcher
Okay. That's very helpful to understand the economic drivers of it, but also the kind of way in which it's being pitched. At what point then does it start to become apparent that there are some health problems with all of this?
- [17:15]
Tom White
Well, really, it was apparent right from the start. You know, it's right from the kind of 1880s, 1890s, British factory inspectors are kind of noting the fact that working in asbestos factories is even, you know, even by the standards of the late 1900s, is particularly dangerous. Right. And there's, you know, there's this kind of acknowledgement that develops. Yeah. By the kind of last decade of the 19th century that, you know, if you start working in an asbestos factory when you're in your mid to late teens, you're probably doing quite well. If you reach your kind of mid-30s. Um, there is obviously always like a lag, though, between the kind of experience of working in asbestos and the kind of anecdotal accounts and then the kind of medical knowledge and the kind of medical vocabulary that develops around that. So I guess for asbestos in particular, there are kind of three kind of phases or three kind of important moments. So in the kind of 1910s, 1920s, you get this kind of increasing awareness about the damages caused by asbestos. And in. In 1924, there's the death of somebody called Nellie Kershaw, who was an asbestos factory worker in Rochdale. And she. She'd worked in a couple of other asbestos processing plants as well. So she worked at a big Turner Brothers. Turner Brothers factory, which is. Which is still there, in fact, the kind of ruins of it. And she had this terrible lung condition. She passed away. She left a young child and her husband. And there was a doctor called William Cook who studied her. And then he gives the condition that she had the name asbestosis. So it's a kind of. He's kind of linking it to things like bissinosis and silicosis. So kind of an existing vocabulary of industrial diseases caused by inhaling particles or fibres. And asbestosis is a traumatic injury caused by the prolonged or kind of repeated inhalation of asbestos fibers. So the asbestos fibers pass into the lungs and they cause sort of scarring and stiffening of the lungs and it becomes harder and harder to breathe and it becomes harder and harder for the heart to pump blood around the body. By the 1930s, the late 1930s, I think the. The asbestos companies, you know, it's hard to tell from the archival record, and they were very good at covering things up, but I think basically they had also realized at this point that asbestos is a carcinogen, which is the kind of main association, the kind of main medical association that we now have with asbestos. So in the. In the 30s and then 40s and then particularly into the 1950s, you get this. This realization that asbestos fibers can also cause lung cancer. And then in the late 1950s, 1960s, is this the discovery of the link between asbestos and mesothelioma, which is something that a lot of listeners might have heard of, which is kind of what I was talking about earlier that my granddad had, unfortunately, which is a very, very aggressive, incurable type of cancer that affects the lining of the chest cavity. And, yeah, prognosis for people with mesothelioma is usually. Is usually not good at all. And it becomes really hard from that point for the industry to kind of maintain that asbestos isn't dangerous. The mesothelioma in particular has these kind of. Has obviously huge implications because it can be caused by really brief, you know, fleeting exposure to asbestos. So asbestosis is, you know, usually associated with people who work in the asbestos industry. And that's definitely the way that the industry wanted to frame it. But lung cancer and mesothelioma, you can have very, very brief exposure to asbestos and then develop those illnesses later. So that has obvious implications for the kind of environmental and sort of infrastructural understanding of massive asbestos use. Extra value meals are back. That means 10 tender juicy McNuggets and medium fries and a drink are just $8 only at McDonald's for a limited time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska and California. And for delivery. Hi, I'm here to pick up my son, Milo. There's no Milo here.
- [21:45]
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Who picked up my son from school.
- [21:47]
Tom White
Streaming only on pe.
- [21:51]
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I'm gonna need the name of everyone.
- [21:52]
Tom White
That could have a connection. You don't understand. It was just the five of us. So this was all planned.
- [21:58]
Dr. Miranda Belcher
What are you gonna do?
- [21:59]
Tom White
I will do whatever it takes to.
- [22:01]
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Get my son back.
