With over 20 years in asbestos health, Samantha Collins, Principal Examiner (Asbestos), British Occupational Hygiene Society, discusses the unseen risks firefighting personnel face in asbestos exposure

I consider myself very lucky to have no real experience of the fire sector.

I have of course always been aware of the dangers firefighting personnel must face.

As an occupational hygienist with some health and safety experience, I can probably recognise some of the slightly less obvious issues such as smoke and soot inhalation, exposure to extreme temperatures and the risks of working in high-stress environments.

What I am ashamed to say, however, is that despite having worked within the asbestos industry for 20-plus years, asbestos exposure to firefighting personnel has never been at the forefront of my mind, possibly due to several reasons.

The first is that the ‘immediate risks’ to firefighter’s health and safety were always the ones I thought of first.

The second is that I always imagined the PPE, RPE and decontamination procedures within the emergency services to be of such a high standard that exposure to various ‘nasties’ would be almost non-existent, and finally, as an industry with the HSE as our regulator, we are primarily focussed on the exposure risk in ‘tradespeople’ and members of the public more so than emergency responders.

Recent press releases and campaigns, news articles and reports have all predominantly centred around the risk of asbestos in schools, hospitals and government buildings and there are more training courses marketed for electricians, plumbers, property maintenance workers etc than you can shake a stick at.

But what is this ‘asbestos’ and could we be doing more about it for the fire industry?

Understanding the risks

Asbestos, from a Greek word meaning “inextinguishable” is the name given to a group of ‘naturally occurring fibrous silicate minerals’ formed over time throughout the Earth’s crust.

The mineralogy of asbestos formation is somewhat complex and requires quite specific circumstances influenced by local geology and environmental conditions.

Asbestos was first reportedly discovered by the ancient Greeks and Romans and appears in early texts written by the Greek geographer and philosopher Strabo (64/63 BC – 24 AD) and the Roman naturalist ‘Pliny the Elder’ (AD 23/24 – AD 79).

Following its initial discovery, we quickly recognised the ‘magic’ properties of these asbestos minerals, notably their high resistance to fire and excessive heat, and its historical use has been found in many countries around the world used to strengthen clay cooking pots, form lamp and candle wicks, woven into fireproof tablecloths and interestingly even cremation blankets because the blanket itself didn’t burn and could contain the deceased’s ashes for easy separation from the rest of the funeral pyre.

Closer to home during the Industrial Revolution, the expansion of Britain’s global trading empire and the threat of a second World War, the use of asbestos in the UK became more widespread, particularly in the aftermath of WWII when several political changes resulted in increased demand for schools, hospitals and government buildings, and a general desire of the country to get back on its’ feet.

Cheap and readily available

There are reportedly more than 200 different types of asbestos mineral globally, however, due to various reasons, including how abundant they were and how commercially viable they were to extract, only 6 types tend to be ‘regulated’ in the UK.

These are Chrysotile, Crocidolite, Amosite (more often known by their colours as white, blue and brown respectively) and the slightly rarer types of Fibrous Anthophyllite, Tremolite and Actinolite.

The concept of new construction and engineering materials which were strong, cheap, readily available and more importantly said to ‘save lives’ through fire protection, meant demand and importation of asbestos fibre and the production of asbestos containing materials (ACMs) skyrocketed.

ACMs quickly found their way into various installations around the country with the number of imports increasing steadily from the late 1930s, peaking in the 1970s and only finally reducing throughout the 80s and 90s when awareness of the health risks associated with asbestos exposure began to expand until asbestos was finally banned in the UK in 1999.

It’s estimated that during the 20^th Century over 6 million tonnes of asbestos were imported into the UK, mostly as ‘raw fibre’ direct from the mines of countries such as South Africa, Canada, Russia, Cyprus and Australia.

Often arriving by sea and distributed countrywide by road and rail, UK factories and processing plants produced a variety of different ACMs.

There are thought to be approximately 3600 different types of ACMs in the UK.

