The Wednesday Landfill: How Much Asbestos On Site?

While we all wonder about the clean up to date of the Spodden Valley dumps and works and the wisdom of building homes on this can we get some idea of the amount of waste dust being produced from this installation? And therefore having to be disposed of somewhere or other, most cheaply on site presumably.



Today's Rochdale Observer letter (above) backing some aspects of Turner and Newall's saintly performance was written by the man who built some of the dust extraction equipment in the 1950's. Very modern insights then.

This the same equipment that kept workers less dusty than the surrounding outside residential area which was - according to Turner and Newall's own figures - about three times dustier? And also than the exterior of the Turner plant which had around four times the asbestos - and no requirement for protective clothing.

They produced the figures in fact to justify the idea of recirculating their own air rather than pulling any in from outside. This was in 1957 in appeals to the local Factory Inspectorate (above) to let them off normal requirements to pull in fresh air, and later that year in internal memos (below).



I wonder how on earth the local air got to be so claggy with asbestos and other dustiness? Was someone else blowing it there? Was there a callous disregard for local people's lungs by Turner's? Or what was it?

This extraction equipment our man helped create collected up to six tonnes (15,000 lbs) of asbestos dust A WEEK in 1957. This was DUMPED TO WASTE, apparently locally.

Six tonnes a week times 52 weeks. 312 tonnes a year. For how many years? Suppose this output was for just fifty years of the plant's 100 years plus production. 15,600 tonnes. Where would the other fifty years worth have gone? Who knows?

But how much area would this 15,600 tonnes take up and to what depth? Well, let's assume this was concentrated in carefully mapped locations and say one metre deep, capped let's hope with hardcore and soil, and prevented from leaching into the water table.

Let's suppose that a tonne of asbestos dust not only weighs the same as a tonne of feathers and a tonne of sand, but takes up around the same volume as the latter. Like one of those big builders' bags. Around one metre cubed.

15,600 tonnes therefore takes 15,600 square metres. One minimum sized football pitch would be 45 metres wide by 90 metres long = 4,050 square metres. So the asbestos waste from 50 years at this rate of production would almost cover four modest parks pitches to a depth of one metre.

One maximum sized international football pitch is 90 metres wide by 120 metres in length. 10,800 square metres. The estimated output over 50 years would cover almost one-and-a-half Wembley pitches one metre deep in raw asbestos dust.

Each square metre of the stuff would contain trillions of trillions of fibres of asbestos. And remember it only takes one fibre to bring about lethal malignant cancer.

Nonetheless if Turner and Newall had mapped the deposits they'd made and recorded the any volumes taken for disposal off site there'd be a chance of a clean up and containment of any and all dust. They must have done that, right? In answer to your reasonable question ... did they buggery!

A great place for family homes is the Spodden Valley. Of course Cyril says he hasn't decided on the desirability of building homes there. No thoughts either way, preferring fact, in this matter at least, to fantasy. He has said disingenuously he had shares in asbestos only for speaking rights, claims that he made no money on them, and claims that he has disposed of them. Meanwhile his brother Norman - a local planning expert and wheeler dealer - says he has never had any interest, financial or political, in the company "TBA".


Almost three weeks ago we first brought you this picture of a wooded idyll, from Spodden Valley as it goes. And we promised a description of how some of this was shifted. Here goes:

In 1996 TBA took the top off this asbestos tip. Work began in the summer, digging out compacted waste from a fenced off area at the side of Woodland Rd. This area started by the river. (photo taken from side of the tip.)
One man with a digger loaded a convoy of waggons. The digger driver and waggon drivers wore no protective clothing. They were all in short sleeves (no masks). Dust could be visibly seen. These men were contracted labourers, they did not work at TBA.
When employees of TBA came on site they wore protective clothing and masks.
While this work continued people passed within yards of the gates and loading area to get into Healy Dell nature reserve. There were bikers, walkers, even groups of children on school field trips. They were unaware of the vulnerable position they were in.
The gates were left open at weekends, children were using the compound as a BMX track.