Cape Asbestos, Barking, health and environment: 1928-1946

Our plain-English summary of Cape Asbestos, Barking, health and environment: 1928-1946, by M. Greenberg (American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 2003).

The study

• Author: M. Greenberg
• Journal: American Journal of Industrial Medicine
• Published: 2003;43(2):109-19
• Type of article: Historical article
• Cited by: 2 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

Abstract

Background: The mining of chrysotile began in the province of Quebec in the late 1870s. Twenty years later, while annual exports were still measured in hundreds of tons, serious and lethal effects were being reported in England and shortly after in France. In 1913, after a number of years of operating in South Africa, Cape Asbestos Company established a factory in Britain in Barking, Essex. Some 15 years later, in 1929, the local Medical Officer of Health was seeing their asbestotic workers at his Chest Clinic, the local Chest Hospital was investigating them and publishing their findings, and the Coroner began what was to be a long series of inquests.

Methods: Documents from the Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, The Royal School of Mines, Central Library of Imperial College, The Porton and Barking Archives, and documents obtained by legal discovery were utilized in preparing this historical perspective.

Results: Despite complaints from the local authority, Parliament was assured that there was no special incidence of disease at Cape, Barking, and that its exhaust ventilation was quite up to the general standard and constantly being improved. Reports on the factory environment and information on the health of Cape's workforce that are available for the years 1928-1934, provide a less sanguine view of the situation, as was confirmed by subsequent health reports on its workforce.

Conclusions: The case of asbestos is considered as a paradigm for the economic considerations that are considered to justify the perpetuation of unsafe and unhealthy occupations, decisions with which medical opinion can be found to concur.

Copyright 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

In plain English

This article is a historical account. The author reviewed archival records, including documents obtained by legal discovery, to see how the Cape Asbestos factory in Barking, Essex, dealt with the health of its workforce between 1928 and 1946. By the end of 1929, the local Medical Officer of Health had investigated 23 cases, 9 with enough evidence for a diagnosis of asbestosis. A Factory Department manuscript listed eight fatal asbestosis cases at Cape between November 1929 and February 1931. Parliament was told in 1929 that there was no special incidence of disease at the works, a reply the author judged to be at variance with the evidence. A 1930 dust survey found a weaver exposed to 406 particles per c.c. under the best conditions. A 1934 inspection reported somewhat serious irregularities. A 1946 thesis counted 98 known deaths at Cape from asbestosis, alone or with other diseases, with a mean age at death of 34.9 years. The author noted that the completeness of these data cannot be checked. The author presented the case as a paradigm of economic reasoning used to justify continuing unsafe occupations.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Historical perspective (review of archival documents, official reports and correspondence, and documents obtained by legal discovery)
• Who was studied: Workers at the Cape Asbestos factory in Barking, Essex (East London), which opened in 1913, examined through records covering 1928 to 1946
• Exposure: Asbestos dust in factory processes, including opening, spinning, weaving and carding, mattress making, slab making, sawing insulation, disintegrators, boiler compositions and powder. The article does not state which fiber type was used at the factory.
• Main results:
  • In the Medical Officer of Health's 1929 report, 23 cases had been investigated by the end of that year. Of these, 9 showed sufficient evidence for a diagnosis of asbestosis, 10 did not, and 4 were awaiting further investigation.
  • A Factory Department manuscript (Table I) listed eight fatal cases of asbestosis at Cape, with dates of death from 30 November 1929 to 4 February 1931.
  • A ministerial reply to Parliament in December 1929 said there was no special incidence of disease at the Barking works and that its exhaust ventilation was up to the general standard. The author judged this reply to be at variance with the evidence.
  • A dust count survey at Cape on 23 September 1930 found a weaver exposed to 406 particles per c.c. under the best conditions.
  • In 1931, Factory Department Medical Inspector Dr. Merewether wrote that he was not satisfied that dust suppression at Cape was sufficient to prevent cases of asbestosis.
  • Factory inspectors visited on 12 December 1934 and reported somewhat serious irregularities. These included slab making with no exhaust, because the fan had been disconnected a few weeks before.
  • In a 1932 letter, Reginald Tage reported that autopsies had been performed on 11 people who had worked at Cape since 1929. The letter put the average workforce in 1930 at 218 and the number of present and past employees known to have asbestosis at 160.
  • Dr. Wyers' 1946 MD thesis counted 98 known deaths at Cape from asbestosis, alone or complicated by other diseases such as tuberculosis and carcinoma. The mean age at death was 34.9 years and the average exposure was 7.6 years (range 24.0 to 0.75 years). By 1949, Wyers gave the total of known fatal cases at Cape as 115.
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that the handling of asbestos can be seen as a paradigm for how agents and occupations causing substantial disability and death were dealt with at that time. Their continued use was justified on economic grounds, a view with which medical opinion concurred.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The completeness of Wyers' death data cannot be determined.
  • There is no evidence of where Tage obtained his figures.
  • The 1930 particle counts were not converted to fiber counts, because such a conversion is very uncertain.
  • The local archives do not hold the Medical Officer of Health's or the Council's papers and correspondence.

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Asbestosis, Chrysotile.

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Cape Asbestos, Chrysotile, Discovery.

Related studies

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• Occurrence, behaviour, and human exposure pathways and health risks of toxic geogenic contaminants in serpentinitic ultramafic geological environments (SUGEs): A medical geology perspective — W. Gwenzi (2020)
• The art of perpetuating a public health hazard — M. Greenberg (2005)
• Experimental asbestos studies in the UK: 1912-1950 — M. Greenberg (2017)
• A review of scientific literature examining the mining history, geology, mineralogy, and amphibole asbestos health effects of the Rainy Creek igneous complex, Libby, Montana, USA — B.R. Bandli, M.E. Gunter (2006)

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