[White asbestos] Retraction Of The Decade

From AsbestosWatchdog*:

The Advertising Standards Authority [ASA] have recently upheld our complaint about the HSE’s massive advertising campaign claiming that asbestos kills 4500 workers every year. That was further refined to claim that 9 plumbers, 9 carpenters, and 9 electricians will die every week from asbestos exposure. The HSE must now stop making these exaggerated claims.

The ASA, after an initial investigation, were satisfied that this was a commercial advertising campaign and not a government information promotion. The ASA asked us to provide evidence to support our complaint and below is the text of our submission using only HSE statistics...

Two pages of evidence follow, the highlights of which are this:

1. ... the main reason for our complaint is that 4000 deaths [or up to 5000 as claimed by the TUC] do NOT occur each year from asbestos related disease in the UK. The basis for the HSE to make this claim is a series of calculations contrived from a theoretical model based on a [linear] extrapolation that includes totally wrong data. The formula below is used by the HSE to justify the basis for the 4000 estimated deaths and 90% of the information in this formula is grossly inaccurate or just plain wrong.


2. A chart showing the relative nastiness of blue asbestos (somewhere up there with plutonium); brown asbestos (steer well clear) and white asbestos (perfectly safe once behind a coating of plaster and a couple of coats of paint; either way, it's better to leave well alone than to try and chisel it out again).

In conclusion:

The HSE spent 9 months sending all [their] evidence and the ASA was not persuaded as to its accuracy and upheld all 5 of our complaints.

* Thanks to Bayard for the tip-off.