How asbestos killed thousands of British carpenters

Denis Brown’s story is common among carpenters working in 1960s and 1970s Britain. He worked for years among clouds of asbestos dust, unaware of the risks and unprotected. His employer, large asbestos manufacturers, and the UK government all failed to protect him or warn him of its well-established dangers. Decades later, it led to his death.

Early career

Aged 17, Denis started working in Tonbridge for Harry Lawrence Ltd as an Apprentice Carpenter in 1952. He would leave for two years of National Service, then returned to Harry Lawrence as a qualified carpenter, where he worked until 1976.

Denis built cold-store units and constructed small buildings to house them. This meant using large volumes of asbestos sheets. In a statement to his lawyer, Denis recalled there were “clouds of asbestos dust coming off the sheets” while using an electric saw.

Sometimes he would be sawing into the sheets for a couple of hours, sometimes it would be all day. The dust went on the ground, the work surfaces, his hands, and his clothes. There was no ventilation to reduce the amount of dust, there were no respirators provided, and there were no warnings that he could contract a disease from working with asbestos. This meant he would bring his dusty overalls back into his home, where they were washed by Patricia.

By the time Denis began to work in 1952, it was already known that asbestos dust could cause asbestosis and lung cancer. Asbestos had been regulated – albeit only for a small percentage of workers – since 1931. By 1960, it was also known to cause the cancer mesothelioma.

Despite this, the industry group – the Asbestos Information Committee (AIC) – consistently downplayed the risks to carpenters and other tradespeople. In 1967, the AIC rejected the notion that sawing, hand-working or machining asbestos products caused asbestosis or cancer, arguing it was based on “extremely scanty and inconclusive evidence.”

It took until 1970 for a significant expansion of the 1931 regulations, and until 1976 for asbestos to be labelled on all products. The industry’s actions, and numerous employers’ subsequent lack of care, meant that Denis and thousands of other carpenters across the UK continued cutting into asbestos sheets or asbestos boards for years, generating enormous amounts of potentially fatal dust.

It normally takes decades after exposure for asbestos diseases to develop. Asbestos was partially banned in 1985 and fully banned in 1999, yet the results continue to be catastrophic.

In the UK between 2001 and 2022, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) recorded 2,029 carpenters and joiners under 75 years old as dying from mesothelioma caused by asbestos exposure. The figure doubles if accounting for lung cancer from asbestos exposure, according to the HSE. A further 178 died from asbestosis.

The figure would be considerably higher if it included deaths for those over 75 years old, the average age at which people develop mesothelioma in the UK, which HSE does not track.

In total, among the generation of carpenters working in the 1950s-1970s, “about 10% of them are going to die of asbestos-induced cancer,” epidemiologist Professor Julian Peto told Confront.

Retirement

Until February 2019, Denis had no need to think much of his time at Harry Lawrence, which had long since closed down. He left in 1976 to start a successful insulation business with two friends, and away from asbestos. He retired in 1999 and was enjoying life with his wife Patricia, his two children, Dawn and Denise, and three grandchildren.

Denis was “fit and full of energy”, his daughter Denise told Confront. He enjoyed playing snooker with his friends, golf, holidaying with Patricia, and generally going out and enjoying life. He’d never been a smoker, nor had a cough.

It wasn’t until February 2019 when Denis began to feel unwell. His GP sent him for initial tests, which included a chest x-ray. It showed fluid on his left lung. Denise said her dad had absolutely no idea it could be a terminal disease caused by asbestos, yet that was the diagnosis he was given in early April.

He and the family were devastated by the diagnosis. Denis was told he probably had no more than a year to live, and was fearful for his wife and family.

“Everybody in the family’s life just changed dramatically from that day, and started a journey that nobody wanted to go on,” she said.

After the diagnosis, and upon hearing a doctor say mesothelioma is an ‘aggressive cancer’, Denise did some research on the condition. “I started grieving from that day, to be honest,” she said. “I knew that it was going to only go one way. I had a very, very close relationship with my dad, so it was devastating.”

There is no known cure for mesothelioma, so Denis’s doctor encouraged him to create a bucket list. One thing he had always wanted to do was to fly in a Spitfire. After some encouragement from his family, he organised a flight from Biggin Hill in Kent and brought his family with him in an adjacent plane to watch.

“He would never have done this otherwise,” Denise said. “It gave him some excitement and enjoyment in what were the bleakest days of his life.”

Ravaged by mesothelioma

Over the course of his illness, Denis was admitted to hospitals on six different occasions for a variety of treatments, tests and invasive procedures. This included a biopsy, lung and stomach drainage, a colonoscopy, an endoscopy, and blood transfusions. Denise said he was ravaged by the chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

“He was angry that nobody in management had protected him and others, and that he was going to die early based on somebody’s lack of care,” Denise said.

He also suffered from numerous complications, either inflicted by the disease or from treating it, including severe anaemia, night sweats, change in taste, extreme exhaustion, diverticulitis, acute cellulitis, ascites, and breathlessness.

Seeing Denis endure this pain was difficult for the entire family. “Mesothelioma is a devastating, horrific, and cruel disease which is entirely preventable,” Denise said. “I saw him cry a few times, mainly towards the end, but he took everything on board, the treatment, all the hospital visits, and he fought it to the end.”

After Christmas in 2019, it became clear her parents needed more support, so they moved in with Denise and her family. Their GP said they were a ‘family in crisis’. The final few weeks were horrific and heartbreaking. “[Mesothelioma] took away his right to have conversations at the end, and say what he wanted to say,” said Denise. “He was so poorly and literally on morphine, wanting not to be there.”

In one of his final conversations before he died, Denis spoke of how he would have liked to have lived a few more years to see more of his grandchildren.

The final five days of his life were in a hospice. Denis died on March 7th 2020, aged 85. Only eight people could attend his funeral on March 26th due to the COVID-19 lockdowns. When the family arrived at the crematorium, they were told to sit two metres apart from each other. Exactly two years after his funeral, when lockdowns had ceased, family and friends celebrated his life in a more fitting manner. “My dad had a great sense of humour,” said Denise, so “it was a celebration with lots of laughs and humour. Dad would have enjoyed himself there!”

Community

After the pain she saw her father endure, Denise started volunteering for asbestos support groups in 2021. “It was very raw and I did find it difficult at times, but I found it very rewarding,” she said.

The days of thousands of unprotected carpenters sawing into asbestos-containing materials are long gone. But in Denise’s new role working as the Events Coordinator for London Asbestos Support Awareness Group (LASAG), she still sees the dangers asbestos poses today. LASAG and other asbestos support groups across the UK are seeing a rise in people falling ill who didn’t work directly with asbestos but worked or lived in buildings containing old and degrading asbestos products.

Denise hopes that by sharing her father’s story, she can raise awareness and prevent needless pain and suffering in the decades to come. “I think he’d be proud that I’m helping get the message out. He’s sitting here looking at me in a picture on the shelf,” Denise said.

“If we have to draw any positive out of it, it was the fact that my dad’s health didn’t deteriorate 20 years earlier.” Had that happened, Denis could never have met Dawn and Denise’s husbands or his grandchildren.

“It was approximately 60 years from exposure to asbestos to when Dad became unwell, he died 11 months later. He enjoyed 60 years married to my Mum. We were lucky Dad was here for that long, but that still doesn’t make it right. He could have been here longer, he was fit and healthy.”