More RAF Asbestos worries.
 

The Sea King was in service for 40 years. I suspect that there would be much more than 1000 'workers' involved over that time.

If anything was going to kill me, I always thought that the fumes from the PX24 that we use to rub in would have been high on the list.

Hangars of a certain generation were ridded with the stuff; 4 shed at Marham had a "decontamination incident" a year or so before Tornado disbanded and in the meantime they demolished the adjacent hangar[s] with the dust getting everywhere...

What were the flame proof seals on Mk1/3 HAS'es made of BTW?

The problem isn't just related to above ground buildings.
I am aware of a guy the died, as a result of working in an underground signals facility in Germany.

This asbestos problem really is a ticking time bomb. My late brother died of mesothelioma at the age of 75 - his last regular contact with asbestos had been when he was an apprentice in a Clydeside shipyard as a young man in his teens and early 20s. The stuff was used for boiler and pipe lagging and was everywhere.

Interesting. Increased longevity probably means more people survive other ailments that so susceptibility to asbestosis is now more obvious.

My father served in merchant ships that had exposed asbestos lagged pipes into the early 50s, about 30 years. The pipes had painted canvas covers bound around them and were superheated. He died aged 71.

I arrived at A&AEE Boscombe one morning in 1989 to find a workman putting up a sign (using drills) at one of the old sheds of Nav/Radio division in the dip (I was the Jaguar RTS officer at the time). I asked him what the sign said. It was "Danger asbestos - do not drill into the wall"! Five months later we arrived at same shed, after particularly heavy storms, to find white powder all over the desks - not too worry they said very officially. Six months later, I organised my leaving barrel at the community centre and no-one turned up. It transpired that they had done the checks and determined that it was asbestos after all and that all the top/secret material had to be transferred to some HASs by the staff xthat day - some leaving do!
30 years later, after some scans on my lungs following a diagnosis of bowel caner, the consultant informed me that I had asbestos scarring and did I know of any asbestos incidents. The moral being - asbestos is a serious long term poison of which the MoD were blissfully (or determinedly) unaware over many years.

The Sweep

When I was a RN artificer apprentice part of the training was taking off asbestos lagging , repairing the machinery exposed and then taking wet asbestos and moulding it by hand round same bits of machinery. That was 50 years ago..:sad:

Then one night there was a fire in the storeroom where the asbestos was held, fire brigade were called and stood very well back with breathing apparatus on :eek:

It's fun to get back to your home station and be told that the new leak in the corner of the tower won't be fixed because, "it's full of asbestos and no one is willing to touch it!"