Mesothelioma After Forty Years Short Exposure.

[NATURAL ANKLING]

Hi,
Bumped into a cyclist probably about 65 -70.
He said that he was off for tests in the new year.
I am sure it was something like Mesothelioma?

He worked in the navy forty od years ago and he said he used to mix up asbestos dust to make parts.
He said its minor and has just noticed a slight drop of in performance, could be age as well, he said its not bad enough to be terminal.

Many of us worked in industry and I distinctly remember asbestos and cutting it too, forty years ago?

[firestarter]

My dad has it it took around 45 years to show itself from working with it to diagnosis, and it wasn't long term exposure but he knew when it was

[axel_knutt]

My parents used to live about 300 yards from Roberts, if I'd been born 10 years earlier I'd have been one of the kids making snowballs from the asbestos dust in the school playground. The area has the highest incidence of mesothelioma in the country.

[Mick F]

40 years ago, ships used asbestos for the lagging on the machinery and pipework.

Every time maintenance was required, the lagging had to be cut off, and then renewed after assembly. We had "lagging teams" of engineers in the RN, plus the dockyard people had lagging teams. They were all exposed to asbestos dust, and many of them suffered in later years.

Can't specifically remember when they stopped using asbestos, but it could easily have been well into the 1980s.

[thirdcrank]

My parents used to live about 300 yards from Roberts, if I'd been born 10 years earlier I'd have been one of the kids making snowballs from the asbestos dust in the school playground. The area has the highest incidence of mesothelioma in the country.

I spent the first 9 years of my life (Dec 1944 to Feb 1954) living in the asbestos houses, and I must have posted before that we played with what we called "fever sand" in the street. I'd have to say that although the "Clock School" (AKA Armley Primary School) was on the other side of Canal Road from Roberts, I don't remember ever seeing the stuff in the playground. You could see into the factory from the street and inside looked like a snow scene. What we now know to be asbestos-related conditions seem, in retrospect to have been common.

I understand that the two main conditions are asbestosis and mesothelioma. The first is dose-related and progressive: the more the exposure to asbestos, the more likely the illness and it will get worse while ever the exposure continues. Stopping the exposure will stop further development but there's no cure for damage already suffered. Asbestos fibres are apparently very sharp and even a single fibre can penetrate tissue and cause problems. The time-bomb feature of asbestos is that a single fibre can remain in a lung for decades and the something causes it to penetrate the lung wall, which is how mesothelioma can start. Having said that, the passage of time reduces the chance of this happening.

Nearly forty years after leaving Armley, my mother moved back there when she was widowed and lived in a flat and she found that several people she had known had died from mesothelioma and one woman who had worked with her in a shop was by then in a wheelchair, permanently fitted with an oxygen mask. One of my cousins, about a year older than me, had relatively little contact with the area because her father was in the Army and his family travelled with him, including a long spell in Cyprus. She developed mesothelioma in her sixties and died very quickly. Impossible to say whether she inhaled perhaps a few deadly fibres in Armley or on her widespread travels - she spent her adult life working in Lancashire.

[NATURAL ANKLING]

Hi,
Forgot to add this link

https://survivingmesothelioma.com/short ... othelioma/

"Although mesothelioma is alarmingly common in the UK, the region with the world’s highest per capita rate of the cancer, Beale’s case was unique. To his knowledge, his only known exposure to the asbestos dust that triggered his mesothelioma occurred in 1967 for only two to three days. It was during that time that Beale worked in a factory where he was required to cut asbestos with a circular saw. Without protection, Beale likely inhaled a substantial amount of the deadly asbestos dust that is the primary cause of mesothelioma. "

[axel_knutt]

I don't remember ever seeing the stuff in the playground.

They might have been hamming it up with their sights on a compo cheque, or they might remember throwing dust like snowballs but not recall which side of the school gate they were. People think that memory is like a video, but the brain only stores the salient points and then fills in the gaps using imagination.

[thirdcrank]

... They might have been hamming it up with their sights on a compo cheque, or they might remember throwing dust like snowballs but not recall which side of the school gate they were. People think that memory is like a video, but the brain only stores the salient points and then fills in the gaps using imagination.

