“This could have been prevented” – Chloride Batteries & mesothelioma

After being told of his mesothelioma diagnosis, Terry Higson described it as a death sentence. The cause of his terminal illness was traced back to asbestos exposure in his workplace for much of the 1960s and 1970s – a Chloride battery factory in Greater Manchester.

Chloride Batteries

Chloride produced millions of batteries, which were used in submarines, planes, lighting, trains, and cars. The Clifton Junction factory where Terry worked employed 1,900 people in 1977, before widespread redundancies over the following years.

Terry worked for much of his life for Chloride, starting as a Production Worker in 1963. He stayed with the company until 2005, but left the Clifton factory in 1978 to move to another site.

His wife of over 40 years, Kathleen Higson, told Confront they thought Chloride was a good employer. They had a company doctor and dentist, a good local reputation, and ran events within the community. But they weren’t warned of the dangerous asbestos fibres Terry was inhaling during work.

Terry worked in the Accessory Casting department. There, asbestos-insulating board was continually being cut to line and insulate the moulds inside the batteries. Workers would chisel away at the asbestos sheeting for hours on end.

In addition, each cell within the batteries – which could be quite large – had its own casing box, with a mixture containing blue asbestos as one of the components.

“Now the casings themselves were made in other factories, but they had to be cut to size”, said Industrial Disease lawyer Jordan Bell of Slater & Gordon, who represented Terry. This cutting to size was done with a circular power saw, which operated constantly. It left black dust filling the air, and the workers operating it “black from head to toe, because they’d been covered by the dust.”

There were no dust extraction methods employed. When they cleaned away the large amounts of asbestos dust on the floor, there was no dampening, which would lessen the large volumes of dust that arise from brushing. The risk from asbestos was never told to Terry – not by Chloride, nor by the unions.

Asbestos had been shown to cause mesothelioma, asbestosis, and lung cancer by 1960. The risks of asbestosis from asbestos dust were established in the 1920s.

In 1970 the materials inside the batteries were changed, though the asbestos sheets continued to be used until around 1973. Terry told Bell how seemingly overnight the use of the asbestos sheeting was discontinued, with no explanation.

Archive photos from Salford Community Library of the Chloride Factory at Clifton Junction.

Breathlessness

Until 2018, Terry was in good health, besides a prior health scare and a knee replacement. He had avoided the serious health issues which plagued his father – who smoked, worked with asbestos, and came to depend on an oxygen tank with “terrible lungs” and a debilitating cough later in life.

Terry continued to enjoy exercising and doing DIY jobs around the house. But after painting while on a high ladder, Terry told Kathleen he felt unwell. “I bet you’ve pulled a muscle or something”, she said, telling him to see a doctor. Kathleen described Terry as easy-going and laid back, but she was right to be concerned.

They had a series of meetings with different doctors, and it slowly became clear there was a serious issue. On April 27th 2018, Terry was diagnosed with mesothelioma. He asked the doctor, “How much time do I have?” He was told it could be six months, it could be 30 months. Kathleen had read stories before about mesothelioma; as soon as she heard the word, she knew there was no cure.

“This is because of something that could have been prevented”

After the diagnosis, Terry’s body showed remarkable resilience to the mesothelioma and chemotherapy. He didn’t have a bad cough, though he did struggle with breathlessness. For much of the treatment, Kathleen said “he was more tired than ill”. He couldn’t walk or swim quite as far as normal, or be quite as active with the DIY and gardening. But Terry and Kathleen did go on vacation twice, to Madeira in 2019.

The couple felt immensely well supported by the process after the diagnosis, particularly by the healthcare workers. Their compensation claim was settled out-of-court, without an admission of liability from Chloride, giving Terry some peace that Kathleen would have some security after his passing.

But by early 2021, his condition deteriorated. Terry was taken away to a hospital on January 5th, with Kathleen unsure when he’d return. He never did. The following day she got a call very early in the morning. Terry had died, aged 74. He was survived by Kathleen, along with their daughter Jennifer.

Avoidable

Terry is not the only ex-worker from the Chloride factory in Clifton reported to have died from asbestos diseases. Joan Hill worked alongside her husband Ken at the same factory and died from mesothelioma in 2019. Peter Kirkman, an ex-lab inspector for Chloride’s, including at the Clifton factory, also died from mesothelioma in 2022.

Chloride did not respond when asked to comment on this story.

Kathleen describes Terry as a positive person, who tried to make the best of situations. Even after his diagnosis, he told Kathleen, “Well, we’ll get on with what’s to be.”

Nevertheless, “there was some resentment towards the company where he was exposed to asbestos – they should have been more on the ball,” Kathleen said. “This wasn’t a case of your body failing you… This is being done to you. This is because of something that could have been prevented.”