CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF EMERGING THEMES AND TRENDS
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FRONT DESK
Smart building ecosystems: an interconnected future, but what is FM’s role in it?
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How can buildings data be linked to making people feel better?
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Newsmakers: key stories from Facilitate online in the months of March and April
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What happens now that the building safety manager role has been scrapped?
A S BESTOS
Government urged to solve asbestos peril in real estate within 40 years by Herpreet Kaur Grewal
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ast month, the government was told by a group of influential MPs that it must commit to a strategy to remove all asbestos from public and commercial buildings within 40 years. They argue that the longer it takes to remove asbestos, the more the risk to health “is likely to increase as buildings are adapted with the move to net zero”. The report from the Work and Pensions Committee highlighted how, despite being banned more than two decades ago, asbestos persists as the single greatest cause of work-related fatalities in the UK. There were more than 5,000 deaths in 2019, including from cancers such as mesothelioma. It says it is regrettable that an endeavour meant to make buildings more energy efficient and the health of the general planet and populations better should have such a problematic consequence. The increase in retrofitting in response to net-zero ambitions means that more asbestos-containing materials will be disturbed in the coming decades, states the select committee. Many of these deaths will relate to exposures from 35 or more years ago. The available evidence indicates that cumulative exposures are much lower now for younger age groups, but more data is needed to understand the current picture. As asbestos remains in about 300,000
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non-domestic buildings and a likely dramatic increase in disturbance from netzero retrofitting is likely, the committee says that reliance on the current asbestos regulations will not be good enough. It concludes that a cross-government and “system-wide” strategy for the long-term removal of asbestos is required. The report calls on the government and Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to back
While the late-20th century exposures are behind us, the risk remains real Stephen Timms MP up its stated goal of removing all asbestos by committing to a clear time frame and strategy. The plan should strengthen the evidence base on safe and effective asbestos removal in the first instance before prioritising removal from the highest-risk settings, including schools. The government must also guarantee adequate funding for HSE inspection and enforcement of the asbestos regulations, which has declined in recent years. Professor John Cherrie, emeritus
professor of human health at Heriot-Watt University and principal scientist at the Institute of Occupational Medicine, told the committee that “although we know that the exposures are most probably less than they were in the past, we have very little idea about current situations”. He said there was “no systematically collected information” on how many people “may be exposed or the levels of exposure that they may experience.” Moreover, he added that there was “no attempt to systematically collate that evidence and use it as intelligence to understand what the problem might be for the whole of the UK.” Hence, the report also recommends that the HSE should develop and implement “a robust research framework for the systematic measurement of current asbestos exposures in nondomestic buildings, using a range of measurement and sampling techniques and informed by international experiences and approaches”. It should also ensure that adequate consideration is given to exposure measurement in schools and other public buildings. It recommends that the HSE should publish its framework by October 2022 and produce findings at frequent intervals thereafter. A spokesperson for the HSE told Facilitate: “HSE can confirm it has
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