Compensation claims for dockers in Cork who handled asbestos during the 1950s and 1960s have been lodged in the High Court. The legal firm dealing with the cases claims hundreds came into contact with the material without protective clothing. Some picked it up with their bare hands.
Most of the asbestos was bound for Whitegate oil refinery, which was being built at that time.
Mr Carl O'Mahony, of James G. O'Mahony and Co, told The Irish Times the first case, involving the family of a man who died from cancer, allegedly as a result of exposure to asbestos, is due to be heard in the coming months. The firm is representing eight families but says possibly over a thousand people would be entitled to take legal action.
"A number of our clients know of people that they worked with who are sick from illnesses associated with asbestos or have already died," said Mr O'Mahony. Four companies are being sued, B & I, Irish Ferries, Clyde Shipping and D.F. Doyle and Co, a Cork stevedoring company.
Mr O'Mahony said many of those who handled the asbestos would have been in their teens when they started working on the Cork docks. They unloaded asbestos pipes, bundles of asbestos sheets and bags of particularly potent white asbestos, which were unloaded loosely from the boats, he said.
"The dockers would have to go down into the enclosed hold of the boat and put 10 or 20 bags of this white asbestos into slug nets to be taken up. The bags would often fall and burst open and the dockers would sweep up the dust with a brush. There were no fans fitted in the holds and no protective clothing or other safety equipment fitted," he claimed.
He said many of these dockers had developed serious illness later in life, including chest infections, fluid on the lungs and a particularly virulent form of cancer associated with asbestos contact.
"Respiratory physicians say that it can take up to 30 years for the development of the tumour, and exposure to the asbestos does not have to be very heavy," Mr O'Mahony said.