Asbestos found at Brixton Tube - Closure

[lang rabbie]

From South London Press Friday 31 October

BRIXTON: London Underground has confirmed Brixton Tube station could be closed for up to a month while asbestos is cleared from its roof. An LU spokeswoman said the scale of the work was “enormous”.

The company has still not given specific dates for the closure but the spokeswoman said it was weighing up different options to minimise disruption to customers.

The closure will cause chaos for many South Londoners who rely on the Victoria Line Station

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Jesus H Christ.

 

[Mr Retro]

Fucking hell.

For one month I suppose we can read two?

I'm going to reconsider my abandoned moped plans.

 

[hatboy]

Originally posted by Justin
I don't really want to part with a precious 35p unless I have to.

You forgot the sarcastic smilie:

Or maybe you didn't.

 

[IntoStella]

Originally posted by hatboy
Appach Rd is in South St Reatham isn't it?

What are you talking about?

Try consulting streetmap.co.uk

 

[hatboy]

I know where it is dear. I was just teasing.

 

[lang rabbie]

Originally posted by Justin
Anything new on this in today's SLP? I don't really want to part with a precious 35p unless I have to.

I share Justin's prudent view, and only buy the Friday edition.

52 weeks@35p = £18.20 = 13 pints of decent bitter in the Crown & Sceptre

 

[IntoStella]

Originally posted by hatboy
I know where it is dear. I was just teasing.

Teasing generally only works if you are usually nice to the person you're teasing. Otherwise it just looks like bullying.

 

[hatboy]

Oh don't start with all that again. Teasing someone about 35p is not "bullying".

I'm not having this discussion. I'm not your enemy IntoStella and we've done all this.

My reaction to your above post in the pub would be "oh fuck off" said with a smile and rolling my eyes like this:

Oh fuck off.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

I spoke to a chap in the ticket office today and he reckoned they weren't going to close at all - instead, they were going to rip out the asbestos over Xmas. How they would be able to do that when their previously announced plans foresaw a work-schedule lasting a month, was not clear to me at all. Perhaps Santa Claus will dispatch some of his elves to do the job.

 

[Anna Key]

^^ Well, he's not been talking to the South London Press:

Tube station closure chaos ... But when?

Nov 3 2003

London Underground (LU) has confirmed Brixton Tube station could be closed for up to a month while asbestos is cleared from its roof.

An LU spokeswoman said the scale of the work was "enormous".

The company has still not given specific dates for the closure but the spokes-woman said it was weighing up different options to minimise disruption to customers.

The closure will cause chaos for many South Londoners who rely on the Victoria Line station.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Looks familiar....

Originally posted by lang rabbie
From South London Press Friday 31 October

BRIXTON: London Underground has confirmed Brixton Tube station could be closed for up to a month while asbestos is cleared from its roof. An LU spokeswoman said the scale of the work was “enormous”.

The company has still not given specific dates for the closure but the spokeswoman said it was weighing up different options to minimise disruption to customers.

The closure will cause chaos for many South Londoners who rely on the Victoria Line Station

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Originally posted by lang rabbie
Let us know what you think of your "stylish pen" when it arrives.

Well, my stylish pen arrived yesterday.

I can say with confidence that it is a pen. Further than that, I wouldn't necessarily wish to venture.

 

[Anna Key]

Evening Standard article

Steve Grant, Aslef London district secretary, said today: "Unless LU gives our safety representatives clear assurances of how and when the work to remove asbestos at Brixton station is to be carried out, our members will be instructed not to drive beyond Victoria.

"This is a very important issue both for our passengers and our staff. We have given LU until next Tuesday to come up with these assurances. We just hope the management sees sense."

Edited to add: much more importantly, how d'you stop the blue underlined link thingy from breaking up in that highly irritating fashion?

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

Fuck me So you won't even be able to get a bus to Stockwell Station

 

[Anna Key]

It's not the first time this has happened:

Tube services between Brixton and Victoria had to be suspended for more than seven hours one day in September (2002?) after engineers found loose asbestos panels in a tunnel. Services only resumed after clearance air tests showed that safe levels were reached. It is not known how long the panels were loose before they were detected. Vibration from passing trains would aid the release of asbestos fibres which would then be dispersed throughout the Underground system.

