Asbestos victims to be remembered at public memorial event

Action Mesothelioma Day rally 2016

Campaigners will be rallying in Albert Square outside Manchester Town Hall at 12.30 pm on Friday 6 July in memory of all those who have lost their lives to the asbestos cancer, mesothelioma.

Local MPs will address the Action Mesothelioma Day rally and doves will be released to commemorate the thousands of people who have already died from this disease in the biggest long-term industrial catastrophe in this country’s history.

More than 2,500 people die of mesothelioma in the UK each year, more than die in road traffic accidents. The UK has the worst incidence of mesothelioma deaths in the world, a legacy of our heavy use of the so-called ‘magic mineral’ in construction and industry after the war.

In Greater Manchester there were also local factors that fuelled this rising epidemic.

Turner & Newall, at one time one of the biggest asbestos companies in the world, had factories, in the Spodden Valley in Rochdale, Trafford Park, Hindley Green and Chapel-en-le-Frith (Ferodo). 

More raw asbestos was unloaded at Salford Docks than any other port in the country. And the widespread use of asbestos to insulate steam engines and railway carriages saw many workers at Horwich locomotive works heavily exposed to asbestos dust.

Graham Dring of Greater Manchester Asbestos Victims Support Group said: This epidemic was man-made and avoidable. The profits of the asbestos industry were considered more important than the lives of workers by the industry and successive governments.

"Asbestos was not banned in this country until nearly 40 years after it was shown that it caused mesothelioma and, shamefully, it is still exported to, and used in, the developing world, despite what we know about the dangers from our own experience in the UK.

"At least 90,000 people will die of mesothelioma in the UK before this epidemic ends.

"We desperately need more money for mesothelioma research and a total ban on the continuing trade in asbestos.