Webinar Suggests Underestimated Asbestos Cancer Burden in UK

29th May 2026

Asbestos and Cancer: Is it worse than we thought?

On Thursday, 28th May 2026, ARCA and ATaC hosted a webinar that drew almost 120 attendees from across the UK and beyond, including delegates from New Zealand, South Africa and local authorities.

Professor Daniel Murphy, who holds a chair in lung cancer and mesothelioma at the University of Glasgow, opened with a sobering message. While mortality rates among male workers are finally beginning to decline, we are now seeing statistically significant increases among groups not traditionally associated with heavy exposure, including carpenters and joiners, and among female workers in secretarial, teaching and education roles. His view is that the continued presence of asbestos in buildings is driving a growing share of new cases.

His central argument was that lung cancer is the cancer we have not been paying enough attention to. Drawing on epidemiological work, including a recent meta-analysis suggesting as many as nine lung cancer fatalities for every mesothelioma case linked to chrysotile, alongside striking Scottish data showing the geographic distribution of lung cancer and mesothelioma closely tracking one another, he made the case that asbestos contribution to lung cancer in the UK has been vastly underestimated. His laboratory work using genetically engineered mouse models showed that chrysotile, often regarded as lower risk, accelerates disease onset just as amphibole asbestos does once it reaches the chest cavity.

Richard Blunt, charity ambassador for Mesothelioma UK, followed with a powerful and personal account. He spoke movingly about the loss of his mother, a GP exposed to asbestos as a junior doctor in the 1980s, who died in 2014 only months after diagnosis. He used her story to challenge the assumption that this is a disease confined to men in the trades.

Richard then turned to policy, arguing that asbestos remains an issue overlooked at the heart of government. He pointed to major national strategy documents that do not contain the word asbestos at all, to the contrast between ring-fenced funding committed to RAAC and cladding and the absence of any equivalent commitment, timeframe or removal mandate for asbestos, and to the continued reliance on a figure of 5,000 deaths a year that the science increasingly suggests understates the true scale. He set out four calls to action: use better data, support national data collection, join campaigns for a coordinated national response, and keep supporting patients and charities.

Our thanks go to Professor Daniel Murphy and to Richard Blunt for giving their time so generously, and to everyone who joined us.

View Presentation videos below: