Michael Lees has spent 15 years thinking about asbestos in British schools since the death of his wife Gina at the age of 51 in 2000. She suffered from mesothelioma – a form of lung cancer.
Gina worked as a teacher for more than 30 years and Lees now believes she spent much of that time unnecessarily exposed to asbestos in the school building.
Frustrated with the official response to a problem that could potentially lead to to the premature death of hundreds if not thousands of teachers across Britain, he founded the Asbestos in Schools group.
He went on to conduct research into mesothelioma incidence among UK teachers and he believes it to be the highest in the world.
In his wifes case, changing art work display boards daily was part of her job. “For each drawing pin 6000 fibres are released”. When this information was passed to a government advisory committee they concluded that the breathing zone of the teacher the level is 0.5 fibres per ml of air – that’s 50,000 fibres of a breathing zone of the person actually doing it regularly over the course of a day. This can build up to be a significant exposure.
Lees believes asbestos in schools should not be regarded as a “buildings legacy problem” that should be ignored. On the contrary he is now calling on the government to change its policy of leaving asbestos “if it is not disturbed or damaged until a school is demolished” and carry out a national audit to identify schools that are most at risk and contain the most dangerous asbestos, such as AIBs.