There's more asbestos in this country than ever before

"There's more asbestos in this country than ever before."Asbestos offers a particularly unpleasant way to die. Mesothelioma has no known cure, and few treatments; it is just unremittingly painful. Asbestosis leaves the victim short of breath, often gasping for air which usually has to be supplemented by an oxygen mask. Both diseases strike people who are comparatively young - in their fifties, say, when they should be able to look forward to useful years or pleasant retirements.The parents now changing their children's diets to avoid any chance of catching CJD are probably unaware that those children have a far higher risk of being exposed to asbestos dust in their schools.

In many places, and in many trades, asbestos is a plague to come.Even now, not much is being done. "If we had really been taking this threat seriously, then we wouldn't be looking at the prospect of 200 people dying every week," says Rory O'Neill, editor of Hazards magazine, which looks at present and future risks to health. What we hear less often is that it is too late for many thousands of June Hancocks, the people dying and doomed to die, and that thousands more are still being exposed to risk. In Australia, where asbestos was mined, 1,000 people a year are dying. In the US, by one official estimate, asbestos may eventually kill 5.4 million Americans. World-wide, insurance claims from asbestos victims are expected to total more than $50bn.We have all learnt over the last 20 years that asbestos is dangerous stuff, to be avoided at all costs.

That is far more than are killed in road accidents or die from Aids, and it is 200 times more than Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) has ever killed in a year.And it is not just Britain. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE), a body which is not given to wild predictions, said recently that by 2025 there could be 10,000 deaths annually. Asbestos is already responsible for more occupationally related deaths than any other single cause, and the toll is rising steeply. While we worry that eating beef might - just might - trigger a rare brain disease, thousands of people have been dying, not from any choice they made themselves, but from having once inhaled asbestos fibres in their workplace, home or school.ABOUT 3,000 people now die in Britain every year either from mesothelioma or from asbestosis, an inflammation of the lungs caused by inhalation of asbestos particles. "I'd be dead now if it hadn't been for this," she says.June Hancock is one among many victims of a man-made epidemic that makes few headlines but is becoming impossible to ignore. Now she has the disease too, but she is luckier, if lucky is the right word. The doctors no longer bother with exhausting therapies; she just has drugs for the pain, and she has been sustained by the fight to win compensation from Turner & Newall, the conglomerate of which J W Roberts became a subsidiary.

As the children played in the streets and park - some are said to have thrown "snowballs" - the deadly particles steadily accumulated in their lungs.Fourteen years ago, June watched her mother die a painful death from mesothelioma. When she was a child in Armley, Leeds, she and her friends played in the streets around the J W Roberts asbestos factory. At that time, the white fibrous dust from the factory is said to have filled the air and built up in drifts in corners and against walls. It was the first victory of its kind in the British courts, and many more compensation claims are now likely to follow.June is 59. They saw Leeds United - she is a lifelong supporter - play at Wembley and she had tea at Fortnum and Masons. She is treating herself. The money and the illness go together, for June Hancock has just won the last round of a historic legal battle giving her pounds 65,000 compensation for the damage done to her health by asbestos. She recently took her family from Yorkshire to spend a few days at the Waldorf Hotel in London.

"But Tories, I think, have too selfish a definition of self-interest," he adds."They fail to look beyond to the community. That is the essential reason why I am on the left rather than the right."Labour sources played down the comments, stressing that Mr Blair had not said Christians should be Labour supporters Tories claimed that Mr Blair had clearly suggested as much.. BY RIGHTS June Hancock should be dead. Most people with mesothelioma, a cancer of the chest lining, die within one or two years. Although she was diagnosed as having the disease in January 1994 she is still active and mobile, so she is enjoying some borrowed time She is also enjoying spending a little money. The Labour leader was "wearing God on his sleeve".In today's Sunday Telegraph Mr Blair writes that he is not pretending to be any better or less selfish than anyone else, or saying that Christians could only vote Labour. Trust, friendship, faith, love, affection, respect - there seemed no end to his amour "I do not need a visa to visit Lebanon," he told us.