Killer lurking in an overcoat

HOLDING her aunt's hand, little Val Walton felt safe and secure as she skipped home from school. The ten-year-old was getting used to seeing Edna Dean's comforting figure waiting for her at the school gates, having being left in her care while Val's brother Melvyn was ill.

It wasn't hard to spot her aunt either. Like many of the workers at the Darlington Chemical and Insulation Company, part of Darchem, her overcoat was covered in thick, white dust, giving the impression of a walking snowman, even when the sun was shining.

It was 1953, and Val would often stay with her aunt while Melvyn underwent a series of life-saving operations and treatment for a brain tumour.

Over two-and-a-half years, Edna would be regularly there after school, standing and waiting for her young charge, shrouded in the funny white dust. Once home, the youngster watched as her aunt shook out the clouds of dust from her coat outside before hanging it up. Little did either of them know that, clinging to the fibres of her clothing, was a deadly powder which would eventually kill them both.

In the end, it was more than 40 years later before the killer spores Val inhaled stirred from their dormancy within her lungs, and developed into the asbestos related cancer, mesothelioma. Val left Darlington to study computing and statistics in Leicester and went on to work as a senior systems analyst for Blaby District Council. She married her second husband, Peter Stiles, in 1984 at Maidstone Register Office, and the couple moved to Sevenoaks in Kent.

The first signs of the disease she was harbouring in her body came in November 1998, when Val noticed a shortness of breath followed by chest pains. But, according to husband Peter, she was initially told she was suffering from blood clots on the lung. As the pain grew, Val saw another consultant in February 1999, and mesothelioma was diagnosed following a biopsy.

"We were totally shocked to hear that," recalls Peter, 55. "Edna had died of mesothelioma in November 1996. Even then, the full impact didn't really click. It wasn't until Val was diagnosed that we put the full connection together. I think we had both realised she had something fairly serious, but not as serious as it turned out to be."

MESOTHELIOMA is a relatively rare form of cancer which affects the lining of the chest, and, less commonly, the lining of the abdomen and the heart. The pain can vary depending on the nature and position of the tumour, but it is often excruciating and can last for months.

"It's a very, very nasty disease," says Peter. "It's extremely painful and the pain spreads. The worst thing is watching it happen and feeling so helpless. People cope in different ways. I used to get a bit upset because I couldn't get Val to talk about it. She would clam up completely, but it was really her way of dealing with it and I just had to accept it."

Val battled with the disease for only three months before she died, aged 52, in May 1999. "It was so quick," says Peter. "But, in that sense, we were comparatively lucky, I suppose."

Val had looked into making a claim for personal injury on behalf of her Aunt Edna. But Peter says she was advised by solicitors it would not be worth pursuing, as Edna had accepted a form of payment before she died. It was with this in mind that he decided to seek compensation on behalf of his late wife.

"My initial thought was that I didn't want the money, but when I thought about it and Val having already tried with Edna, I knew she would have approved, and I came to the conclusion I would go ahead," he says.

Peter pursued his compensation bid through solicitor Ruth Davies, at John Pickering, a firm in Halifax, West Yorkshire. Says Ms Davies: "The hardest part in these kind of cases is proving that, at the time the exposure took place, the company ought to have known that they should have been protecting, not just their workers, but their families as well.

"Asbestos was used everywhere in so many industries, in shipping, railways, factories. People we're getting through now include joiners who used asbestos sheeting, or those using asbestos cement on corrugated roofs."

The Stiles's case was strengthened after the firm placed an advert in a newspaper and witnesses came forward who had worked at the same factory on Darlington's Faverdale industrial estate. One recalled: "The dust was very light and fluffy and stuck to clothing and people's skin like snowflakes. The area was always hazy. There was no provision for showers or laundering of work clothes and clothing would be taken home to be washed."

The case was also boosted by Val giving evidence in a statement at her aunt's inquest, where she recalled her aunt "shaking the dust out of her clothes".

But solicitors still faced the difficulty of trying to trace employers. The disease can take between ten and 50 years, and sometimes even longer, to develop, and in that time businesses have shut down or being swallowed up by other companies.

Cases usually take around two years to reach a conclusion, and successful outcomes are not guaranteed. Nor are they helped by the "Fairchild" judgement at the Court of Appeal, which held last month that victims would be unable to claim compensation if they were exposed to the dust by working for more than one employer. The ruling was considered a slap in the face to those fighting for justice. Recent figures show that, every day, someone in the North dies as a result of working with asbestos.

NANCY Tait, director of the Occupational and Environmental Diseases Association (OEDA), says the Fairchild decision is nonsensical. "If you were employed by more than one company then they can each argue that it was the other, which puts the responsibility onto the claimant to prove which single fibre caused it, and there's no way you can do that," she says.

"Since there have been more claims, the solicitors for the companies are becoming better at presenting their cases and finding some excuse to avoid paying."

According to Mrs Tait, whose Darlington-born husband William was one of the early victims of mesothelioma after working in an asbestos-lined bunker during the Second World War, Val's case is not unique. People have turned to her charity, which provides advice on mesothelioma and pursuing claims, after having only fleeting contact with the deadly dust.

The most unusual victims have included a hairdresser and a chemist's shop assistant. "It was accepted that the men had asbestos in their hair and on their clothes when they went to the hairdressers, and the chemist's assistant was exposed when the workers came into the shop from the nearby factory," she says. "But obviously we get far more occupational cases."

Peter Stiles was awarded £95,000 compensation on his wife's behalf last month. He has already decided to donate the money to research into the killer disease.

"It feels slightly like dirty money because it doesn't replace Val, but, hopefully, if we can put it to good use so that other people get some help, then some benefit will come of it," he says.

*OEDA can be contacted on 0208 3608490 or write for an information booklet by sending a stamped addressed envelope for 44p to OEDA, PO Box 26, Enfield, EN1 2NT