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Worker spent 20 years breathing in deadly dust

By Karl Plunkett

Mar 2 2005 - NEWBURY man Bernard Danks' inquest heard in his own words how he was exposed to lethal asbestos dust during a 20-year career as a pipe fitter.

In a statement made for a compensation claim, 70-year-old Mr Danks, of Kiln Road, Newbury, had listed three jobs that he held between 1954-1975 where he breathed in asbestos.

The Reading inquest heard as a 20-year-old pipe fitter's assistant Mr Danks was first exposed to the deadly dust while working at AWRE Alder-maston in 1954, and contact continued between 1956 and 1958 when he did a similar job at AERE in Harwell.

And from 1960 to 1975 Mr Danks estimated he removed asbestos insulation from the outside of boilers at least two or three times a week while working for Elliotts of Newbury.

Mr Danks said: "As I was doing the fitting, other workers were coming round after me. And the laggers were mixing up the lagging on site in the rooms where we were working.

"On some occasions, the dust was so thick I could not see across the room. I had to put a handkerchief across my mouth to breathe."

The inquest heard that Mr Danks died at the Duchess of Kent House hospice in Reading on December 28 from bronchial pneumonia as a result of a malignant tumour [mesothelioma], of a type rarely found in those not exposed to asbestos.

Recording that death was caused by industrial disease, Berkshire Coroner Peter Bedford described it as an "awful and wicked" condition which produces no apparent symptoms for many years.