- [22:02]
Tom White
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- [22:13]
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- [22:41]
Dr. Miranda Belcher
Yeah, that definitely explains also why we start to see pretty large scale movements organizing to get asbestos banned. And yet despite the kind of clarity of like, this is really bad and we need to do something about this. Why doesn't this sort of political organizing work, for example in the 1980s?
- [23:02]
Tom White
Yeah, I mean, it's a good question. I mean there's a kind of, there's lots of things going on. I mean, one thing that I sort of talk about a lot in the book is that the asbestos industry was a very important part of, of the kind of British establishment. This is a material that's being used in lots of defence uses, kind of warships and various other things. The asbestos industry is very well integrated with the sort of British ruling class. So there are sort of various barriers in that sense, political barriers. The asbestos industry, like lots of other malign industries, also develops a very, very sophisticated kind of PR and sort of information obfuscation machine as well. So in the late 1950s in Britain you get the establishment of something called the Asbestosis Research Council and then a decade later you get the establishment of the Asbestos Information Council, Asbestos Information Committee, I think. And these kind of sound like respectable independent bodies, but they're not, they're like fronts for the industry. And the kind of the playbook that they are following is a playbook that had been developed by the tobacco industry in the 1950s, which is basically like, you know, you can't prove that asbestos is safe because it isn't. But what you can do is you can sort of produce various studies and you can create doubt, you know, you can foster uncertainty, you can call for more proof and more evidence and more information in a way that kind of enables you to carry on making profits. And we obviously see how effective this has Been this was a playbook that had been developed by sort of American PR companies, deployed very effectively by tobacco in the 1950s, refined by asbestos companies in the 60s and 70s, and then obviously taken up by fossil fuel companies a bit later as well. So I think those are sort of two important parts of it, I think also and something that I write about quite a lot in the book. There are certain failings as well by the British trade union movement when it comes to asbestos. The kind of basic attitude of a lot of the trade union leaderships and bureaucracies is that this is a matter for kind of negotiating danger, money, right? So they acknowledge that asbestos is dangerous, but the logic is that you should get paid more for working with it. And there are a lot of sort of independent trade union branches in Glasgow in particular on the shipyards where there's very high prevalence of asbestos related disease. You know, you have these branches just sort of coming out and saying, you know, we need to just ban this material and substitute it for safer alternatives. And really a lot of the kind of anti asbestos movements energy comes from these independent trade union branches and then also kind of from outside the trade union movement. So I write a lot about somebody called Nancy Tate, who was one of the kind of very well known and important anti asbestos campaigners. Her husband passed away from mesothelioma and then she kind of dedicated the rest of her life to fighting for a ban on asbestos and supporting victims. So by the kind of late 1970s you begin to get a kind of coherent anti asbestos movement. But as I kind of write about in the book, this is also a moment when the sort of political ground is shifting beneath them, so particularly into election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. The sort of decline of British manufacturing and British industry during the kind of late 70s and into the early 80s means that the asbestos industry is kind of already shrinking. You know, like it partly declines because of concerns these like very valid concerns about safety, but it's also just declining because British industry and British manufacturing is declining as well. There's less demand for these products. And a lot of these anti asbestos groups that had started in the 70s and then sort of really developed in the early 80s end up, you know, they end up really sort of fighting a lot of defensive battles and a lot of what they're doing at this point is supporting victims. So they are organising to try and force a ban on asbestos. But the kind of short term and medium term priorities becomes sort of removal practices and supporting people who are already struggling with these illnesses.
- [27:44]
Dr. Miranda Belcher
Yeah, that's interesting how the kind of immediate organising is a factor, but also all these industrial aspects too. Kind of everything's coming together there, but not quite. In the 80s, we then get to a ban on asbestos right at the end of the 90s. To what extent was this a victory?
