Reply to Compass Call:
Yes that’s what I recall. I was careful in my choice of words in my original post as back in 99 when I worked in SM27 the original directive of “identity and manage” had been corrupted into “removal” while the stuff was sandwiched between two flanges no one was exposed. One case in point was some gasket on the VC10 APU. Certainly not effective to send them through maintence but to dispose of the whole assembly as Hazardous waste when the jets were scrapped.
Did a bit of work on Sea King up the tail boom and under the cabin floor laying in some cables for Omega and RWR back in 1982. I do hope I was not exposed. I can’t remember ever cutting holes in any trim blankets but may have done.
So far as I remember the only exposure I was aware of was wrapping some hot air pipes in a Canberra PR9 camera bay with asbestos woven tape which was fixed in place with locking wire. My locking wire skills were not up to much and I had to do it again. Each time the braided tape became more fluffy. I think some time (quite a few years) after this we were all given forms to fill in. I entered this on my form.
We all knew cadmium was an issue with all steel bits being plated. I do remember a change for some bits where, in the parachuting world we were able to issue concessions to have bits being made to old drawings zinc plated. There was a lot of folks who thought stainless was preferable but did not get the potential difference scketch when in contact with aluminium. Yak s#1t jointing Compound JC5A was not in common parlance in those areas. My understanding in the day that the hazard was in the processing of cad plating not the finished articles. I know the in house facilities were slowly shut down and any plating had to go out to Contractors.
The one thing that grabbed my attention in the Daily Fail article was that the contents of the internal memo were “Secret” and not to be shared outside of MoD. Well the cat is out of the bag now. Is this a further example of an MoD cover up? I get the point that they don’t want to spread alarm. But....