Danger Dust

A man who lost four family members to asbestos-related cancer has backed an MP's campaign to have the potentially deadly material removed from all public buildings.

South Shields Labour MP Emma Lewell used a Commons debate to press the government to create a register of UK buildings containing asbestos and plan for its removal.

Her grandad John Henry Richardson died in 1998 from asbestosis - a hardening of the lungs - after working in the area's shipyards, while her constituency has one of the country's highest death rates from contact with the material.

Raymond Turnbull, from Washington, supported Lewell's call with the plea: "We've got to really get it out there how dangerous it is."

Mr Turnbull has seen asbestos take a terrible toll on his family.

His mother died from mesothelioma in 1979, aged 72, and his brother and uncle also succumbed to the same cancer.

All three worked at the now closed Turner and Newall factory in Washington which made products containing asbestos.

But the biggest blow for Mr Turnbull was the loss of his wife, Jean, who died aged 62 in 2009.

"When she was young he used to play with other children on big white heaps near the factory," he said