Asbestos still a major concern
Asbestos is still a growing concern for the UK, with many people googling their apprehensions daily.
The research, which was conducted by health and safety training provider Safety Services Direct, looked at Google trends data to find the number of searches for asbestos has almost doubled in the last five years.
Looking over the amount of searches from July 2012 to July 2017 there has been a steady increase year on year. The searches for asbestos hit a maximum in July 2017 – which was double the number of searches carried out in July 2012.
Safety Services Direct provide asbestos training through asbestos awareness courses that are approved by UKATA, IATP and RoSPA, and have seen an increase in people wanting to take up the course.
Many of these professionals are those working within the construction industry. They also looked at the demographics of those looking to participate on the awareness courses and found that 25% of users were in the age bracket of 35 to 44 and on the whole 65% of them were men.
The need for awareness training for professionals who may come into contact with asbestos is crucial, as there are fatal health risks involved with asbestos.
Statistics from Health and Safety Executive found that there were 2,542 cases of mesothelioma death in Great Britain in 2015; mesothelioma is a form of cancer which develops following the inhalation of asbestos fibres. In addition it is estimated that there are currently about as many asbestos-related lung cancer deaths each year as there are mesothelioma deaths.
