HSE

The widow of a popular Birmingham musician has told how her husband's life was cut short by a brush with Britain's biggest industrial killer.

Mick Adkins, the singer and lead guitarist of 1960s Brumbeat band The Chads, died in June 2007 after contracting mesothelioma while working as an electrical apprentice in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

As is typical in these cases, the condition laid dormant for another 40 years. During that time Mick went on to build a successful electrician business while playing in The Chads, a band that also featured a young Jeff Lynne, of ELO and Travelling Wilburys fame.

Such was Mick's popularity that hundreds of people attended his funeral, filling the crematorium near his Hall Green home. His work as an electrician was also well respected, and even today his wife will still receive calls from people looking for a good electrician, which is something she is very proud of.

It was in 2006 when Mick began to suffer from wheezing coughs while at work. At first he and his family thought he was allergic to the dust that inevitably surrounds his work, or had asthma. However, after a series of x-rays and meetings with specialists it was revealed to be the onset of mesothelioma, brought about from that time working on the school building programme four decades earlier.

Judy Adkins said: "As soon as he was diagnosed, that was it. It was the end of his working life, and his own life. He was never going to enjoy a retirement. Over the following months you could see it was really beginning to affect him. He'd always be marching out in front when we went out for walks, but now he was slowing down and taking regular breaks."

"At the time he was exposed to asbestos the dangers of it were still relatively unknown. But even so, when you're young you don't think about things like that and what you might be breathing in. They just don't think anything will happen to them.

"His post-mortem revealed that apart from his lungs, everything else about him was fine. He was a healthy man, yet because of something that happened while he was working in his youth he has died.

"When he was working on those sites, back in the Sixties, the threat of asbestos was just starting to be recognised. Those he was working for should have warned him there was a risk and given him and the others he worked with training.

"Even now, tradesmen need to be warned of the dangers of asbestos. They are repairing or demolishing older buildings and the dangers are there. Their employers should ensure they go on regular courses, and have the proper equipment. But the workers should also be asking the employers if there is a danger there before starting the job."

More than 4,000 people die every year from asbestos-related diseases - more than are killed on the roads. Of those, 2,000 of them suffer from mesothelioma. A quarter of those people currently dying from an asbestos-related disease are building maintenance and repair workers. Any worker that suspects there may be asbestos where they are working has a right to know about it.