Newbury widow speaks of dying husbands last months
Jane Angel was speaking after the inquest in Newbury Town Hall yesterday (Wednesday) into the death of Anthony Arthur Angel.
The hearing was told how the 71-year-old was able to organise his affairs after being diagnosed with deadly malignant mesothelioma, a rare cancer affecting the lining of the lungs, in June 2012.
And afterwards Berkshire coroner Peter Bedford spoke of the “ticking timebomb” of a mesothelioma wave that has not yet peaked.
Before his death Mr Angel, a father of two daughters, who lived at Kingsley Close, made a formal statement outlining how he had worked in confined spaces with the so-called “wonder product.”
Mrs Angel said after the inquest: “Then we went on a cruise together, because he’d always wanted to do that.”
She added: “We had a wonderful last 16 months together. Anthony wanted to die in the home we’d shared for the past 20 years and he did so, looking out at his garden.”
Mr Angel, a keen fisherman who enjoyed narrowboat holidays with friends, said in the statement made before his death on October 24 last year: “Asbestos was a wonder product used for many different things. One of my many jobs was removing asbestos pipes or cladding. I had to cut through asbestos insulation when installing new heating systems. I was working in dusty, confined spaces.”
The inquest heard Mr Angel was working for a local authority - which was not publicly disclosed, due to the rules governing inquests which state no blame must be apportioned - when he was exposed to asbestos.
He said in his statement: “I was a heating and plumbing engineer. All the council houses had back boilers at this time and I was employed to do the new central heating installation.”
Mr Angel built up the works department from two people to a 30-strong team before his retirement in 2007, the inquest heard.
But in 2012 he developed a chest infection that would not respond to antibiotics and tests at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading revealed the worst.
Mr Bedford pointed out that there was no suggestion that asbestos was unsafe at the time Mr Angel and his colleagues were working with it.
He added: “With mesothelioma, more than 90 per cent of cases are proven to be linked to exposure to asbestos. There’s still a suggestion that we’ve not reached the peak of the graph. There are people walking around with a ticking time bomb and they are blissfully unaware because it lies dormant for decades..
“But it’s a horrible thing and when it becomes symptomatic, there’s no cure.”
Mr Bedford recorded a verdict of death due to an industrial disease, namely, malignant mesothelioma.
