I am a solicitor in the Asbestos Diseases Litigation team in Irwin Mitchell’s Birmingham office. My blog will follow two mesothelioma sufferers 'William' and 'John' through the compensation process in real time to show how claims work and to highlight some of the issues that may arise.

In this post I want to talk about a more general issue in asbestos claims – the issue of when an employer knew that exposing their employees to asbestos was potentially dangerous.  I was talking to John about the Letter of Claim and he said to me that “of course, we didn’t know asbestos was dangerous back then”.  Of course John is right that he and the working men along side him often had no idea asbestos was dangerous. 

However, that is not the whole story and it is a very common misconception that, because the working men didn’t know of the dangers, their employer’s didn’t either.  I thought I would use this post to set out the history of the knowledge of the dangers of asbestos and to show that employers knew or should have known about the dangers of asbestos and taken action to protect their employees sooner than they actually did.

Asbestos became heavily used in industrial processes in the late 19th century, mostly due to its heat resistant properties.  The first reference to the dangers of asbestos dust was made in the annual report of the Chief Inspector of Factories as early as 1898.  The report warned of the dangers of the “evil effects of asbestos dust”.  References continued to be made to the dangers of asbestos in these annual reports and in 1930 a report from the Medical Inspector of Factories was published warning of the dangers of long-term exposure to asbestos.

This detailed report resulted in the Asbestos Industry Regulations 1931 which attempted to impose safety standards on those working with asbestos for the first time.  At the same time, the first Government Compensation Scheme for asbestos related illnesses was created.  Further legislation followed in the 1937 Factories Act and Factories Act 1961 which applied to more workplaces than the previous Regulations. 

These pieces of legislation were intended to stop workers being exposed to larger amounts of asbestos as it was known that such exposures could cause the condition asbestosis.  However, knowledge of the dangers of low levels of exposure increased during the 1950s and 1960s.  In 1965 a report was published which established that very small amounts of asbestos could cause a mesothelioma.  This report received lots of coverage in the press and a key article was published in the Sunday Times on 31 October 1965.

Generally the courts accept that employers could or should have known that exposing their employees to heavier amounts of asbestos could cause an asbestos related illness from the early part of the 20th century and that, after 1965, employers could or should have known that exposing their employees to even very small amounts of asbestos could cause mesothelioma.