EXCLUSIVEDo you live in an asbestos hotspot? Interactive map reveals levels of deadly material in your area with one town's deaths EIGHT times higher than road traffic accidents

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Deadly asbestos kills three times as many Britons as road accidents and is rife in hospitals and schools, a new report has warned.

The probe compiled 381,398 separate inspections and found there are at least 150 million asbestos items hidden in public buildings across the UK. The data has been turned into an interactive map that shows the prevalence of asbestos and mesothelioma - an incurable cancer caused by inhaling asbestos fibres - in each area of the country.

Today, we are publishing an interactive map produced from the Asbestos Information CIC research as part of The Mail’s Asbestos: Britain’s Hidden Killer campaign. It is a constituency-by-constituency guide to what asbestos they found, and what state it was in. There are few areas without it in an alarming state.

Researchers used more than 7 million data entries from 381,000 asbestos surveys in order to build up a picture of the prevalence, and condition, of asbestos in the UK. In Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s constituency of Holborn and St Pancras, around 40,000 buildings contain asbestos, with more than half containing the highest risk variety.

Asbestos Information CIC, which compiled the report, is now calling for a national database of asbestos so it can be removed urgently. It is also demanding a new system of certificates, rating buildings from A to G based on their asbestos content, to be displayed publicly like food safety certificates.

At the report’s launch in Westminster this morning, Charles Pickles, of campaign group Airtight on Asbestos, branded the material ‘Britain’s dirty little secret’.

‘We have been in denial as a nation for a long time,’ he said. ‘It is now policy to eradicate asbestos, but it has not yet gone into practice.

‘Asbestos is Britain’s dirty little secret because it’s in all our schools and hospitals and no one knows about it. 

Click on your constituency in the map below to see the level of risk in your area. If what you see concerns you, there is a handy email link to your MP. If, like us, you believe there is no place for asbestos in society – especially in schools and hospitals – then please use this link to tell your Parliamentary representative. 

The Mail’s Asbestos: Britain’s Hidden Killer campaign demands that a phased removal of abestos must begin with schools and hospitals

‘Understanding the location and condition of asbestos in buildings is vital for the development of a strategy that can lead to the removal of asbestos from all buildings, starting with those that present the greatest risk.’

He added he has a ‘dream’ of an asbestos-free UK by 2065 - and believes it can be achieved.

The fireproof material is found in floor and ceiling tiles, wall insulation, external cladding, sprayed coatings and lift shafts of thousands of public buildings built since the 1960s.

As asbestos ages, it starts to break down, potentially shedding its deadly fibres which can then be inhaled.

The policy of successive governments has been to leave asbestos where it is unless visibly damaged and shedding fibres.

The Mail’s Asbestos: Britain’s Hidden Killer campaign aims to end that policy.

Report author John Richards said building certificate ratings should be based on the type of asbestos, along with its age, condition and location.

‘Our public buildings are riddled with it,’ he said. ‘The data clearly shows that those asbestos materials which represent the highest risk to human life are the products with the highest levels of damage.

MP Emma Lewell-Buck lost her grandfather, who worked as a plater making ships, to asbestosis in 1998

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‘The arm’s length policy that places a duty on owners and leaseholders to manage asbestos in their buildings is not working.

‘I don’t want people in 50 years to say they we an opportunity to do something and did nothing.’

He added the Heath and Safety Executive is ‘frustratingly slow’ to respond to warnings about potentially lethal asbestos deposits.

The report’s authors found that in Australia, where a policy of asbestos removal has been actively pursued, every dollar spent on removing asbestos has saved two dollars in healthcare for treating mesothelioma patients.

They also discovered that many victims did not inhale the deadly fibres at work, but suffered ‘bystander exposure’ - simply by visiting buildings that contain asbestos.

It’s believed hundreds of thousands of people will die in the coming decades from mesothelioma.

There is no official figure for the number of schools containing asbestos, but freedom of information requests to Department for Education (DfE) have established that there are at least 21,500.

There are more than 32,000 schools in the UK, and any built before 1999 – when the use of asbestos was finally banned - are likely to contain it.

Liz Darlison, CEO of Mesothelioma UK, said: ‘We are keen to support initiatives that prevent others experiencing the same devastating diagnosis.

‘We welcome the findings of this important report, and hope that the Government will take the necessary action, by adopting the proposals set out here, to help protect future generations.’

MP knew of asbestos risk in her constituency - it had killed her grandfather

By Steve Boggan 

MP Emma Lewell-Buck always knew her South Shields constituency was blighted by asbestos from its proud ship-building past – after all, it had killed her grandfather.

But it wasn’t until the Mail showed her the latest cutting edge research into the presence – and dangerous condition – of the deadly material nationwide that the threat to her constituents fully hit home.

