In this podcast, HSE experts discuss the legal obligation to manage asbestos in non-domestic buildings, highlight where asbestos is likely to be found and explain why it is dangerous. ----more---- In January 2024, HSE launched the Asbestos – Your Duty campaign, featuring updated web guidance, including new templates and explanatory videos. The steps to the legal duty to manage asbestos in buildings, and the importance of the campaign, are discussed by Tim Beaumont, HM Principal Inspector Health and Safety, Asbestos Cluster Lead and Samantha Lord, Chartered Occupational Hygienist & Principal Specialist Inspector both from HSE. They are joined by Craig Barker, Group Property FHS & Asbestos Manager at Marks and Spencer. During his 11 years with the company, Craig and his health and safety team have established robust ways of working to manage asbestos containing materials, developed training for employees, and put controls in place to ensure that the duty to manage asbestos is upheld and the processes are followed when any work is carried out on its buildings. For more information and to download HSE's free asbestos management plan template, visit: https://www.hse.gov.uk/asbestos/duty/index.htm HSE Podcast - The duty to manage asbestos in buildings transcript Host (Mick Ord): Welcome to the HSE podcast, the latest in a series designed to help and support you because whether you are a business owner, a manager, or a worker. Health and safety is for everyone. In this episode we're taking a look at a hazardous material that has been banned in the UK for the past 25 years, but which still claims the lives of about 5, 000 people a year, more than the number of people killed on our roads. I'm Mick Ord and we're talking about asbestos. What it is, why it still causes so many deaths, how it can be managed properly and efficiently in the workplace, and what you can do to ensure that you or your employees are not exposed to it. This is all part of HSE's campaign, Asbestos - Your Duty. And, as I'm bound to mention a few times today, you can find the relevant information to help you on the Asbestos pages of HSE's website, https://www.hse.gov.uk/asbestos/duty/ With me are three people on the frontline of asbestos awareness from very practical points of view. Tim Beaumont is HSE's Principal Inspector and a Senior Policy Advisor on asbestos. He's been with HSE since 1999 in a variety of operational and policy roles. His main work right now revolves around coordinating the delivery of the recommendations arising from the Work and Pension Select Committee inquiry into HSE's management of asbestos regulation. Samantha Lord is HSE's Chartered Occupational Hygienist and Principal Specialist Inspector. She's been with HSE for 15 years. But has been working in the area of asbestos for more than 26 years. She plays an integral role in supporting and enabling HSE's asbestos-related inspection programs, as well as their asbestos campaigns. And she also regularly engages with external partners about HSE's work on asbestos. And we're delighted that Craig Barker from Marks & Spencer has joined us too. Craig has 20 years of experience consulting and advising on asbestos, with the last 10 years in the retail sector for M&S, where he's the Group Property, Fire Health and Safety and Asbestos Manager. Since 2013, M&S has completely overhauled its approach to the management of asbestos-containing materials. Sixty per cent of the estate was built before the year 2000, meaning asbestos must be considered as a potential hazard. Craig and his health and safety team have established robust ways of working, developed training programs for employees, and put controls in place for any work carried out on the building's fabrics to ensure that the duty to manage asbestos is upheld, and the correct processes are followed. Craig will talk us through their approach to managing the risks of asbestos across their estate. Welcome all. Tim, can you explain in layman's terms what asbestos is? And how it causes so many deaths. [00:03:38] Tim Beaumont: Well, thanks, Mick. That's a really important question. Asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral. When we say asbestos, actually there are a number of different types of asbestos. They're all found in the ground naturally and over many years we've been removing it. It has a number of different qualities that make it rather useful. First of all, it's cheap, it's widely distributed across the globe and easy to get to. Secondly, it's a really good fire retardant. Thirdly, it's a really good insulating material. So, for those three reasons, it has been used widely in construction, particularly over the last 150 years or so, but most of all, the second half of the 20th century. It's got these wonderful attributes that meant that it was cert to be used in a huge range of structures and properties to insulate