A FORMER Plymouth shipwright who travelled the world with the Royal Navy died as a result of regular asbestos exposure on board ships during his early working life, a coroner heard.
Gloucestershire Deputy Coroner David Dooley was told yesterday that Keith Hoskins had a very high level of asbestos fibres in his lungs.
The coroner recorded a verdict of industrial disease on Mr Hoskins, who died from the asbestos-related lung cancer mesothelioma.
The inquest was told that Mr Hoskins, who was 82 and from Gloucestershire, originally came from Plymouth and first worked as an apprentice shipwright at the Royal Naval Dockyard there.
His wife Barbara said he had started working in the dockyard in 1944 and worked on both steel and wooden-hulled ships.
"He told me that all the ships he worked on contained asbestos used for heat and fire insulation, and for lagging pipes," she said.
"His duties involved working in all parts of the ships and although he did not work with asbestos himself, he was exposed when others were using or repairing it.
"In 1949 he joined the Royal Navy as a shipwright and spent 13 years travelling all over the world working on ship repairs and maintenance."
Mr Hoskins was discharged from the Navy in 1962 and then went to work in Bermuda because he could not find a job in Britain. After he took early retirement as manager of a factory he and his wife moved to live in Churchdown.
Mrs Hoskins said he had been generally well until 2010 when he started suffering shortness of breath and loss of appetite.
He had a number of tests and investigations and eventually he was diagnosed with mesothelioma.
GP DrJeremy Halliday said Mr Hoskins had been fit, active and independent until mid-October 2010, with high blood pressure and angina both well-controlled with medication. "He then started to have shortness of breath and lost his appetite. Fluid on his lung was consistent with a pleural effusion and I arranged for him to be admitted to hospital," he said.
"When he was in hospital he was treated as if he was suffering from pneumonia but a CT Scan showed a thickening of the pleura around one lung."
Mr Hoskins was discharged to await further out-patient investigation but then suffered an acute stroke and an MRI scan showed significant narrowing of an artery to the brain.
An operation to repair this was carried out on November 10 and Mr Hoskins made a slow recovery. However, the inquest was told that he continued to lose weight. Before he could be reassessed he collapsed at home and was readmitted to hospital where despite the efforts of staff, he died. A post-mortem examination carried out by Professor Neil Shepherd found extensive changes in keeping with mesothelioma, together with pleural plaques – a strong indication of exposure to asbestos.
Tests showed a very high level of asbestos fibres in the lungs and this was also a strong indicator of an industrial link to Mr Hoskins' death. Mr Dooley said there was a strong history of exposure to asbestos during Mr Hoskins' 18 years with the Royal Navy. "On the balance of probabilities I can be sure that he died from the industrial disease malignant mesothelioma," he added.
source: thisisplymouth.co.uk
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