BOHS Event Calendar

This Open Technical Seminar was organised by our London and South East region.

This was a full event and we are hoping to run another seminar in the near future, please contact louise@bohs.org for more details.

As in all developed countries, we have a legacy of industrial and other sites which are potentially contaminated with asbestos materials from previous use - and future redevelopment may leave the new occupants at risk of exposure.   In some countries, particularly in the US , there is also a perceived problem of ‘naturally occurring asbestos’.   This is really a misnomer, of course, but it refers to outcrops of minerals which may be disturbed by new development and by recreation activities.

All this gives rise to problems in how to assess the risk - is there asbestos at all, if so where is it, and how much is there on a site? The problems are exacerbated because asbestos does not migrate through the soil as some other industrial pollutants do so it can be difficult to determine how to examine a site, or to measure the amount of asbestos present, or who to assess the risk to future occupants.   

There has been some activity in the UK trying to address this problem, but we are not alone and other countries - the USA and Australia among them - are also concerned about this problem.

In the UK , we need a cooperative approach between the HSE and the Environment Agency, and this seminar provided the necessary background on the issues involved and a platform for discussion and debate.