Unhealthy outlook for industry?

Industrial diseases are in the news on two counts at the moment. A coroner in Wolverhampton has delivered a landmark judgement that a former Goodyear worker died of the respiratory disease mesothelioma after being exposed to asbestos.
And the Health and Safety Executive is describing what it calls "the biggest occupational asthma outbreak in the world" at Longbridge in 2004.
For workers who may be suffering what they believe to be an industrial disease, or who may be worried that their working environment could be affecting their health in the short or long term there are places to go on the web for help.
Unfortunately - or fortunately depending on your point of view - making a search on a phrase like "industrial disease" will land you slap in the middle of a very crowded beauty contest where firms of solicitors will, through their websites, offer what they consider to be the best deals and advice on compensation claims.
If this is what's meant by "compensation culture" it is all too evident, swamping what might be thought as more independent counsel.
But if information is your first priority, the first places to go should be where there's no cheque expected at either end of the deal.
Probably the first port of call should be the Health and Safety Executive's site at www.hse.gov.uk
As it says on the tin, health and safety at work is the organisation's oxygen.
The site includes a comprehensive search facility on all manner of issues.
The section on asbestos at www.hse.gov.uk/asbestos/index.htm is typically thorough.
The front page links to even deeper information, including a look at all the relevant legislation, including new combined regulations due to be launched in October of this year.
Following the link www.hse.gov.uk/asbestos/furtherreadjun.pdf brings up a three-page pdf document listing all the relevant documents and where to get them.
There is information on Asbestos (Licensing) Regulations 1983 as amended in 1998 and on Control of Asbestos at Work Regulations 2002 which is not just about workers' rights, but employers' responsibilities and help for all on either side of the fence.
Elsewhere, the Department for Work and Pensions at www.dwp.gov.uk offers practical help if a claim is required.
Under its Advisors and Claim Forms sections it actually includes a form to claim for benefit for a prescribed industrial disease.
You can read through the claim form online using Adobe Reader or download and print it.
There's also more advice from Department for Constitutional Affairs, which has a section on personal injury claims at www.dca.gov.uk/pubs/injuryclaims.htm
And if a potential claim really is the first thing on your mind, there is virtually no limit to the online offerings.
One piece of advice may be to look for the logo of the Claims Standards Council a www.claimscouncil.org , which says it is a "a non-profit making company limited by guarantee and is governed by a Board of Trustees. It was formed to represent organisations and individuals interested in the development of regulation in the UK."
Last word, though, should probably come from the HSE site, which leads its asbestos section with this quote from Bill Callaghan, chairman of the Health and Safety Council:
"Tackling the problem of asbestos is a huge undertaking, but the HSC regards it as one of its highest priorities. Asbestos killed 50,000 people in the 30 years to 1998, and the toll will continue to rise because illnesses resulting from work with the material can take up to 60 years to manifest themselves."
As the events at the coroners court this week have so clearly demonstrated.