Because that research, using more than 380,000 UK-wide asbestos surveys conducted between 2022 and 2024, suggests that her constituents are dying from mesothelioma – a deadly cancer caused by exposure to the material – at a greater rate than any of their fellow Britons.

In fact, analysts from Asbestos Information, the not-for-profit ‘community interest company’ (CIC) which conducted the research, found that people from South Shields are more than seven times more likely to die from mesothelioma than from being killed in a traffic accident.

They also found that nationally, the picture is grim. They discovered more asbestos in a poor condition than they had expected, deteriorating to the point where it could release potentially deadly fibres.

‘When I opened the findings about South Shields, my researcher just said: “Oh my god. This is terrible,"' says Emma. ‘And I felt the same way. I was shocked – but when I thought about it, I wasn’t really surprised.

‘We were the makers and the builders, and we kept this country going. The legacy of that, from the shipyards and the mines, is illness caused by asbestos. Everyone knows somebody who has been affected by it, even my own family.

‘But asbestos is everywhere and we simply can’t ignore it anymore. We have to do something about it, and with a real sense of urgency.’ 

Last month, Emma echoed the demands of the Mail’s Asbestos: Britain’s Hidden Killer campaign during Prime Minister’s questions in the House of Commons, asking Sir Keir Starmer to introduce a national digital register to record where asbestos was located, and to commit to a phased removal of it from all public buildings. He promised her a meeting with ministers.

The Mail has gone further, demanding that such a phased removal must begin with schools and hospitals. Asbestos is known to be in more than 80 and 90 per cent of these respectively.

For decades, the policy of successive governments has been to leave asbestos where it is, as long as it is boxed in or painted over and – theoretically – not shedding fibres. But we argue that this is no longer a viable policy as long as Britain’s public buildings are crumbling. According to the National Audit Office, there is a £49billion backlog in maintenance for schools, hospitals, courts, offices and so on.

Asbestos-related disease is now the UK’s biggest industrial killer, causing more than 5,000 deaths a year, according to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Just over half of these are caused by mesothelioma, a cancer affecting the mesothelium, a membrane surrounding the lungs, heart and intestines.

Symptoms include abdominal pain, chest pains, coughing and breathlessness caused by a build-up of fluid on the lungs. These symptoms can take anything from 20 to 60 years to appear, but once they do, most victims die within a year. There is no cure and the disease is always fatal.

According to the HSE, in addition to mesothelioma, around 2,500 deaths a year are caused by asbestosis, a hardening of the lungs, and lung cancer associated with the material.

Emma’s grandfather, John Henry Richardson, died from asbestosis in 1998 at the age of 69.

‘He was such a lovely, quiet, dignified man,’ she says. ‘He had been a plater, working with the heavy steel used to make ships at several shipyards around the Northeast, which was where he would have been exposed to asbestos. He retired when he got his diagnosis at 62.

‘I was in my twenties when he died, and I don’t remember him deteriorating in great detail – but I do remember that when I’d call him, it would take ages for him to get down the stairs to answer the phone, and he’d be out of breath. My mum, Linda (72), says he had lots of inhalers to help him breathe.

‘But he wasn’t alone. Everyone in his area knows someone with a relative who has died from an asbestos-related disease.’

The figures on which the latest research was culled came from surveys conducted by 12 of Britain’s biggest asbestos consultancies. They form only 20 per cent the sector, so what they found is only a fraction of the asbestos likely to be out there.

There is an argument that this sector, some of whose members founded the CIC, has most to gain from a policy of removal. But this is specious; these are the people who come into contact with it every day, and the only ones qualified to deal with the dangerous job of removing it.

Nationally, the research identified 2.5 million items of asbestos during 381,398 surveys at 257,622 unique sites and found that more than a quarter were considered to be ‘highest risk’, where asbestos is damaged and able to shed dangerous fibres.

During the two years of the study, 153 asbestos surveys were conducted in South Shields and 1,088 items of the material were found. Many were in a condition likely to cause fibres to be released into the air.

Mortality statistics for mesothelioma covering this period are not yet fully available. However, during the years 2018-2022, the disease caused 63 deaths in the constituency, while there were only eight caused by road traffic accidents – a ratio of 7.88:1.

Government policy was previously to leave asbestos where it was if it was boxed in or painted over and not shedding fibres. But we argue this is no longer viable, as Britain's buildings are crumbling

While there is no relationship between the two types of death, researchers thought it would be helpful to have some kind of context the public could understand.

‘Younger people would have very little knowledge of asbestos and would regard it as a thing of the past,’ says Emma. ‘Some of them would never have heard of it – and certainly wouldn’t know anything about mesothelioma. But they know what a car crash death is and what a devastating effect that can have on a family.’

Asbestos Information CIC’s map, created from more than 7 million survey entries, shows that in most of the country you are at least as likely to die from an asbestos-related disease than from a traffic accident. People living in former industrial heartlands are, predictably, at most risk.