Some time afterwards, safety reps on an inspection of some sidings near Brixton station found that the removal of similar asbestos-containing panels was taking place. In this case, though, it did not appear that clearance tests were being carried out to check whether fibres had been released. Reps are pursuing the matter with London Underground to find out exactly what is going on.

Dust on the Underground has long been a bone of contention between safety reps and the management. As well as asbestos, reps are concerned about the levels of silica, which can cause cancer by inhalation, found throughout the system. Despite many years of argument, no agreement has been reached on the best way of measuring dust levels. While the management maintains that occupational exposure levels are never breached, the reps believe that high concentrations of dust are achieved in at least some locations.

Source

Given the choice of believing an elected safety rep (with statutory protection against unfair dismissal should they raise safety concerns which an employer would rather hide) or a privatised manager about safety on the tube I know who I'd trust.

 

[lang rabbie]

Asbestos sparks new Tube row

BBC London News

The drivers' union Aslef is threatening to advise its members not to drive between Victoria and Brixton on the Victoria line, if its concerns are not answered by next Tuesday.

Asbestos has been found at Brixton station, where new escalators are being installed, but London Underground (LU) said it has not been disturbed and is safe in its current state.

Asbestos dust can cause serious illnesses if inhaled.

"There is no safety risk to our customers and staff," an LU spokeswoman said. "However, we need to remove any asbestos we find so work can continue safely in putting in cables to get the new escalators up and running."

But Aslef wants "clear assurances" about when and how the asbestos will be removed and is threatening to advise its members not to drive past Victoria.

It would cause chaos on the line which carries almost 600,000 passengers a day.

Methinks ASLEF are using bogus grounds in this case to escalate (excuse the pun) other disputes with LU on more legitimate health and safety grievances.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

You say so because....

 

[Anna Key]

Asbestos sparks new Tube row

Originally posted by lang rabbie
Methinks ASLEF are using bogus grounds in this case to escalate (excuse the pun) other disputes with LU on more legitimate health and safety grievances.

Methinks the new consortium of private companies running Brixton tube is desparate to find grounds to escape bad publicity and possible penalty charges for the massive cock-up made of Brixton tube station.

If I was an ASLEF official I'd go and talk to the Brixton station management (or their senior management) sharpish and take a couple of my most bolshy safety reps along with me.

Who knows what could be found during a particularly vigorous safety inspection? And who knows how grateful the management might be?

 

[academia]

Originally posted by Justin
You say so because....

It doesn't sound like a very helpful tone they're adopting, a bit bolshy and confrontational.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Yeah, people tend to get like that about health and safety.

 

[IntoStella]

Originally posted by lang rabbie
Methinks ASLEF are using bogus grounds in this case to escalate (excuse the pun) other disputes with LU on more legitimate health and safety grievances.

And what would be the point, exactly, of undermining their case in a legitimate dispute with ''bogus grounds''?

ASLEF, yesterday..

 

[lang rabbie]

It's the media, innit!

The lead front page story in today's South London Press is

DANGER STATION
Asbestos fears may close southern stretch of Victoria Line
Bosses tight-lipped over plans

My point in my earlier (ASLEF-sceptic) post being that by shouting about asbestos risks, union reps hope to get more media attention, because the travelling public may think that there is a risk to all of us.

The legitimate health and safety concern is the ongoing debate about whether LU and its PPP contractors are doing enough to protect employees from dust. The dust these days is mostly iron, and health hazards remain unproven. [IMO from reading the links below, they are likely to be several orders of magnitude lower than those when asbestos was in more general use in brake blocks etc. ]

The source that Anna Key quoted was the October 2000 edition of the London Hazards Centre's newsletter - so Anna's insertion of a tentative 2002 date in brackets for the last asbestos related incident was wrong.

As I understand it, that article predates, the establishment of a joint management-union Dust Action Group, which has commissioned independent research.

