I often describe the European Asbestos Forum (EAF) as the finale of the conference season, and this year’s event certainly finished off 2024 in style. This was something of a special edition, as it was ten years since the very first one in 2014 – it seems amazing that I have been going for a decade!
The anniversary event in Brussels was worthy of its billing. Dr Yvonne Waterman always puts on a special conference – all the way through to the gala dinner on the last day, where this year we were entertained by the players from Covent Garden – amazing. The whole event was decorated by stunning photos by Tony Rich (Asbestorama) and Carlos Duane Salinas of Eurofins.
The photo you see above is one of Tony’s, showing glue with crocidolite. Tony is a dedicated analyst and surveyor, but with a camera in his hand he’s an artist. I wanted to highlight his work before I dig into the conference itself, as beyond the terrifying beauty Tony’s art has huge practical uses. I often find it helps me visualise asbestos in a different way; this one is a (very) sharp pencil with tremolite fibre bundles. Astonishing.
Certainly, if you need to smarten up your training material, don’t hesitate to get in touch with Tony.
By the time of the EAF gala dinner, we had experienced two days of a fascinating conference, delivered in Yvonne’s classy style. Day one as always started with an excursion, this time to Ghent’s industrial museum. Here they have several working cotton machines, which doesn’t sound very asbestos, until you realise that the exact same machines were used for weaving chrysotile into textiles. This shot, taken by Wayne Bagnal, is of their ‘cotton’ carding machine. The exposure must have been horrific.
The afternoon was hosted by BOHS, with a series of speakers from both ends of the world discussing asbestos training, followed by an open forum conversation with the delegates from all four corners. My main takeaway from this part of the conference was: beware of merely regulating.
We learned that US lawmakers decreed that asbestos measurement would be conducted via Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM). This quickly created a burgeoning industry of TEM analysis, but speaker Sean Fitzgerald raised big questions over the level of competency. Surely the international collaboration between BOHS and FAMANZ is a better way. Here, what ‘good’ looks like is agreed, and then the regulators adopt that. The discussions in this space could, I hope, be the birth of international training standards for asbestos analysts and surveyors.
EAF’s format means that day two is actually the day of the conference ‘proper’. There were seven amazing speakers in the morning session. From the opening Speech by Jose Blanco, secretary general of the European Decontamination Institute, to the keynote by Olha Bohdanova of Ukraine’s European Society of Occupational Safety and Health, this year’s theme of The Legacy of Asbestos was cemented. Ms. Bohdanova’s challenge is immense: all of the difficulties that we encounter in managing asbestos, but in a war zone. You cannot imagine.
I’m guilty, along with most, of dismissing or ignoring the dangers of ingesting asbestos. Professor Arthur Frank, from Drexel University, disabused me of that utterly. His talk on asbestos cement water pipes was an eye-opener.
There are somewhere in the region of 620,000 miles of water pipes made from asbestos cement in the US. When testing a selection of supplies, Professor Frank found approximately seven million asbestos fibres per litre of drinking water. In one community where the slightly acidic water strips the minerals from the pipe, this was measured at 1.3 billion fibres. Inevitably the UK will have similar levels.
When you consider that asbestos fibres can pass the pleural layer, can pass through the bowel wall, even pass through the placenta into an unborn child, consuming this vast quantity of asbestos cannot be good. Now think about additional exposure through showers and baths – and when the water dries. Professor Frank doesn’t suggest that ingestion represents a similar risk to inhalation, but it certainly can no longer be ignored.
Still, it was the talk by Mesothelioma UK CEO Liz Darlison on asbestos in schools that stayed with me. Liz announced the release of the charity’s Mesothelioma and Education Workers Study (MEWS). MEWS reveals the shocking under-representation of identified sufferers within the education sector, and identifies some of the reasons for this.
The Office of National Statistics (ONS) views education as a low-risk sector for asbestos, and when you look at the methodology behind the stats, it is not surprising. The official statistics only identify teachers, rather than education workers as a whole. Mesothelioma UK’s study found that rather than the official 23 meso deaths per year in the sector, the truer figure is nearer to 70 – nearly 1.5 per week.
