Asbestosis

Summary

diamond geezer Monday, October 20, 2025 This monument popped up in the middle of Barking recently. I thought it was very recently but it was actually unveiled in April 2022 and I'm just not very observant. It says "In Memory of those who lost their lives because of exposure to asbestos". And it's here because Barking has one of the highest rates of asbestos-related deaths in the country. In 1913 the Cape Asbestos Company built a huge asbestos factory beside the River Roding in Barking. The company mined asbestos-bearing rock at several sites in South Africa, then shipped them in sacks to a private quay in Barking for processing. Hundreds of people were employed to mill the ore into usable fibres and then process these into lagging, packaging, pipes, resins, boards and all forms of insulation widely used in the building trade. They worked without masks or other protection, the dangers of asbestos either unknown or not thought worth bothering about. And hundreds of workers died, often many years later, of insidious chronic respiratory disease. I found a 32-page booklet published by Cape Asbestos in the days before blue asbestos was recognised as dangerous and banned, which was as late as 1985. It shows workers with rolled-up sleeves and women leaning over unshielded machines, all potentially inhaling enough fibres to ultimately kill them. I read reports about the local school in Barking, barely 100 metres away, saying that the playground was often covered in fine dust which children rolled up and played with as if it were snow. I read that mesothelioma was so common in the area it was known as the ‘Barking Cough’. These were different times, but times that linger on. Cape Asbestos's plant eventually closed in 1968 and in its place was built the Harts Lane council estate, which is still not the loveliest corner of Barking. It included two tall tower blocks called Colne House and Mersey House, both of which Barking & Dagenham council would now like to demolish. This is ...