Health & Safety: High fibre risk

Asbestos is the biggest occupational health problem ever encountered in the UK. According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) figures, deaths caused by asbestos dwarf deaths caused by all other occupation-related diseases and rival those caused by road accidents. Deaths from exposure to asbestos are set to increase over the next twenty years, despite the fact that most asbestos use in construction stopped in 1985. The 15-year plus latency period of asbestos means that positive efforts made now to reduce the risk of asbestos exposure will not be realised for some time.

Within the next year, asbestos legislation is due to bring into force new regulations for the compulsory survey and management of the substance in workplace buildings. The definition of workplace buildings in this case includes publicly owned housing such as stock owned by housing associations.

The controller of the premises will be responsible for identifying, assessing and managing the risk from asbestos in those buildings. Section 4 of the Health and Safety at Work Act defines the controller of premises as any party who has a duty in relation to the repair or maintenance of a workplace property.

The idea of a compulsory asbestos survey and management plan was first mooted by the Health and Safety Commission in 1997 and has been a long time coming. The HSE's consultative document, published in 2000, produced overwhelming support from all interested sectors for this new duty. However, the HSE has found difficulty in placing the duty on controllers of public sector housing because these are not workplace premises as defined in the Health and Safety at Work Act. It is well known, however, that system-built, non-traditional public sector housing contains large amounts of asbestos material and the HSE is keen to see the risk from this included in the new regulations. As a result it will delay implementation of the new regulations from 2001 to spring 2002 in order to allow for further drafting and consultation to ensure public sector housing is included. In the meantime, the HSE is prosecuting property owners for failing to provide adequate and accurate information on asbestos under the 1992 Management of Health and Safety at Work regulations.

Managing the risk
Managing the risk from asbestos materials in buildings will be a job for the majority of employers, owners and managers of commercial properties in the UK. This is a three-stage process. First, the location, condition, nature and extent of all asbestos materials have to be identified. Second, the risk of fibre release from all asbestos materials and any activity likely to cause disturbance of the materials must be assessed. Third, the risk of accidental fibre release must be controlled until the materials are eventually removed under controlled conditions - for example, at the time of refurbishment/demolition.

Historically the reliability of asbestos surveys has been poor when compared to other more established types of building survey. Although this is often attributable to error or omission, asbestos materials are frequently concealed within the structure and are not apparent unless there is some opening up. 

No asbestos surveyor worth their salt will state that a building is asbestos-free unless it was built after 2000. Many asbestos survey companies have had claims against them and one has been prosecuted by the HSE. The lesson here is to make sure that any firm you employ has adequate professional indemnity insurance.

The main problem is the competence and diligence of asbestos surveyors. There is no nationally recognised system of certification for individual surveyors' competence - which does not help the situation. It is suggested that a person is likely to be competent if they can demonstrate a suitable knowledge of building materials, structures and services and have a specialist qualification such as the British Institute of Occupational Hygiene certificate S301 (asbestos and other fibres) or P402 (asbestos survey). Probably the best place to look for an asbestos surveyor is among members of ATaC, the asbestos testing and consulting division of the asbestos trade association ARCA whose directory gives details of all 26 ATaC members. All of these are accredited by quality control organisation the UK Accreditation Service (UKAS) for the sampling and testing of asbestos in building materials. The ARCA directory also includes contractors licensed by the HSE to provide asbestos removal services. Remember that work with most asbestos materials (except cement, plastic and bitumen products) is now 'licensable' and failure to use a licensed contractor will probably result in a prosecution and heavy fine.

Storing information
Key to the success of an asbestos survey is getting the information generated recorded and reported in a fashion to suit your needs for subsequent use of the data. As a minimum the survey must provide the data for an asbestos register of the type needed for trades maintaining a building. For a register, each item of asbestos needs to be individually described in terms of its nature/function, location, position, and type of material, extent and condition. It is important that registers are clear and unambiguous. This is often aided by providing annotated plans. It is often useful to include negative as well as positive results obtained from sampling and testing of suspect items. All too often, failure to report absence of asbestos in a material leads to it being repeatedly queried with the result that it is repeatedly sampled and tested. This causes unnecessary delays to maintenance and repair works as well as unnecessary expense.

Many asbestos surveyors use computer software to generate reports. This could be simply a spreadsheet application to generate the asbestos register or a more sophisticated asbestos management tool. Most property owners or managers would benefit from keeping their records in an electronic format as this allows them to disseminate the data in-house using an intranet if they have one, or to external parties such as maintenance contractors by email or via websites such as Asbestosregister.com.

There are a number of methods of drawing attention to the existence of asbestos in a building. Labelling of asbestos items has been suggested. However, experience has shown that at best such labels detract from decoration and at worst promote vandalism. Research shows that at least 95 per cent of building owners and managers are not willing to label all the asbestos items in their buildings.

Instead, most currently rely on issuing paper asbestos registers to contractors and tradesmen carrying out maintenance on their buildings. These documents are rarely available in the right place at the right time. Asbestosregister.com, launched in March, makes asbestos registers accessible via the internet. This 'not for profit' operation is paid for by property owners to 'privately publish' asbestos registers for the benefit of a target audience chosen by the owner. The website allows anyone to check if the register for a particular property is on the system and, if they have not been previously granted access to it, refers their request for access on to the property owner by email or telephone.

Assessing the risk
When it comes to assessment of risk, the following must be considered:

• All persons or groups likely to disturb the asbestos material must be identified
  
• If the material is disturbed, what quantity of dust is likely to be released?
  
• What, if any, controls are in place to prevent disturbance or accidental dust release?

Assessment systems broadly fall into two types. First, the qualitative method where substantial variation tends to be found between different surveyors' opinions and second, the quantitative method which generally leads to more consistency. Any system should lead the user to a recommended action. So far, the HSE has failed to come up with such a system although the DETR method, which was developed as long ago as 1983, takes the user through a flowchart to an action - for example, label, encapsulate, remove.

There are only a limited number of options when it comes to the control of asbestos in buildings. These are:

• manage (maintain and disseminate asbestos information to all those who need it)
  
• encapsulate and manage
  
• repair, encapsulate and manage
  
• enclose (physically protect) and manage
  
• remove.

Both the HSE and DETR are quite clear in their guidance that asbestos is a risk best managed, because of the inevitable danger of fibre release when it is removed. But the most common problem with managing asbestos is the dissemination of information to those who need it. And failure to make asbestos information available has led to prosecutions by HSE.