By / Lee Loftus, retired Local 118 Business Manager
When I was a young boy, I could not wait for my dad to get home from work at the end of the day.
The minute he walked in the door, we kids would ignore his dusty clothes and hair and run to give him a big hug. He would then put his work clothes in the family laundry hamper and climb into the shower. It was not until some years later we realized the dust on his clothes was mostly asbestos.
By the middle of the 1900s, asbestos made its way into insulation for pipes, boilers, industrial machinery, fireproofing, sprayed insulation for houses and commercial buildings, and eventually building materials including roofing, drywall, floor tiles, concrete, and any other product where it could be useful.
I am a third-generation Insulator. My grandfather Ted Loftus was a bricklayer and asbestos worker from the 1930s to the 1960s and helped charter Local 118 in 1954. My father followed in his footsteps and joined the union in the 1960s when he returned from service in the Air Force after the war. He became active in union issues including the perils of asbestos use in the industry.
During his time in the union, Dr. Irving J. Selikoff began researching asbestos exposure and released his first results circa 1970.
As a young member, I was asked to help coordinate his research on behalf of the union because his work touched directly on the lives of our members. His research clearly established a link between asbestos exposure and asbestosis (a silicosis-like condition) and death. As a young kid seized with this issue, I was faced with the challenge of telling the world they needed to do more.
Occupational physicians were under-reporting, the compensation system was denying claims, workplace regulations were not enforced, and family doctors did not ask about work exposures because they felt mesothelioma was so rare that it did not need any attention. Manufacturers and suppliers cleared out their stocks or asbestos products before they could be banned. They were feverishly installing asbestos products everywhere they could.
My father worked on a project in downtown Vancouver where asbestos was being sprayed everywhere, with no controls. It was all over the workplace in stairwells, elevator shafts, lunchrooms, and tool lockups. The overspray was falling on cars, buses, sidewalks, and onto pedestrians walking below.
The workers pulled a one-day, wildcat strike on the asbestos issue, which resulted in changes to some of the practices. Barriers were put in place to control overspray and the public walking near buildings was now protected. Overall, progress was slow and uneven.
As a green eager-to-please apprentice at a gas plant in northern British Columbia, on my first day on the job I worked to remove insulation from pipes and vessels. The general foreman insisted the asbestos-based blue mud finishing cement be kept for future use because it was getting hard to come by.
I was energetic, young, and determined to not embarrass my father and grandfather. I stripped all that mud off the pipes and vessels and stuffed it into 45-gallon drums. When it came time to reinstall the finishing cement, it was my job to dump it into a mixing trough, add some water, and hoe it into a nice consistency for the insulators to re-apply.
That was in the early 1970s, and the use of asbestos was at its peak. I was aware enough to ask for a respirator when I was working with asbestos, but there were none.
The older workers scoffed at me. Been working with it for years, they said. There were no coveralls, no respiratory protection, no containment, no clean-up protocols, and no recognition that asbestos fibers were dangerous killers.
Today, we know breathing asbestos leads to asbestosis or mesothelioma, an incurable form of lung cancer. When tiny asbestos fibers become airborne, they attach deep into the lungs. The fibers kill cells in the lung lining and the scar tissue grows and grows. After many years, the scar tissue overwhelms the lungs, and the lungs simply stop working. There is no cure for either disease or very little in the way of treatment.
In British Columbia, the Workers Compensation Board woke up to the realities of asbestos in 1978 and issued a report which put serious rakes on the worst abuses of safety regarding the handling of the deadly mineral. Since 1978, regulations stiffened to protect workers in Canada. Abatement contractors in the field of asbestos removal and building renovation and teardowns must be specially licensed. Workers must be protected against harm from asbestos and must receive special training and certification to work in the field.
Canada outlawed the importation and use of asbestos in 2018, a few years after the Insulators Union invited Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to a Canadian Building Trades Union Convention.
Though asbestos is no longer being applied, it was widely installed in commercial, industrial, and residential buildings. It poses a serious hazard for workers who disturb it in the course of their work, and community members are equally vulnerable when they accidentally disturb it.
Last year alone, asbestos claimed the lives of 53 workers in British Columbia. Since 2000, asbestos has been responsible for one-third of all Canadian work-related deaths. It is the single biggest workplace killer, striking people down decades after their exposure.
When I first became a construction worker, I never imagined I would find myself helping members to arrange their deaths. As safety director for my union, one of my jobs was filing Workers’ Compensation claims. The cuts, bruises, and broken arms were easy to manage. It was those calls asking, “What’s next?” after an asbestos diagnosis that troubled me.
I have given too many eulogies, helped procure too many tanks of oxygen for members, worked on countless Worker Compensation Benefits claims, held scores of grieving wives’ hands, and looked into the faces of too many children who lost their dads to asbestos.
Asbestos is an ever-present threat to the lives of insulators, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, labourers, and many other workers whose job it is to work on existing installations that may be covered with asbestos-laced construction materials.
We will continue to lose people unnecessarily until everyone recognizes and acknowledges the dangers we face and take the right steps to keep workers and innocent civilians safe and alive.
Due to my activities in preaching care, safety, and concrete actions to stem the tide of deaths due to asbestos, I am often asked about my personal health.
I keep close tabs on my health and yes, I have some lung damage. I recently retired from the trade, and at age 66 I am enjoying life. However, I know how this disease works. It very likely will take my life one day, but we all must make the best of every day we have.
Modified from a blog post with the International Association of Heat and Frost Insulators and Allied Workers. To read the full text, visit: insulators.org/blog/british-columbia-memorial-honors-lives-lost-to-asbestos
Lee Loftus is a retired HFIAW Local 118 Business Manager, a proud, third-generation insulator, and former BC Federation of Labour Occupation Health, Safety and Environment Director. He spent his entire career entrenched in health and environmental issues. ■
