• ON April 23 Camden Council published a leaflet delivered over the next two days to West Kentish Town Estate (WKTE) residents.

It proudly announced that Chrysotile asbestos had been discovered on the Coity and Allcroft Road garage site during the course of demolition of the structures, but that it was “the least dangerous type”, according to a person employed by Camden with no ostensible medical qualifications.

So, that’s all right, isn’t it?

A quick web search reveals the statement: “Chrysotile asbestos is two to four times less potent than crocidolite asbestos in its ability to cause malignant mesothelioma, but of equal potency of causation of lung cancer.”

Another: “It is clear that chrysotile can cause mesothelioma (cancer of the lung or abdominal cavity linings). Chrysotile can also cause other cancers, including the most common cancer associated with asbestos exposure, cancer of the lung, as well as cancer of the larynx and ovaries.”

Assuming that it took one day to discover this, a day to write and publish the leaflet, and another to deliver it, this urgency does not speak of much concern to warn the people Camden is meant to be serving.

Did Camden even think to inform residents on any of the neighbouring roads, or Rhyl Primary School, just 40 metres or so downwind of the site?

If, as Camden states, the presence of asbestos was “to be expected on a site built in the 1960s and 1970s”, why was nothing done before?

Is this not obvious negligence?

ANDREW DOW
Secretary West Kentish Town Estate Tenants’ and Residents’ Association