Fears about asbestos building site
January 14, 2005
Residents near Spodden Valley, Manchester, are campaigning against building plans for a site which was once home to the world’s largest asbestos textile factory.
Campaigners are concerned about plans to build up to 600 homes on the site of the former Turner and Newall site, which processed asbestos for over 100 years, fearing that the building work could disturb the asbestos.
By 1957, the factory was dumping over 300 tons of waste dust per year and by 1970 it was producing 2,250,000 yards of asbestos cloth and 5,500,000 miles of asbestos yard in a year.
The location of all the dump sites is not known.
Campaigners say that large quantities of brown asbestos fibres are hanging from tree roots on the troubled site.
Richard Morgan, a Derbyshire-based asbestos health and safety expert from the GMB Union, said the use of the Spodden Valley for housing development was similar to "that of seeking to open up a plague pit or develop the reactor site at Chernobyl".
The leader of Rochdale Council, Paul Rowen, has demanded that "every square inch" of the site be investigated.
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