BR doctor finds his gifts of flowers, prayers returning to him since illness

Dr. Mike Hackler put in a rose garden when he moved into Santa Maria subdivision in 1999.
The roses are for sharing.
The cardiovascular surgeon regularly takes them in plastic bags hanging off each arm to First Presbyterian Church, where each woman who passes gets a rose to match her attire.
Now it’s the women’s turn to give to him.
Hackler, battling asbestos-caused cancer, goes each Sunday to a room set aside for prayer and before he enters receives a rose from a member of the Presbyterian Women.
Never mind that the effectiveness of prayer as a help in healing remains a source of debate in scientific circles.
And never mind that studies of the subject yield mixed results at best with a recently published study funded by Templeton Foundation and Harvard Medical School finding no discernible benefits for the 1,800-plus heart patients studies over nearly a decade.
Hackler, as doctor and man of faith, credits “the power of prayer and the grace of God” along with medicine for the life he continues to experience today.
“Only 20 percent of people with mesothelioma have a positive response to chemotherapy,” he said.
Nevertheless, after four rounds of chemotherapy and a CAT scan in early March, he was told that the large tumor on his liver is shrinking. “I ask friends to keep on praying,” he said.
Hackler, who is associated with CTV Surgical Center, grew up in Port Allen, a football star and award-winning honor student.
He always held jobs while attending school for 16 years, including LSU Medical School in Shreveport, the Medical School of South Carolina and School of Medicine in Tennessee.
It was while pursuing an engineering degree at LSU that he worked as a longshoreman at the Port of Baton Rouge, where he unloaded asbestos from ships coming from Africa.
“I diagnosed two friends/co-workers with the same cancer,” Hackler said. “Until a year ago, there was no hope. Now, there is one chance out of five for a positive response.”
His first symptom in mid-2005 was lassitude — a feeling of weariness.
Next came pain in the right shoulder radiating to the chest, then came pain in the right upper abdomen.
Not until he had a laparoscopy, a procedure where two holes are drilled in the abdomen and pictures taken, was the diagnosis made.
“I felt like a bomb had been dropped on me when the biopsy was confirmed,” he said. “I was dumbfounded.
“Here I was, age 59 and at the peak of my career.”
After conferring with Dr. Gerald Miletello, he learned that only two places in the country have experimental surgery for mesothelioma. “I knew medical statistics give a patient three to six months to live, if nothing is done. It took me about 20 seconds to say yes.”
On Dec. 29 at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Md., he had his abdomen opened up, the intent being to remove as much of the tumor in the abdomen as possible. “It was a bloody mess, I lost four units of blood. They removed the omemtum (a veil of fat that hangs off the stomach and colon), and closed me back up,” he said. “The tumor was attached to the right diaphragm, and in trying to dislodge it, they put a hole in the diaphragm and saw that the cancer originated in the right chest.”
He returned to Baton Rouge for the chemotherapy — two successive days every three weeks.
He recently had his fifth round of treatment.
“I have two good weeks out of three,” he said. “The week after chemo, I am laid low, feel weak, tired and nauseated. I take a derivative of morphine to control pain.
“In good weeks, when I feel like it, I go to the office and do paperwork, and I visit in the hospitals.”
During Mardi Gras, he danced at the Karnival Krewe de Louisiane’s ball that benefits cancer patients. “I had no idea when I joined at its inception 15 years ago that I would be a cancer patient,” he said.
A lifelong Christian, reared in the West Baton Rouge Presbyterian Church, as a high school senior, he contemplated going to seminary.
He has traveled to Russia to help found a church.
Several years ago he taped some televised segments on Spirituality in Medicine for Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center.
He always offers to pray with a patient and the family prior to surgery, and 95 percent of them take him up on it, he said. While scrubbing, in preparation for his surgery, he prayed.
“Once I faced the cancer, I accepted the fact I have it, I quit worrying and turned it over to God,” he said. “I got ‘the peace that passeth all understanding’ that we read about in the Bible.” In thank-you notes to friends, he writes, “All is well with my soul.”
His roses, 40 varieties of hybrid tea roses, began blooming in late March and he has begun taking them again to the sick and to church. The difference now at First Presbyterian is that he receives one from a different woman every week, to let him know he is loved and in their prayers.
“I’ve been floored by the people who have called and written. I’m on prayer lists throughout the world. I had no idea that I had touched their lives.”
Irregardless of some studies showing that prayer has no impact on healing, Hackler is convinced otherwise.
“I recall a study in California years ago with one group of patients being the subject of prayer, without their knowledge, and the other group left alone. Those being prayed over did far better.
“I believe that we doctors are just a tool of the Lord’s will and the Lord is the Great Physician.”