- [28:02]
Tom White
I mean, yeah, it certainly was and it was the result of a very, very long, long campaign and, you know, kind of heroic effort by all of these asbestos groups. So, you know, from from the kind of late 70s, 80s, you have asbestos groups all around the country, in sort of cities around Britain. The ban in 1999 is, I mean, I sort of tell the story in the book. It's a kind of, it's a triumph, but it's also a little bit of a kind of farce and a kind of tragedy as well. Where New labor, before New labor came into power, asbestos was one of the things that they sort of claimed to be very interested in and they wanted to sort of ban asbestos. And then once they came into power in 1997, it seemed like an asbestos ban would come in relatively quickly. But it actually took quite a long time and there was quite a lot of prevarication, mainly because Tony Blair was trying to sort of keep the Canadian government on side for kind of various reasons that I explained in the book. So there's kind of this kind of political maneuvering that, that ends up delaying the asbestos ban until 1999 and it's also tied into various kind of EU law changes as well. So basically, as a member of the EU at that time, Britain's hand was kind of forced as well. What I talk about in the book is that when you ban something, it kind of has this effect of making people think that the problem is solved. It kind of, you know, the material recedes from people's consciousness and from their kind of their memory. But really this is a moment when the British state could have really reckoned with this kind of long history of asbestos that we've been discussing. You know, there's asbestos in all of these public buildings, asbestos in housing, there's asbestos in water pipes. But unfortunately New Labour aren't or they're not interested in that. This would have been a moment to really come up with a long term plan for how asbestos was going to be dealt with as it went past its intended design life. Instead of that, though, you sort of get this impression that New labor, once the banners come in and sort of been celebrated, they kind of think that that's drawn a line under the issue and that you know, they don't really have to think about it anymore. So the way I kind of write about it in the book is, you know, it's kind of double edged. It's. I think it is a moment of triumph for all of this tireless work of all of these campaigners. But I think, you know, in hindsight in particular, it's just such a kind of tragic missed opportunity.
- [30:59]
Dr. Miranda Belcher
Is that idea of kind of this is it, we don't need to worry about this anymore. Is that why asbestos care got worse after that?
- [31:08]
Tom White
Well, I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm not sure it necessarily got worse. I mean, I think, yeah, Britain, considering how much asbestos is used in Britain and how high the kind of rates of asbestos related disease are, the kind of medical care that's been available in Britain has always been fairly limited. So there's obviously lots of research projects and sort of increasing knowledge about asbestos related diseases, but there's never been a kind of real infrastructure of asbestos related disease care. Laurie Kazan Allen, who's one of the kind of people I talk about a lot in the book, very well known anti asbestos campaigner, she kind of once said that even in the early 2000s, Britain was in the sort of dark ages for mesothelioma care. So you don't see a real kind of investment in NHS respiratory disease services during this period. I don't think a lot of this care is also funded by sort of charities. I think Macmillan Cancer Research funds kind of mesothelioma nurses in various parts of the country. It's never been sort of incorporated into the healthcare system as much as it should be given what a massive issue it is in society. Um, alongside that as well, obviously people who are suffering from asbestos related disease can claim compensation and various sort of government benefits. But from the kind of early 2000s in particular, I think when a lot of those insurance companies realise that they're on the hook for kind of potentially billions and billions of pounds, it's like there's a real counteroffensive from insurers to try and sort of lower their liabilities for these, for these compensation payouts. So, you know, everything around that becomes very, very adversarial and quite brutal in lots of instances. I write a lot in the book about, you know, this, this period in the sort of 2000s when the, you know, the kind of emboldened insurance industry is, is really sort of trying all of these legal techniques to try and get out of paying this compensation to lots of victims.
- [33:16]
Dr. Miranda Belcher
So where does that leave the UK now, in terms of asbestos, I mean.
