By Ruth D'Alessandro, The Wildlife Gardener

The Wildlife Garden resembles a scene from CSI this week: Plastic tents, decontamination unit, men undressing in see-through cubicles, donning red suits and respirators, hazard notices and endless cups of tea. The postman asked me if we had ET in the garage. What is going on?

Readers of this column and my Twitter witterings will be familiar with the ongoing saga of the Wildlife House and Mr Idiot the cowboy builder’s attempts to wreck it before being unceremoniously ejected from the premises. This is the final, and most dangerous stage of the correction process.

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Last July (2008), one of Mr Idiot’s untrained crew managed to fall through the garage ceiling: “Don’t worry, luv, we’ll just plasterboard that over”. Mr WG and I cleared up and swept out the garage, coughing as we went, “Bit dusty in here, isn’t it?”

The ‘plasterboard’, on professional inspection and analysis turned out to be asbestos insulating board (AIB), and in breaking it, lots of lovely little microscopic particles of white and brown asbestos were released into the air, all over the contents of the garage and probably into my and Mr WG’s lungs.

This left us with a big problem. Damaged asbestos is very, very nasty stuff indeed. Unlike coal dust or wood fibres which are trapped within the lungs and may be expelled by coughing, the needle-like fibres of asbestos pierce through the lungs and into the mesothelium (the protective lining of most internal organs) causing malignancy and mesothelioma (cancer of the mesothelium). Mesothelioma is uniquely associated with asbestos exposure, and has a poor prognosis. Asbestos exposure may also lead to lung cancer and asbestosis (inflammation of the parenchymal lung tissue). Interesting, at the time of the garage damage, there was much media publicity about the dangers of asbestos. I won’t go into it here, but our UK readers will find Mesothelioma UK useful.

Clearly we couldn’t have 30m^₂ of broken asbestos hanging around so we started the tortuous process of launching an insurance claim which, thanks to a clever barrister friend and his equally clever wife, paid out for the asbestos to be dealt with. One of the few pleasant aspects of the process was interviewing asbestos removal companies, whose reps, unfailingly, were helpful, charming and funny. Unfailingly too, they were smokers. Chatting to a jolly chap who was sparking up on the driveway, I joked that he must have a death wish, working with asbestos and smoking. “Whey aye” he responded in Geordie tones, “An’ ah used to be a miner an’ all...”

Finally, in March, we contracted The Stan and Les (SL) Environmental Services Company (Matt – link here please to SL Environmental Services) to carry out the work, the decision based solely on Les’s promise to visit the site in his Fiat 500. And they’ve been great.

I feared for the life of Wayne, who turned up on Monday morning thin, pale grey, coughing and snuffling, but it was just ‘flu and he was a better colour by the end of the week. I asked him how people working with asbestos were insured, as most companies won’t touch them. Apparently, there’s a fund held by each removal company, and should an unfortunate develop mesothelioma, a percentage of compensation is paid by each company that he or she has worked for previously. But, get this: the payout is made only on death.

So what useful things from this experience can I pass on to our Naturenet readers? Asbestos is an excellent fire retardant (remember those asbestos mats for your Bunsen burners at school? Nice.) If you’ve got it, undisturbed, it’s OK. Just don’t put your foot through it. If you do damage some boarding, especially some put up in the 1960s – 1980s, get it analysed before you sweep up. Don’t let anyone tell you Asbestolux doesn’t contain asbestos. It does, although in lesser proportions than white, brown or the horrible blue asbestos. Professional, safe removal is expensive: you’re looking at 3-5k plus for a garage, so don’t listen to anyone claiming to be able to do it on the cheap. They should be members of the Asbestos Removal Contractors Association. The amount of paperwork involved is enough to make this recycler blush, but you know the job will be done properly.

I persuaded The Ranger to run this article on the tenuous basis that asbestos is a natural mineral and it is affecting the Wildlife Garden. I’m not a doctor or a lawyer, but I hope that it gives some insight into how dangerous the stuff is, and how to deal with it. Oh, and how a Fiat 500 can do wonders for your business.