A FORMER joiner and welder died at home as a direct result of being exposed to asbestos in his working life, an inquest heard.

John Edward Ward, 75, died on February 21, 2022, on Castle View, Sedgwick, just one month after being diagnosed with mesothelioma, a type of cancer that develops in the lining that covers the outer surface of some of the body's organs; and is usually linked to asbestos.

At the Coroner's Court in Cockermouth, assistant coroner for Cumbria Dr Nicholas Shaw heard that Mr Ward, originally from Haleswowen, had suffered from a range of health problems since his retirement including a long-standing back problem, and increasing shortness of breath.

As part of a claim that Mr Ward and his family were making in relation to historic asbestos exposure, Mr Ward, on February 15, just days before his death, made a statement to his solicitor about his work history.

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He recalled that in the 1970s he worked in a factory cutting various materials in sheet form, including asbestos. The statement said: "There was no extraction on the machine or in the factory, the sheets were large.

"I wore ordinary clothing and we were responsible for washing our own clothes - I was covered in dust when I came home."

Mr Ward also said that he would make shopfitting site visits in another job and would walk through areas where old fittings were being ripped out, and asbestos was present.

The inquest was carried out as a requirement for anybody suspected to have died as a result of industrial disease.

He was also diagnosed with 'mild' vascular dementia and Alzheimer's disease but Dr Shaw said that this did not contribute to his death.

"I come to be a coroner as a doctor primarily, and note that dementia has nothing to do with John's death," he said.

"He happened to have mild dementia but dementia doesn't give you mesothelioma, almost certainly asbestos does. 

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"There are cases of mesothelioma where they can find no trace of asbestos but they're very rare - 99 per cent of them are related to this stuff, and really, in the 60s and 70s, people should have known better when they were getting chaps to work with it. 

"The link between asbestos and mesothelioma has been known about since the 1930s. It goes back quite a long way but it took a lot of time for employers to catch up with it, and then of course we get the epidemic of mesothelioma cases 40 or 50 years later."