- [33:22]
Tom White
We'Re in a bad position, unfortunately. I mean, I kind of spoke earlier about this perfect storm. In the kind of post war period where you had British companies mining these particularly dangerous types of asbestos, you had a high demand for these sort of building and infrastructural materials. I guess the thing that you could add into that recently is alongside the kind of neoliberal restructuring of the British state Since the late 70s, austerity since 2010 I think as well, has been like a huge, a huge contributing factor to this. So you have various types of public buildings, schools, hospitals, colleges that are kind of well past their intended design life, that are full of asbestos that is being disturbed on probably a daily basis, or at least those buildings are in a kind of constant state of maintenance where, you know, things are being sort of kicked up. What we haven't got to in Britain and which I think we need as a kind of matter of urgency, is a coordinated asbestos removal plan. And this is really a kind of a source of a lot of frustration for the kind of current generation of anti asbestos campaigners. There is a kind of consensus among experts and amongst these campaigners that, that this really needs to happen. The current regulations that we have in Britain, the asbestos regulations from 2020. 12. 2012, basically it's a policy of management in situ. So the idea is that every building should have a kind of asbestos management plan so that you know where the asbestos is and that if it's in good condition and undisturbed, it should, it should be left, it should be left there and that that's the kind of safest approach. I mean, I've said in the past that that's kind of bad in practice and bad in theory and kind of even worse in practice because we know that lots of asbestos materials just are, are being disturbed already or are already damaged and releasing fibres. It's unfortunate really that, you know, there's, there's a real sort of disconnect between the kind of knowledge on what we need to do and the actual sort of political will or kind of political commitment to do it. So, you know, if you look somewhere like Australia, Australia has started a new federal agency, the Asbestos Eradication Agency, you know, which is tasked with removing asbestos from the built environment over the next few decades. So this isn't sort of like pie in the sky stuff. This is something that's happening in Australia and various other places. In 2021 and sort of winter of 2022, there was a series of hearings In Parliament there was a select committee on asbestos and all of these experts were, were invited to give their opinion. And the MPs who were on that select committee came up with a series of quite good, kind of relatively sensible recommendations of a 40 year plan for the phased removal of asbestos beginning in schools and hospitals. And since then, really kind of not that much has happened. And the kind of, you know, we need, this is something that we need to sort of start, you know, yesterday really. And it's kind of obvious as well that this is something that would have to start in school. So I kind of, I write, I write in the book that if you're exposed to asbestos fibers at the age of five, you're in, your chance of contracting mesothelioma is five times higher than if you're first exposed when you're 30. So we have all of these, you know, children and their teachers and various other workers in these kind of austerity ravaged buildings kind of breathing in asbestos fibers. And I think that's just like such a, such a kind of indictment, a kind of really grim symbol and kind of example of what's happened to Britain over the last, not just since austerity in 2010, but really since like the late 1970s. So that's kind of where we're at at the moment. I think there's like a real frustration on the part of sort of current generation of anti asbestos campaigners that this is still something that we're apparently having to make the case for. But you know, it's difficult. As I said earlier, asbestos kind of has receded from the kind of public consciousness. It flares up every now and again. But it's something that's quite difficult to keep in the, in the public attention.
- [38:17]
Dr. Miranda Belcher
Well, perhaps books like this will be part of getting more awareness about it. What might you be doing now that the book is out in the world? Hopefully achieving that goal.
- [38:26]
Tom White
Yeah, I mean, well, I hope it can contribute in some small way. I mean, I plan to kind of keep on writing about asbestos and what's happening. I would like to sort of write something in detail about the Australian asbestos removal plan and how that's going and the things that they've learned and, you know, how that could be sort of replicated in Britain. I've also been working on a new project as well which is kind of a social history of the Humber Bridge, which is this big piece of infrastructure in the north of England. So a slightly different, slightly different tack on that one.
- [39:09]
Dr. Miranda Belcher
Still sounds interesting though. Best of luck. With both projects.
- [39:12]
Tom White
Thanks very much.
- [39:13]
Dr. Miranda Belcher
In the meantime, of course, listeners can read the book we've been discussing titled Bad Dust A History of the Asbestos Disaster, published by repeater in 2025. Tom, thank you so much for speaking with me on the podcast.
- [39:25]
Tom White
Thanks, Miranda.