Today if you work with asbestos you’ll be given an arsenal of protective gear and a long health and safety briefing before you’re allowed anywhere near it.
But when Frank Graham was working with the deadly material in the 1930s and 40s health and safety in the factory was virtually non-existent.
Frank, who also worked with dangerous chemicals in the 1940s and 50s, was lucky.
Despite repeated exposure to lethal substances he lived to 88.
But his colleagues weren’t so lucky, many of them dying in their 40s and 50s.
Between 1938 and 1940 he worked at Cocking Mill, Old Leeds Road, making gaskets for motor vehicles from asbestos.
Asbestos was once used as an insulating material until people released it caused mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer.
Frank’s older son Douglas said: “They used to get big blocks of asbestos and they would put them in these big machines that flattened the asbestos.
“Then there were 20 women sat at a long table pressing gaskets with their hands. They were covered in this white dust.
“They wouldn’t have had any protective equipment in those days.
“That was how it was in those days; there was no health and safety.”
Douglas, 72, added: “You hear of women who have actually died from washing asbestos from their husband’s clothes.”
Frank even saw the factory foreman hit and killed by a wagon when its brakes failed while delivering asbestos to the premises.
And when Frank and his colleagues demanded extra pay for working in hazardous conditions they were sacked on the spot, Douglas said.
Frank served in the army during World War Two setting up anti-aircraft guns before taking a job at ICI, Leeds Road, making explosives.
The pay was good and Frank, who died in 2008, enjoyed the varied social life that ICI put on for its employees.
But again dangerous chemicals were involved.
Douglas, from Berry Brow, said: “When he came home from work he had green stuff on his ears, blue over his face and stuff all over his hands.
“His colleagues were dying from bladder cancer. Thank God he got out of there.”
Frank moved onto David Brown engineers in Meltham working as a mechanist before working for WC Holmes, at Turnbridge, which made fans and furnaces.
Douglas said: “Holmes was a good place to work with good conditions and it was run properly.”
He added: “My dad wanted to work and he worked hard.”
