Thanks for the information. I know that this wood composite board containing asbestos was definitely supplied to Cammell Laird shipbuilders in Liverpool.
Does anyone know of this being linked to illness particularly amongst woodworkers, wood machinists, joiners, carpenters, etc? I would be interested to hear from anyone in the wood trades who has been exposed to these boards and who suffers ill health such as autoimmune diseases or respiratory disease, etc.
Does anyone know exactly what kind of asbestos it contained?
My husband, a wood machinist, worked with this board in the 1970's for a company in Manchester but they were told by management that it contained a 'safe' asbestos, which of course isn't true. Besides cutting it they also laminated it and edged it too. It was used as wall partitioning. They were never given any PPE. Crazy really but when they banned the use of asbestos they substituted it with crystalline silica (they are very similar in qualities), another carcinogen. Besides causing cancers both asbestos and c/silica have been linked to causing certain autoimmune diseases too, also devastating, life threatening and destructive and treated with chemo and the like. We have now both been diagnosed with a rare form of necrotising autoimmune disease and they say we're the only husband and wife couple in the world. Our disease was caused by the exposures to wood dust and silica in the wood dust at work and possibly even the asbestos too. It's crazy as wood dust per se is a classified carcginogen and yet wood machinsts, wood workers, are knowingly allowed to inhale it daily and to bring it home on their clothes, hair and skin to contaminate their homes and expose their loved ones too. They would never allow this if it were asbestos which is also a group 1 carcinogen. Wood dust is reffered to officially as a 'nuisance' dust and a 'safe' level set. How can a proven carcinogen be merely a 'nuisance' dust? I despair. There is no 'safe' level that can be inhaled of any carcinogen so the workplace 'safe' levels of 0.5 are inadequate and fail to protect anyone. I have washed his work clothes for over 30 years. There was a time when they were so full of dust that I had to take them outside to shake of the wood dust/fibres. It would choke me and tasted foul.
Wood composite boards such as MDF/chipboard are made of old waste woods recycled from C&D waste, construction and demolition waste. Old woods from the demolition of old properties and buildings, etc. So hence the real risk that these older building materials such as Marinite, Trunall Asbestos Ships Board, Asbestolux, etc., and also containing woods treated or containing chemicals that were banned years ago because they'd been proven to cause ill health. Therefore if these asbestos boards, which are diificult to tell from any other boards are 'recycled' then asbestos, silica, lead, heavy metals, banned chemicals, pesticides, fungicides, preservatives, etc. will be 'recycled' back in to the chain and emitted as a dust.
Whilst these boards may be safe in solid form, as a dust they're deadly to those working with them or nearby manufacturing plants. A real ticking time bomb. You only have to look at the internet and see how many residents living near wood waste recycling firms, wood chipping plants and wood composite board manufacturers are all suffering and complaining of the same symptoms from exposure to wood dust from demolition wastes. The dust from the 9/11 atrocities are very similar too and that's why they're experiencing high incidents of cancers and autoimmune diseases since the dust clouds.
If you could see the huge mountains of this wood waste at wood recycling companies (so high the huge earth moving equipment looks like a child's toy sat on top) then you would see the problem is massive. With the new trends for Biomass incinerators springing up all over the UK, this same old recycled wood waste is being used as fuel for Biomass. They use the worst grades for this. When this waste is burned it will emit many of these contaminants back in to air in very fine particules so small you can't see them. As always it's not the dust/particles you can see that do the most damage, it's the ones you can't see that are the most harmful. When inhaled due to their small size often nanoparticle size, then these don't stay in the lungs like the larger size particles, these can pass through vein walls and through the blood brain barrier, so can travel beyond the lungs to affect any part of the body including the brain.
So as you can see the asbestos and Marinite nightmare is not over yet. Instead of it coming to an end there's a chance it's being 'recycled', like that's a good thing.
I'm writing a book about our experiences.