Large amounts of asbestos were used in shipbuilding, and this is reflected in the findings. Next door to Emma’s constituency are Jarrow and Gateshead East, and Tynemouth. In Jarrow, a person is 4.95 times more likely to be killed by asbestos than in a traffic accident. In Tynemouth, the figure rises to 6.8 times.

Other blighted areas include Poole, and Bournemouth East and West (4.19 times); Plymouth (5 times); Mid-Dunbartonshire (6.5 times); South End West and Leigh (4.86).

In many constituencies, the population is twice as likely, or more, to die from an asbestos-related disease than a car crash. These range from Winchester in the South (2.2), to constituencies in Nottingham in the Midlands (3.15); Aberdeen in Scotland (3.78); and Wallasey in the Northwest (3.48).

‘What this map reveals is truly shocking, says Jonathan Grant, Registrar of the Faculty of Asbestos Assessment and Management at the British Occupational Hygiene Society. ‘The sheer volume of damaged high risk asbestos was genuinely a surprise to me. It tells us that the asbestos in the UK is in a far worse condition than we had previously thought.

‘I strongly suspect that the government’s risk assessments for asbestos within the UK are incomplete – and this is a problem because there is no asbestos in this country that isn’t beyond its intended lifespan. And the longer we wait to remove it, the more it’s going to deteriorate; that is just a simple fact.

Asbestos fibres, which can cause asbestosis (scarring of the lungs) and mesothelioma (cancer of the lining of the lungs, chest or abdomen)

‘Being able to look at the mesothelioma recorded deaths on the map is absolutely stark when you compare it with the number of road deaths. It’s pretty terrifying.’

Referring to hundreds of school building closures due to fears the reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) in them was crumbling, Jonathan adds: ‘Not a single person has died from a collapsing school yet, but closures are happening to safeguard pupils and staff from the effects of RAAC. Yet former teachers and pupils are dying because of exposure to asbestos in the classroom, and I’ve never heard of a single school closure caused by that.’

Research conducted by eight education trades unions and shared with the Daily Mail last October concluded that since 1980, 1,400 teachers and school support staff, and 12,600 former pupils had died from asbestos-related diseases. They predicted that ‘hundreds of thousands’ more would die in the coming decades.

The Asbestos Testing and Consultancy Association (ATaC) and its analysts Charlotte Burton and Maureen Ekwugha, who created the map, used bespoke algorithms and artificial intelligence in order to standardise results recorded during the 381,000 surveys. For example, they found that asbestos surveyors were using as many as six different words to describe a ‘roof’. Their aim is to persuade the government to introduce ‘Asbestos Information Certificates’ similar to Energy Performance Certificates for every building in the country.

John Richards, a former chair of ATaC, says: ‘As someone who has been involved in the asbestos industry for more than 40 years – and as someone fully aware that considerably more people die from asbestos exposure than road accidents - I was surprised to see that this picture is the case in almost all Parliamentary constituencies, and not confined solely to the industrial locations where we would consider the risk to be higher. All of the ATaC members who have looked at the map have expressed similar surprise.’

This is significant because in 2022, the Parliamentary Work and Pensions Committee conducted an inquiry into the way the HSE oversees asbestos regulations and recommended that the government introduce a digital register and embarks on a 40-year programme to remove asbestos.

Both recommendations – which form the basis of the Mail’s campaign - were rejected, with the HSE arguing that collating such a register would be too costly and difficult. By producing this map, the sector has proved that this is argument does not stand up to scrutiny.

Sir Stephen Timms was chair of the committee that made the recommendations. Now a government minister, he is spearheading efforts to implement them, and sources tell me he is making considerable progress.

Although there has been no official policy change yet, campaigners behind the scenes say one is likely to be announced during the life of this Parliament – and possibly very soon.

On February 5, during questions from members of the Work and Pensions Committee, Sarah Albon, CEO of the HSE, admitted for the first time that asbestos should be removed from buildings. Nobody within government or the HSE had ever before advocated removal of asbestos over management of it.

She said: ‘Although we haven’t had any direct conversations about the specific time frame in which we should be looking to see asbestos removed entirely from the built environment, I think there’s an absolute agreement between us and Sir Stephen as our responsible minister that, ultimately, we need to work towards a place where asbestos is fully removed from the UK environment.’

She added: ‘I think that links to the potential for some kind of register, and we’re working actively with Sir Stephen to see how that recommendation around a register could be most sensibly progressed.’

This is music to the ears of Liz Darlison, a mesothelioma nurse who, 21 years ago, founded Mesothelioma UK, a charity aimed at supporting victims and campaigning for asbestos removal.

She says: ‘Every day I see people dying from this completely avoidable cancer. If we manage to get rid of this threat for good, we will save many thousands of families from losing loved ones in future generations. And if we can do that, it will make us a far happier - and healthier - country.’