The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) have revealed that some 4,000 people a year in the UK are dying from the effects of asbestos.
Although a quarter of the victims are former tradesmen, it is feared that today's plumbers, electricians and joiners underestimate the ongoing risk from asbestos.
Asbestos was banned in 2000, but remains in some 500,000 UK buildings. The HSE state that exposure to the material remains the biggest single cause of work-related deaths, likely to peak at around 5,000 per year in the next five years.
Research suggests that exposure kills on average six electricians, three plumbers and six joiners every week. The HSE fear complacency could lead to those numbers growing and is launching a campaign to raise awareness, headed by ex-footballer and former tradesman Ian Wright.
HSE disease reduction programme director, Steve Coldrick said, "We have a legacy of 500,000 commercial or industrial buildings in this country which still contain asbestos and it is tradesmen who are at risk from it now. Unless we make them really understand the problems it can cause, in 20 or 50 years time we will have even more people dying."
However, general secretary of the builders' union Ucatt, Alan Ritchie, said his members were rapidly losing confidence in the HSE, because when workers raised concerns about asbestos, "Rather than talk to the workers whose health is being put at risk, they instead simply speak to the management, who invariably give the organisation a clean bill of health."
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