Question: Do they use asbestos in the substances?
"Oh yes, that's been used from time immemorial, the covering up
the steam pipes, boilers, turbines, anything that had to be ...
heat had to be retained. There was two different types. There was
the white asbestos for general purposes and the blue asbestos for
when it came to be super heated steam - it was more retentive this
blue and that was ten times more dangerous than the white asbestos
... you get a few bits of that in your lung and it was really
fatal."
Question: Did you know it was dangerous then?
"We did ... in as much as a miner knew that he was liable to get
silicosis ... but you had a job and it was one of the hazards of
the job. In those days if one didn't do one's job as one should you
were out and somebody else would be in and if you were a family man
... well you had to bring your family up and this was one of the
things about it."
Question: Did you ever have any protective clothing?
"Nothing at all. No. No. And in those days you?d have your
sandwiches and you'd eat them sometimes in the engine room and
you?d be eating (coughs twice) the stuff as well, getting into your
stomach and what have you. It'll take years to show. It's got
similar symptoms to angina, you get very breathless, but a lot of
people, because it turns cancerous and many, many of my old
colleagues are gone."
Question: Did they ever get any compensation from the
company?
"Some did and some didn't. Matter of fact like myself, it was
more or less proved that I had it in the pleura of the lung but the
Ministry of Pensions (cough) says angina".