I wasn't suggesting that others were wrong, just because their memories differed from mine. Our house - in Salisbury Avenue - is further from the factory, than is the school, and FWIW, we were to the West ie upwind in a prevailing westerly. Our street had plenty of what we called fever sand and I can vaguely remember discussions among grown ups about what it was. I don't remember asbestos ever being mentioned. I do remember a widespread belief that it was a form of soot, albeit the wrong colour, from Kirkstall Power Station. There's quite a height difference between Armley Road, at the front of the Clock School, and Canal Road running down the back, with the factory. The playground was at the higher level.

I first heard of the asbestos problems much later in life from the TV news. The story opened with a shot of Armley rooftops which looked very familiar. Nobody needed to exaggerate evidence because there was plenty available which had been supressed going back decades. Apart from all the asbestos-related deaths, houses in the area were eventually found to be full of it and had to be professionally cleaned. I'm not talking about asbestos used in their construction but muck which had blown into every nook and cranny over the years. Inevitably, those responsible ducked responsibility. A local MP, John Battle did a lot to publicise all this.

I'll be 72 in a couple of weeks and touch wood, I've been OK. When I was having tests for chest pains which turned out to be angina, my GP prescribed X-rays which he said could spot traces of asbestos so long as the people doing the analysis were told to check for it. Whether that's right, I don't know, but it gave me a bit of reassurance.

This streetview has what survives of the asbestos factory to the right, with the Clock School, surmounted by the eponymous clock ahead and to the left. The school is now a business centre.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.80001 ... 312!8i6656

Here are a couple of old pics of the asbestos factory from the Leodis archive, with user comments. One does refer to asbestos in the school playground.

My brother Bruce and I attended the Clock School in the early forties. The dust was all over the playground. Bruce died fifty years later as the result of inhaling it.One of many terrible deaths.

http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... SPLAY=FULL

http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... SPLAY=FULL

[axel_knutt]

I first heard of the asbestos problems much later in life from the TV

Me too. My parents lived downwind at 15 Picton Street further down Armley Road, but I don't recall them ever mentioning the dust. I thought it was curious that the contaminated area marked on the map on the Wikipedia page is upwind.

It's good to hear that you are ok. My family and I were all x-rayed endlessly in the early 60s, but that was because dad had TB twice, first in the navy and then again later. Prior to being called up after VE day he had spent the European war working at Marston Excelsior, also in Armley Road, but that would have been too early for them to contemplate that his cough might have been asbestos and not TB (both in terms of medical knowledge and incubation period).

The ceiling tiles in our works canteen sprouted asbestos warning stickers in the 1980s, our lab ceiling appeared to made of the same tiles too, but plant engineers used to leave swarf from those all over our desks after they'd been drilling for computer cables etc. Perhaps they were a non-asbestos equivalent, although both buildings were put up around 1964.

[Flinders]

Hi,
Bumped into a cyclist probably about 65 -70.
He said that he was off for tests in the new year.
I am sure it was something like Mesothelioma?

He worked in the navy forty od years ago and he said he used to mix up asbestos dust to make parts.
He said its minor and has just noticed a slight drop of in performance, could be age as well, he said its not bad enough to be terminal.

Many of us worked in industry and I distinctly remember asbestos and cutting it too, forty years ago?

Someone I knew got mesothelioma from asbestos exposure in the Navy decades before. In his case it was progressive and he died of it. I gather it was used to lag pipes in ships in areas where he worked, and the dust would flake off the lagging. Another friend died due to exposure to asbestos in the theatre, where it was used in fly towers (the tall bit of the building above the stage where 'flown' scenery and lighting lives).

[Flinders]

A general warning to people doing DIY:

Artex used to contain asbestos. So if you have artexed walls or ceilings, unless you know for sure it has none in it (you'd have to have it tested to be sure) NEVER, EVER, under any circumstances, sand artex.
If you want it removed, or need to replaster and therefore need to remove it, removing it should be done by asbestos experts unless you have it professionally tested and are 100% sure it has no asbestos in it.

Best to keep it painted, or have it plastered over if you want the wall/ceiling flat.