and to prevent the spread of fire. The final thing about it, it's really easy to manipulate. You can weave it, you can turn it into a kind of cement, you can add it to other things, you can put it into other products that you're making. All of these things make it an incredibly attractive and useful material. The massive, massive downside. It, um, forms tiny, tiny little shards, little fibres that are really easy to breathe in. They go right into the very depths of your lungs, and that's the point where it causes ill health. These tiny little shards, these tiny little fibres, so small that you need incredibly strong microscopes to see, end up causing cancers, lung cancer, but particularly an unusual cancer called mesothelioma. And it's this cancer that is absolutely linked to asbestos exposure. So, really useful, but also really deadly. [00:05:34] Host (Mick Ord): And mesothelioma, I believe that causes two and a half thousand deaths a year in the UK. I mean, that's astonishing, isn't it? [00:05:42] Tim Beaumont: That is a very high number. It's one of the highest causes of death, particularly in men. The thing about mesothelioma and lung cancer caused by asbestos is the time delay between being exposed and actually developing the cancer. It can be a number of decades, around about 40 years or so, between being exposed to the asbestos and developing the cancer. [00:06:06] Host (Mick Ord): Tim, is there a safe level of asbestos exposure? [00:06:11] Tim Beaumont: Well, what we're not able to say, we're not able to establish a line In exposure above which you're going to be exposed and it's going to harm your health and below which you're going to be safe That just doesn't exist for asbestos because of the nature of its fibrous exposure type What we are trying to do is ensure that Any material that contains asbestos does not give rise to fibres, and that's the crucial thing with asbestos, the breathable fibres that you might be exposed to. So that's the focus of our attention when it comes to asbestos management. [00:06:46] Host (Mick Ord): Also, Tim, what buildings may contain asbestos and where can it be found? [00:06:51] Tim Beaumont: Asbestos can be found in any building that's been built, particularly in the 20th century, leading up to 1999, when it was banned from use in construction. But particularly the period from 1920s, 1930s, up to the mid-80s, you're most likely to find asbestos. And it can be found in literally any building or structure that was built in that time period. So, offices, Schools, hospitals, shops, warehouses and homes may all contain asbestos in different ways. Now on our website, we've got an excellent little picture of a property that shows you where you might find asbestos within that property. But I just want to be clear, for the benefit of this conversation we're having, we're talking about non-domestic setting. That's because there's a very specific set of legislation and standards in place to for working with asbestos in the non-domestic setting. So, everything you're going to be hearing us talk about today, we're thinking about workplaces in particular. And that is the focus of the work of the Health and Safety Executive. We want to make sure that in workplaces, exposure to asbestos is properly controlled so that when you go to work, you are not going to be exposed to asbestos fibres. [00:08:05] Host (Mick Ord): Sam, what are the steps to managing asbestos properly? What advice say would you give to a new duty holder operating in an older building? [00:08:13] Samantha Lord: Essentially, if you've got an older building, the first thing you need to do is establish if asbestos could be present. Then what you've got to do is identify the risk from that asbestos. And the reason why I say that is that all the asbestos materials don't have the same risk. So as Tim sort of alluded to, there's a range of different products, but their risk is to do with their inherent properties. Some materials are quite what we call friable, and they easily release fibres if they're disturbed, or if they actually deteriorate over time. But some are much sort of hard-wearing, such as floor tiles. And you're really going to struggle to get fibre released from those. So, it's important to understand the difference in risk associated with different products. The other thing that's going to affect the risk is how people processes, maintenance and cleaning sort of happens within that building. So, all the activities that potentially could what we call disturb the asbestos. Because once you disturb asbestos, that is where you'll break down the material and release those fibres. So, once you've identified the risk, then you've got to manage those risks to make sure no one is exposed. And that's really what we're all here to do. What's Duty to Manage is essentially for. So, I've started off just introducing a
