I have a puzzle: what issue links an investigative Radio 4 programme, Bocaccio’s Decameron, Lloyd’s of London, a campaigning epidemiologist, the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne and the 47th President of the USA?
Spoiler alert, the campaigning epidemiologist was my late father- in- law Morris Greenberg. He dealt with industrial diseases and, for the last part of his long life, with the greatest killer of all, asbestos.
Even after all the publicity and regulations, exposure to asbestos still accounts for more than 5,000 deaths annually in the UKÂ and, according to the WHO, around 200,000 deaths worldwide; more people than are killed in road accidents.
The unique qualities of asbestos as a fire resistant insulator have been known for millennia. The Emperor Charlemagne had an asbestos mantle and would impress guests by using it to suppress fires. In modern times more uses were found for it as the industrial revolution developed.
Vivian Wineman
Eventually however the magic mineral was found to have other more sinister properties. The dust from asbestos fibres was implicated as the sole cause of a number of fatal lung diseases. The first known victim of asbestosis was Nellie Kershaw an employee of Turner Brothers in 1920.
Aged 29 she obtained a prestigious position working in their carding room where the asbestos fibre was woven into yarn. Within a couple of years she developed asbestosis. In a letter of poignant dignity she wrote to her employers, who were effectively killing her, begging for support and saying that her illness deprived her ‘of any means of sustenance’.
The directors led by Sir Samuel Turner, knighted for services to industry, were not interested and  refused to support her or even to contribute to the costs of her funeral. She died aged thirty three and was buried in a paupers grave. Her death was the first recorded as being caused by exposure to asbestos as a result of employment.
Even in the1980s there were still commercial institutions prepared to write insurance against liability for causing asbestosis
In the decades that followed the effects of asbestos became apparent. One account by a young man in his early thirties, himself dying of asbestosis, which was killing his colleagues of the same age, reads like the accounts Boccaccio has left us of the effects of the Black Death on the monks in the monastery he visited. Like their successors in Turner Brothers’ carding room they knew a mysterious, invisible killer was wiping them out, in their prime and like their successors they had little idea of the nature of that killer.
The difference was that the Black Death victims were killed by a non-human agency and authorities did their (very poor) best to try to find the cause. In the case of the twentieth century victims, they were killed by  an entirely man-made phenomenon fed by the greed of their employers who acquired riches and honours out of their suffering
Moreover once the suggestion was made that asbestos was the cause of the disaster the employer companies did their best to cover up the truth. The Radio 4 programme  Killer Dust has exposed the dirty tricks used by the employers to prevent any understanding of asbestosis. My father- in- law’s research showed the utter ruthlessness of companies who for ,instance seeing that one of their victim claimants had a ‘poor expectation of life’, delayed settlement of her claim knowing that dealing with her executors would be cheaper.
With the passage of the decades, however, it became impossible to ignore the evidence. Nevertheless even in the1980s there were still commercial institutions prepared to write insurance against liability for causing asbestosis. The litigation involving these claims almost destroyed Lloyd’s of London and with it much of the US insurance industry.
This tragic story may still have another chapter. The current occupant of the White House, and purported leader of the free world, has such an uncanny sense of direction, enabling him to find his way to the wrong side of history on so many big issues, such as climate change, Ukraine, NATO, West Bank settlements, world trade and affordable healthcare that it is often overlooked that he is also  wrong on many smaller issues as well; the MMR vaccine which  he thinks is dangerous and asbestos which contrary to  all the evidence, he thinks is perfectly safe. He says that if the twin Towers had had asbestos cladding ,9/11 would not have happened.
Apparently the furore is not produced by the victims, or more usually  their bereaved families, but by companies owned by and affiliated to the mob.
It is said that. In democracies people get the government they deserve. What did the people of the USA, or the rest of the free world, do to deserve him?
