Charles Pickles

Sep 5, 2024 | britsafe.org | Francesca Ledwith |Pinsent Masons |Mick Dawson |Charles Pickles

Asbestos: Your Duty On 15 January 2024, HSE launched its ‘Asbestos: Your Duty’ campaign to raise awareness of the dangers of asbestos and to improve understanding of what the legal duty to manage asbestos in buildings involves. This campaign ran alongside HSE’s ‘Asbestos and You’ campaign, which was launched in 2023 and which provides a quick guide to tradespeople about the personal risks from asbestos that still exist across the country today, as well as their legal responsibilities.

Sep 5, 2024 | britsafe.org | Charles Pickles |Faye Law |Mike Robinson FCA |Charlotte O'Kane

Campaigning for a national 40-year asbestos strategyThe current deaths are due to past exposure, as asbestos diseases typically have a latency period of 25 to 60 years. Thankfully, the death rates from asbestos-related disease may have, or surely will begin to decline shortly, due primarily to bold legislative action to ban high-risk asbestos in 1983/4 and all asbestos as late as 1999. The lesson here is that strong action has and will save many thousands of lives.

Aug 30, 2024 | britsafe.org | Francesca Ledwith |Pinsent Masons |Mick Dawson |Charles Pickles

This month (September), health and safety rules controlling work on engineered stone came into effect also. The Australian government acted quickly after Safe Work Australia published an impact statement last October recommending a ban, with the regulations passed in December. The move followed work by unions and safety campaigners, highlighting cases such as that of 22-year-old Queenslander Connor Downes, diagnosed with silicosis after three years as a stonemason.

Jul 1, 2024 | dailymail.co.uk | Charles Pickles

Helen Bone is a 42-year-old mother of three young daughters. Three years ago, she was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a type of lung cancer caused only by exposure to asbestos. As a nurse, Helen has spent her life in hospitals — all containing asbestos, perhaps in ceilings, walls, floors, pipework, just about anywhere. As a schoolgirl she, like millions of us, would have been in buildings where asbestos was also present.