This is compounded when it comes to treatment, as when a mesothelioma sufferer from the sector presents at the GP for the first time, an asbestos disease is not usually suspected. The report finds that this leads to delays in diagnosis, and poorer access to compensation.
Liz ended her talk with a tribute to her friend Helen Bone. Helen was a mesothelioma nurse, and also a victim of that horrendous disease. She died on 25 November this year, aged just 42. Heartbreaking.
The conference splits into two for the afternoon, and you have to choose between technical and policy – although there was some blurring of the two. Previously I’ve had the pleasure of chairing one of these sessions, but this year I was speaking in Session B, with my colleagues from BCL Invent, to share the good news story of the Easy Gel pipe removal technique.
Speaking with Alexandre Chasteloux, we took the delegates from the solution to a French problem presented two years ago at EAF, through the industry research headed up by FAAM, to the incredible results that we got. You can read more about what we found in our initial research, and in a follow up study in Guernsey, but it’s not often you can say that a new technique is safer, quicker, easier, and cheaper!
I can’t really do the remainder of the session justice, as there were nine speakers just in our half of proceedings. Sara Mason of ABP and FAAM was our host, and she kept us all to time with calm assurance.
Highlights were a discussion of Fibrebinder, a temporary, but effective spray that is used in Denmark, often in roof replacement projects. The challenge of residual fibres stuck in the natural nooks and crannies of the timber rafters can result in health risks and large project delays. We in the UK have a firm rule that prevents the use of surfactant and glue before the air test, but could Fibrebinder provide an added level of protection after the air test and before the fourth stage?
Next up was a double-act between Wayne Bagnall, and Martin Hönig. They highlighted the huge, hidden problem of asbestos cement spacers in reinforced concrete. These pesky items cause no end of trouble during the demolition of some buildings, leaving contractors with the challenge of thousands of tons of concrete, concealing small but measurable amounts of asbestos cement. This is an emerging problem and they would appeal to any that have come across the situation to contact them so that a practical solution can be developed.
Chris Bishop of Asbestos Training & Consultancy delivered a very sobering presentation on the 2020 Beirut disaster. If you missed the enormity and impact of this explosion at the time, know that it was triggered by a fire in a warehouse holding 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, and is considered among the most powerful non-nuclear explosions of all time.
The explosion killed more than 200 people, and rendered more than a third of a million homeless in an instant. Within the five kilometre blast radius, 400,000 buildings were made uninhabitable or completely destroyed. Most of the buildings contained asbestos. All this happened in August 2020, at the height of the Covid pandemic, when the world was unable or unwilling to help – and simultaneously using all of the PPE and RPE (personal, and respiratory protective equipment). Only in 40 years will we know the death toll.
I’ll only touch on two more talks. The first was by RPA Europe CEO Marco Camboni, on the European Commission’s Report on Asbestos Waste Treatment Technologies. This was a fascinating journey through the pros and cons of the various technologies available to permanently denature asbestos waste. A leader among these is Asbester’s miraculous solution of using the natural alkaline nature of cement to dissolve the asbestos fibres. Indeed, Inez Postema of Asbester revealed to me that the business is preparing to build its first commercial plant. Finally we seem to be on the way to getting a permanent solution to this huge problem.
The last talk that has stuck with me was by Federica Paglietti, of Italy’s INAIL. This was titled Reducing worker exposure to asbestos: new challenges with advanced technologies, a subject very close to my own heart. Frederica took us through a series of fascinating new technologies with the aim of reducing exposure to removal operatives. One that is about a year from production is a brand new approach to respirators. The new design incorporates full head protection – improving the seal, and solving the problem of how to wear a hard hat and RPE together.
Before the celebration that is the end of conference dinner, there were some special announcements. The best of these was that, in recognition of the reach that the EAF now has, it is to be renamed the Global Asbestos Forum. There’ll be a glossy magazine to support it – fittingly decorated by Tony Rich’s photos.
It’s no more success than Yvonne deserves. EAF really was always a fabulous conference, and I look forward to its continued growth as the GAF. Save the dates for next year – they’re likely to be the end of November, or near the beginning of December.
Tweet Share on Facebook Share on Linkedin