A man who worked as a builder from the age of 16 until his death at 55 last year almost certainly died from a cancer called mesothelioma that is caused by being exposed to asbestos, Drogheda Coroner's Court was told yesterday.
Mr Patrick Drew, Termonfeckin Road, Baltray, Co Louth, was married with three children and the inquest into his death heard that at sometime during his working life and possibly up to 30 years ago, he was exposed to the material.
He died in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital on December 3rd, 2003, just eight months after he went to his GP complaining of a cough that would not go away. Until then he had been in good health.
His widow Nuala said her husband had done renovations and extensions and except for a three-year period had worked locally. In reply to the coroner, Mr Ronan Maguire, she said he probably had demolished parts of houses but he never mentioned being exposed to asbestos to her.
Mr Maguire said the dangers of asbestos only became known in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Pathologist Dr Jonathan Ryan carried out a post-mortem on the deceased and found that his right lung was completely encased in a white tumour that was highly malignant and that the mesothelioma had spread to his liver and the lining of the heart.
He found what he believed to be fragments of asbestos in tissue samples he took for examination. There is, he added, an incontrovertible link between asbestos and this type of cancer.
The coroner said it seemed Mr Drew's disease was due to asbestos exposure and the jury returned a verdict that his death was due to occupational disease as it was related to his work.