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Veteran BBC presenter Esther Rantzen fears her lung cancer may have been caused by exposure to asbestos in the studios where she worked for decades.
The Times of London reports that the 82-year-old former British host of That’s Life! – one of the BBC’s most popular shows that ran from 1973 to 1994 – remembers staff regularly walking past piles of white dust at Lime Grove Studios, and even termed one corridor “asbestos alley.”
Rantzen was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer earlier this year, and her disease is not the type linked to smoking. She told The Times she couldn’t be sure what caused her illness but said: “It is vital that asbestos is removed from buildings everywhere as soon as possible.
“I worked in the BBC’s Lime Grove studios for at least 35 happy years from 1965. Some time in the late-Eighties or early-Nineties, workmen wearing white spacesuits arrived to take down walls and ceilings along the corridors where I wrote our scripts to remove the asbestos, which did not surprise any of us since my team called our regular route to the canteen ‘asbestos alley.’”
Separately, The Times reports, the BBC has paid out £1.64 million in damages, following the deaths of 11 former staff who died from cancer, with 18 different locations being mentioned in reports. These include two musicians from the BBC Symphony Orchestra who both died in 2021, while the newspaper lists other musicians, set builders, engineers, make-up artists, producers and studio managers who have also suffered.
Jo Laverty, national organiser of the Musicians’ Union, told the paper the organisation had been “seeking robust answers” about asbestos at Maida Vale since 2017.
Asbestos kills more than 5,000 people a year in the UK, causing mesothelioma, asbestosis and lung cancer.
A BBC spokesman said in response it could not comment on individual cases but added: “We would like to extend our continued sympathies to the families of all those affected. The health and safety of BBC staff and all that use BBC buildings is a primary concern. The BBC manages asbestos in accordance with applicable regulations and statutory requirements.”
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