ILFORD: Mother and son died of asbestos-related cancer

7:03am Tuesday 10th June 2008

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AN ELDERLY woman died from a rare asbestos-related cancer - three years after her son passed away from the same condition.

Joan Squires, 92, of Ilford, died from mesothelioma on April 8, an inquest heard.

Mrs Squires, a retired clerical worker, had never worked in factories and had not knowingly come into contact with asbestos.

But five years ago, her son John an electrical engineer also died from the cancer aged 59.

Mrs Squire's other son Howard told Walthamstow Coroner's Court that his mother and brother may have inhaled asebstos fibres while dismantling and fixing a storage heater in their Wensleydale Avenue home in the early 1970s.

He said: "I thought it was a bit mad at the time, I thought we should have got a new storage heater rather than fix it but obviously I did not know how serious it would turn out to be."

Mesothelioma is a a rare and virulent form of cancer that affects the lining of the lung, lining of the abdominal cavity or lining around the heart. The average time between diagnosis and death is only 18 months.

It occurs in people who have breathed in asbestos fibres, in many cases 20 to 50 or more years ago.

In most cases, mesothelioma is contracted by people working on building sites, although some inhale the fibres second hand through other peoples' clothes, hairs or skin.

On March 18 this year Mrs Squires was admitted to Whipps Cross Hospital with breathing difficulties.

Following a scan doctors noticed a grey shading on her lung and she was later diagnosed with the incurable cancer.

She was then transferred to the Margaret Centre hospice and on April 8, Mrs Squires died from bronchopneumonia, which had been brought on by malignant mesothelioma.

Mr Squires said: "Up until Christmas she was perfectly fit, and would go shopping and do all sorts of other things.

"But when it arrived the illness came on very quickly.

"It is better this way though, rather than her being ill for 18 months."

As well as the storage heater theory, Mr Squires said asbestos may have got on John's clothes at work and his mother could ahve breathed in the fibres as she cleaned them.

Although asbestos bodies were not actually found in Mrs Squires lungs, Dr Stearns was "satisfied" that Mrs Squires had died as a result of exposure to asbestos.

But as the coroner was unsure where exactly she contracted the disease, Dr Stearns recorded a narrative verdict, which is simply a record of the circumstances surrounding the death.