International appeal to Rochdale Online readers - help locate dumped asbestos in Rochdale

Anyone near the site must wear a protective suit

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As previously reported by Rochdale Online, a planning application has just been submitted for 650 houses and a children’s nursery on the former site of the world’s largest asbestos textile factory.

There is growing concern that disturbing the site could release deadly asbestos fibres into the air. Many people have died as a result of the asbestos produced over the years at the factory. Local people have found exposed asbestos fibres in upturned tree roots within 100 metres from where developers want to build houses.  

Local people have branded the planning application by development company Countryside Properties PLC a “sick joke”. They are angered that the developers’ documents supporting the application have concluded, “Of particular note is the absence of any asbestos contamination”  

The claim was repeated on national radio recently. A spokesman for Countryside Properties PLC claimed local people were wrong to say that asbestos was exposed on the Spodden Valley site.

In a desperate attempt to publicise that piles of asbestos fibres are still exposed, locals have donned protective suits and gone into the woodland to be photographed next to the asbestos.
 
“Nobody seems to be listening to our concerns” says Jason Addy, member of community organisation Save Spodden Valley. “We have had the exposed fibres tested at an independent laboratory – they were proven to be brown asbestos- a known killer”, he said.

Health and Safety bosses from BBC Television banned its reporters and camera crew from entering any part of the former asbestos factory site when reporting recently.

Jason Addy warns,  “Our biggest problem is identifying where all the asbestos has been dumped around the factory from the 1920’s to the 1970’s. Many of the former workers are now dead or have moved from the Rochdale area. We are appealing to all Rochdale Online readers who remember the dumping of asbestos at the Rochdale factory to contact us. We need to locate all the asbestos dump sites. If asbestos is disturbed unknowingly, this could be a life or death issue for some of those downwind of the factory”.

Public meetings in Rochdale have heard accounts from many people who lost family members to asbestos related cancers - some of whom never worked at the factory but lived nearby.

The developers plan to demolish all the former asbestos buildings and crush them on site to create about 30,000 tonnes of hardcore. Health and safety expert Hilda Palmer, from the Greater Manchester Hazards Centre, is concerned that any asbestos fibres trapped in the fabric of the buildings could be released if demolition is done without strict safeguards.

Problems began last May when the new owners of the 72-acre site drove bulldozers in at 2.00am on a Saturday morning. By 7.00am dozens of forestry workers were felling hundreds of trees around the former asbestos factory buildings. Over 2 acres of woodland was destroyed that weekend.

On part of the cleared woodland, a concrete capped mine shaft was discovered. Former T&N Health and Safety manager Abdul Chowdry confirmed that many tonnes of industrial waste had been dumped down the flooded mine over the years by the asbestos factory.     
As one of only 12 national Health and Safety Commissioners, Mr Chowdry shocked listeners on national radio recently with his informed opinion about disturbing soil around the former asbestos factory site. When describing the huge amounts of asbestos dumped around the Rochdale site, Mr Chowdry likened it to “an asbestos mine”.

Public consultation to Rochdale Planning Department closes in mid- February.

More information is available via the Save Spodden Valley website:

www.spodden-valley.co.uk

BBC Radio 4 - You and Yours Programme “Asbestos Land” was broadcast on Thursday 13 January 2005. BBC ‘listen again’ weblink is:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyours/index_20050113.shtml