Asbestos is something we can do something about

Quebec miners still digging asbestos out of the ground aren’t the only ones who have to worry about workplace exposure — many people who work in office buildings or construction sites may come into contact with the dangerous mineral fibres on the job, a workplace safety expert told a conference in Halifax on Thursday.
Most buildings across Canada contain some form of the material in insulation, floor and ceiling tiles or around pipes and furnaces, Cathy Walker, national health and safety director for the Canadian Auto Workers union, said during a meeting of the Canadian Occupational Health Nurses Association.
"Asbestos is something we can do something about," Ms. Walker said.
Whether mixed with cement or sprayed loose into walls, the asbestos will eventually dry and crumble and its dust is a killer, she said.
Car brake pads were also made out of asbestos until the late 1980s.
Tiny asbestos fibres are easily inhaled or ingested and become permanently lodged deep in the lungs.
Asbestosis, a scarring of the lungs, isn’t often seen these days and usually only in people with prolonged heavy exposure. But lung cancer and mesothelioma, cancer of the lining of the lung or abdomen, are more common, found among people with long-term, low-level exposure or brief exposure to large amounts of asbestos.
Ms. Walker said two faculty members from the anthropology department at the University of Manitoba died of mesothelioma after coming in contact with dust over a number of years. A union member whose office was covered in dust from the ceiling after a small fire in a downtown Toronto office building also died of the disease.
"(Mesothelioma) is always associated with asbestos," Ms. Walker said.
But the cancer typically doesn’t appear for 30 to 45 years after exposure to the material, meaning many people never make the connection.
Signs of the disease are now being seen in the children and spouses of construction workers and others who may have been protected by breathing filters but came home in clothes caked in dust to hug their children and wash up, she said.
Ms. Walker suggested a number of ways workers can protect themselves against the hazard.
She said most provinces require employers to provide maps of where asbestos has been used in buildings, but they’re often not accurate, and employees should insist on accurate maps.
Where dust is created by construction or renovations, workers should ask that it be analyzed for asbestos.
The CAW has negotiated contracts that ban asbestos from being brought into a workplace and are now seeking contracts that require the safe removal of existing asbestos, Ms. Walker said.
Safe removal means work must be done in completely enclosed areas with negative pressure to make sure any dust does not escape.
"You’ve really got to wonder, in this industry how many fly-by-nighters there are," she said.
In situations where crumbling asbestos, dust or unsafe removals make workers feel unsafe, they can refuse to work, she said.
Unionized airport workers across the country have done just that.
"They’ve protected not just themselves but the public as well and forced the airport authorities to do this correctly," Ms. Walker said.
The conference continues at the Lord Nelson Hotel today.

CTU Launches Campaign for Asbestos Victims

The Council of Trade Unions today launched a campaign for fair compensation for victims of workplace asbestos exposure.
"The campaign marks International Workers' Memorial Day and its first objective is to get the same ACC lump sum compensation for asbestos victims that injured workers get," CTU President Ross Wilson said today.
"The CTU is calling on Government to urgently amend the ACC laws to ensure lump sum compensation for asbestos victims," said Ross Wilson. "If cost is an issue, companies like James Hardies and Fletchers, which created the hazard, should pay a special levy to ACC to fund fair compensation for asbestos disease victims."
"The potentially lethal nature of asbestos fibres has been known for centuries but credible international research has been available since at least the early 1960s. Yet New Zealand workers continued to be exposed to asbestos, right through the 60s, 70s and 80s," Ross Wilson said in an open letter to Prime Minister Helen Clark today.
"Through no fault of their own, hundreds of New Zealand workers have suffered the painful and terminal effects of lung cancer, asbestosis and mesothelioma through their exposure to asbestos related products."
"The research report of the National Occupational Health & Safety Advisory Committee released yesterday highlights the gross inequity that only 2% of the full costs of occupational disease are compensated and that workers themselves bear a disproportionate 46.4% of those costs compared with 5.9% by employers," Ross Wilson said.
Union members will be sending postcards to the Prime Minister in support of the asbestos campaign, and will be organising members of the public to do the same.