A WIDOWER has won a £95,000 payout after his wife breathed in deadly asbestos dust from her aunt's clothing as a child, The Northern Echo can reveal.

As a ten-year-old, Val Stiles would often stay with her aunt Edna Dean, who would come home from her job at the Darlington Chemical and Insulation Company covered in the lethal white dust like "a snowman".

The contact was enough for her to contract the excruciatingly painful disease, mesothelioma, and Mrs Stiles died on May 1999 aged 52 - three years after the death of her aunt from the same disease.

After her death, Mrs Stiles' husband Peter launched a legal battle with WB Industrial Ltd, which later took over responsibility for the company, and won an out-of-court settlement.

Yesterday, he pledged the money towards research into the cruel disease, which causes a tumour of the lung lining.

"It's a very painful and nasty disease," said Mr Stiles, 55, a retired computer consultant, from Ightham, near Sevenoaks, Kent.

"The money doesn't help to replace Val, but hopefully I might be able to put it to some use to solve the problem with mesothelioma."

Edna Dean had made asbestos pipes at the chemical company, which was part of Darchem on Darlington's Faverdale industrial estate, for 30 years.

When Mrs Stiles was a child, her parents had to spend a lot of time with her brother who had treatment for a tumour on his brain at Newcastle General Hospital, which is why she often went to stay with her aunt.

At Mrs Dean's inquest, Mrs Stiles recalled how her aunt would "shake the dust out of her clothes" when she got home from work.

Mrs Stiles, who left Darlington when she was 18, began suffering breathing difficulties herself in November 1998.

She was diagnosed with mesothelioma the following February, and died three months later.

Ruth Davies, a solicitor with Halifax firm John Pickering, which handled the Stiles' case, said: "Val Stiles' only exposure to asbestos dust was when she was picked up from school by her aunt, who had just come from the factory at Faverdale. Her aunt was a white snowman, covered in dust.

"Mrs Stiles never worked there, so there has been a lot of argument as to whether or not the company is liable."

The North-East's industrial heritage is saddled with the highest death rate from asbestos related diseases in the country.

Over the past four years, 768 people have fallen victim in Tyne and Wear; 264 in Cleveland; 24 in Northumberland and 84 in County Durham.

The victims have traditionally been men in the manufacturing, rail or shipbuilding industries, the latter contracting asbestosis and mesothelioma by fire proofing lagging inside ships.

But a disturbing number of cases involve men and women who had only fleeting contact with asbestos, like Val Stiles.

Nancy Tait, director of the charity Occupational and Environmental Diseases Association, said recent victims in the South who had won compensation included a hairdresser and chemist's shop assistant.

"It was accepted that the men had asbestos in their hair and on their clothes when they went to the hairdresser, and the chemist's assistant was exposed when workers came into the shop from the nearby factory," said Mrs Tait.

Her Darlington-born husband, William Ashton Tait, was one of the early victims after working in an asbestos lined bunker during the Second World War.

Paul Nowak, Newcastle-based regional secretary of the TUC, said: "What Mrs Stiles' case shows is that asbestos-related illnesses are not the preserve of people working in heavy engineering or manufacturing.

"The fact is that asbestos is built into the fabric of our everyday lives, in our schools, hospitals, council buildings and we need to be aware of the problems that brings."

WB Industrial Ltd - the holding company now responsible for Darchem - failed to reply despite being contacted by The Northern Echo several times.