§ Mr. Ernie Rossasked the Secretary of State for Employment if his Department has been advised by the Health and Safety Executive of any safe level of exposure to asbestos.
§ Mr. Waddington:No. The Health and Safety Commission's advisory committee on asbestos concluded that it was impossible to identify a threshold below which there is no evidence of adverse effects. For this reason it recommended, in addition to new control limits, an overriding requirement to reduce exposure to the minimum that is reasonably practicable, and this requirement has been applied by the Factory Inspectorate in enforcement of the existing legislation on asbestos.
99WThe Health and Safety Commission, in considering the new control limits to be introduced from 1 January 1983, bore in mind the advisory committee's recommendations and emphasised, in its announcement of the new limits, that these are not absolutely safe levels.
§ Mr. Ernie Ross:asked the Secretary of State for Employment how many recommendations have been made by the Health and Safety Executive in the past three years regarding the reduction of asbestos levels in the air; and, to date, how many have been carried out.
§ Mr. Waddington:The Health and Safety Commission's advisory committee on asbestos, in its final report published in 1979, recommended more stringent control limits for exposure to asbestos in air at the workplace for chrysotile—white asbestos—and amosite—brown asbestos. These recommendations were that the limit for chrysotile should be halved to 1 fibre/ml of air and that the limit for amosite should be reduced from 2f/ml to 0.5f/ml. The limit for crocidolite was to be maintained at its current level of 0.2f/ml. Since the report, considerable progress has been made in British industry towards achieving these limits, and they will become effective on 1 January 1983.
The advisory committee also recommended the scheduling of asbestos works to enable stricter control of emissions of asbestos dust into the atmosphere. The Health and Safety Commission will shortly be sending proposals for regulations to implement this recommendation to the Secretary of State for the Environment.
It was originally the Government's intention to implement the ACA's recommendations through the proposed European Community directives currently under negotiation, but slow progress on the directives has led the HSE to conclude that action should be taken now. The HSC will consider whether further action should be taken if the results of current reviews on the developments in medical knowledge and the means of controlling exposure show this to be necessary.