We have thermal insulation, fireproofing, firebreaks and ‘compartmentalisation’ materials, ‘sprayed coatings’, friction products such as clutch linings and brake pads, roofs and rainwater goods moulded from asbestos-containing cement, ‘Artex’ ceilings, floor tiles, toilet cisterns and even full woven asbestos firefighting suits at one point in time – the list goes on.

The ancient Greeks and Romans may have had conflicting ideas of what asbestos was and where it came from.

They were however in agreement that asbestos caused illness in human beings noting that workers involved in extracting the fibres from the ground or weaving them into cloths and ropes often developed ‘lung sickness’ and had short life expectancies.

Unfortunately, as advancements were made in medicine it became undeniable that asbestos exposure was a serious health concern.

Due to the unique fibrous shape of the minerals, the microscopic size of the fibres, their ability to become easily airborne when agitated, and their resistance to heat, acids and alkalis, once they enter the human body (usually via the respiratory system) they can remain in situ for decades without being broken down or removed by our body’s defences.

This can cause devastating damage including diseases and conditions such as lung cancer, asbestosis, pleural plaques, pleural effusions (lung fluid accumulation), pericardial effusions (build-up of fluid around the heart) and even laryngeal and ovarian cancers.

There is also the infamous ‘mesothelioma’ whereby inhaled fibres can migrate through the lung tissue, penetrate the lung wall and lodge themselves in the pleural lining on the outside of the lungs where they can trigger the growth of aggressive cancerous tumours.

Health impact of asbestos exposure

The frightening thing is that the effects of asbestos exposure and inhalation are not immediate; there is a ‘latency’ period of anything between 15 and 60 years depending on the source of the information and asbestos is now firmly recognised by the IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) as a Group 1 Human Carcinogen.

The current stance of the regulators in the UK is that if ACMs are not disturbed and the risk of any fibres being released and becoming airborne is mitigated, then ACMs should stay in place and be ‘managed’.

They are often still doing an important job of thermally insulating or fire-proofing structures and their removal could compromise structural integrity and/or cause unnecessary exposure to removal workers and the public.

There are issues with removal costs; who is liable for these costs, and what we should do with waste asbestos.

Currently, it’s buried at specialist landfill sites but many of these sites are now ‘full’ and ideas on dealing with asbestos waste in the future are limited.

Under the current Control of Asbestos Regulations (2012) Duty Holders are legally obliged to survey their properties for ACMs, keep a register of what and where they are and have a management plan to monitor condition and mitigate exposure.

In addition, we have legal training requirements stating anyone liable to disturb the ‘fabric’ of a building during their work must have a minimum of ‘asbestos awareness’ training to educate them in what different ACMs can look like, their different applications and how to avoid exposure.

There are also tight restrictions on knowingly working with asbestos including minimum RPE and PPE requirements, control measures to reduce fibre levels if disturbed and the all-important site and personnel decontamination.

Limitations of current safety protocols

Whether this system is working however is hotly debated both by industry leaders and politicians, with the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) Select Committee raising its concerns with the Government in 2021 about the usefulness of the regulations for managing asbestos, prompting a review on ‘effectiveness’ by the HSE.

The reason is that despite the legal requirements in place we still have more than 5000 people dying each year in the UK from asbestos-related disease.

So even with the regulations in place and a duty to Manage which has been in effect since 2004, we are still seeing many annual deaths, and this is mostly with our focus on managing asbestos in a controlled way within buildings which are intact or undergoing planned demolition.

Registers should be in place for contractors to reference before starting work; tradespeople are taught not to conduct any work without the correct information and we usually have the small luxury of time for planning and acting when it comes to ACMs in the form of training, data retrieval, method statements and risk assessments.

However, what do we do about emergencies, explosions, unplanned structural collapse, fire and dare I say terrorist attacks?

Of course, these are situations where something has the potential to end a life immediately which understandably takes precedence over some strange ‘fibrous rock’, exposure to which may or may not cause harm in the next 30 years, but should we be doing more when it comes to safeguarding firefighting personnel from this so-called ‘Magic Mineral’?

This article was originally published in the December 2024 issue of International Fire & Safety Journal – to read your FREE digital copy, click here.