There has been information on dust issues on the LU website since the Standard first ran with the issue when prompted by the tube unions' campaigns. It now includes the full reports of the research as well as LU's press release spin.

The most recent (September 2003) report - preliminary conclusions are at pages viii to ix of the introduction.

The earlier November 2001 report of the study included the following useful information on asbestos risks:

2.5 The composition of tunnel dust reflects exactly what might be expected from the source of dust. The high iron content results from wear on the rims and flanges of the wheels and on the heads of the rails and by contact between the moving wheels and the track (HSE 1981). The quartz content comes mainly from wear on the brake blocks which, for the older blocks, contained significant proportions of quartz. Asbestos was at one time of concern because the brake blocks contained 5% white asbestos (considered the least hazardous of the asbestos types). Some very limited tunnel lining with crocidolite had taken place in the 1960’s and fairly extensive train sound insulation with amosite was also installed along the tracks. However, this was stripped under controlled conditions in the 1970’s and up to the late 1980’s. The HSE report (OP4) cites a few instances where blue asbestos (the most hazardous) had been used but confirmed by the time of the report in 1981 that this had all been removed. At the time of the HSE report there had been 24 series of airborne asbestos measurements at 12 underground stations. The limits for blue asbestos are 0.2 fibres/ml for any 10 minute period and for other types of asbestos should not exceed 2 fibres per ml / 10 minutes. All of the measurements taken showed levels very much lower than these values. More recent changes in braking technology (the introduction of new brake blocks and rheostatic and regenerative braking) would be expected to have further reduced white asbestos levels overall. However no recent measurements of asbestos have been made available for this study.

Edited to add SLP link at top and correct other hasty lunchhour typos which may have confused.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Originally posted by IntoStella
ASLEF, yesterday..

Aslan?

Lang Rabbie - it couldn't just be that ASLEF find it just as hard to get any information out of LUL as the rest of us? And that therefore, where there's a potential health and safety problem, they have to make a lot of noise in order to be heard?

 

[Anna Key]

It's the profit motive, innit!

Originally posted by lang rabbie
My point being that there is an ongoing debate about whether LU and its PPP contractors are doing enough to protect employees from dust issues.

Which is likely to heat up - quite rightly - now private profit and London underground health and safety are in collision following the PPP.

And at least the ASLEF leadership and their safety reps are elected (the former under stringent Thatcher anti-union laws).

The PPP lot are accountable primarily to their shareholders: the very people with a stonking great vested interest in reducing health & safety expenditure in order maximise profits.

Oh, and in making sure no penalty clauses in the PPP contracts are applied following the Brixton tube station cock-up.

As Livingstone keeps saying (words to the effect of) once there are bodies on the line the PPP will be smashed.

Shame that's what it takes.

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

Incredible. Just rung London Transport information (020 7222 1234) who aren't even aware of the threat of closure of Brixton.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Originally posted by Minnie_the_Minx
Incredible. Just rung London Transport information (020 7222 1234) who aren't even aware of the threat of closure of Brixton.

You got through? Did you speak to a real person?

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

Justin

Yes, of course I spoke to a travel adviser. They're very helpful when they know what they're talking about.

Was looking to see if other buses besides 133 go to Liverpool St in the event that Brixton was shut. The guy was not aware that it may shut.

I had to inform him the decision should be made by Tuesday so for him to "expect to be busy". He thanked me for the warning

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Originally posted by Minnie_the_Minx
Justin

Yes, of course I spoke to a travel adviser. They're very helpful when they know what they're talking about.

I'm sure they are. The point is that when I phone up LUL I get a message saying there are thirteen* people ahead of me in the queue and I'd be well advised to send an email instead. As they don't answer their emails more than once every two months this is not a strategy for the short-term.

[* = I mean thirteen, by the way, that was the figure last time I tried.]

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

Are you talking about the 222 1234 number?

I know it's often busy but when it is the message is along the lines of "our travel advisers are busy, you are held in a queue and will be answered shortly" - no mention about how many people are in front of you