[thirdcrank]

All the terraced housing alongside Armley Road, from the Clock School towards the city centre was demolished long ago, and AFAIK, of the street names on the north side - ie same as the Clock School I believe only Pickering Street survives, albeit without the houses. Unlike typical Leeds street names, where one name generally went with street, avenue, view and even some straight "crescents," most of those streets were singly named after places in North Yorkshire. My mother's family lived at 14 Seamer Street (a through terrace with the other side on Pickering Street.) They moved at some point to 2 Seamer Street and my father's family moved into 14.

Here's a Leodis link to my Great Grandmother at the front door of No2 a few months before she died aged 87 having had a dozen children of her own and brought up two of her grandchildren, including my mother as her own children. The child on her left, second person from the right in the picture, is my cousin referred to in my earlier post who many years later from mesothelioma.

http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... 215_173042

After graduating from the Clock School, I went to Castleton School which used to be just a bit further down than Marston Excelsior. more recently Denso Marston. That site has been derelict a while and they keep announcing plans for some sort of retail centre, including a Lidl.

[axel_knutt]

All the terraced housing alongside Armley Road, from the Clock School towards the city centre was demolished long ago

Yes the Pictons must have gone around the late 60s to early 70s. Dad took me to see the house the first time we returned to Leeds when he got his first car in 1965, but I have an A to Z from the early 70s which shows only Picton Place left. I got to see inside the house where my father grew up in Holbeck, as his brother lived there until he died. It still had the old range, and the rag rug on the floor that my grandma had made, but that's all gone now too. The area I knew is Bramley, as that's where the cousin we stayed with used to live, but she moved out after she was burgled 9 times in 10 years. I saw a program on TV saying Bramley now has the highest burglary rate in the country.

I hadn't heard the name Denso Marston, but I remember they were called Marston Radiators when my uncle was driving a van for them in the 1970s. My father spent is time there patching bullet holes in Spitfire fuel tanks, which was a reserved occupation up until VE day, so it might have saved his life.

[thirdcrank]

I think most terrace houses in Leeds had a range in those days - we did. The rugs were also very common but probably a local thing depending on the textile industry. We made them with a sheet of loosely woven canvas for the backing and threaded through diamond (lozenge) shaped pieces of cloth known as "clippings" IIRC which were chopped up bits of spare suit lengths etc. We lived in Bramley from 1961 and my mother moved back to Armley in 1987.

I think almost the whole of West Leeds took a substantial turn for the worse post-Thatcher in that what had been a working class area with jobs - even in places like asbestos factories - became an area with substantial unemployment. This also coincided with the closing of the local police station and opening a replacement on the boundary with Bradford on land acquired for a traffic police post on a proposed motorway - Kirkhamgate-Dishforth - which was never built. I couldn't demonstrate a causal link but it's otherwise a huge coincidence. Once upon a time, West Leeds was something of a joke in police circles because nothing happened - Sleepy Valley. The change has been startling.

I know what's left of Holbeck quite well, having started my police career in that part of Leeds.
====================================================
PS

It's occurred to me that most of the pics on Leodis are from council archives and most pics of houses were taken for record purposes in the run-up to demolition. I see your pic of Picton Place is dated 13th February 1964, so it was presumably demolished in the months after that.

Salisbury Avenue, where we used to live is still there so no Leodis pic. Here's a streetview

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Sal ... -1.5884966

We lived at no 6, now with the brown door and fence. It's all changed of course: privet hedges gone (the metal railings having been sawn off during the war, before my time) and flagged pavements and cobbled street now tarmac. I see that there are a couple of "No parking" cones in the garden at no 2. No problem with parking when we lived there because nobody had a car to park.

[axel_knutt]

Whereabouts in Bramley were you? My cousin lived in the Ganners, Snowdens, Astons, and then up by the baths off Broad Lane, they flitted around quite a bit in those days. A big city seemed so exciting to a kid growing up in small-town East Anglia, whenever I watch Get Carter I always get the feelings of glamour and excitement I had as a kid because 1970s Newcastle looks so similar to the 1970s Leeds that I knew.

The house where I lived in Woodhouse has an iron security gate over the door now like most of the others, so that doesn't exactly look like a low crime area either. An uncle used to live at Lincoln Green in a block of flats called Ferriby Towers when it was new and pristine in the 60s, but I saw it on a documentary made by Fergal Keane about inner city decay and it had become the stereotypical squalid slum with graffiti and syringes everywhere. They had managed to turn it round again now though.