Industrial disease solicitors raise over £8,000 for asbestos support groups

Dedicated walkers from our industrial disease team at Digby Brown gifted over £8,400 to two asbestos support groups in Scotland after completing a mammoth trek from Croy to Clydebank in May.

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The gruelling 20-mile route - which ended at the International Asbestos Memorial - symbolised one mile for every year that asbestos has been banned in the UK.

Clydebank Asbestos Group received £4,247.20 with the same amount going to east coast support group Asbestos Action which will be presented at their AGM later this month.

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Staff from the not-for-profit support group Clydebank Asbestos Group paid tribute to the solicitors for their generous efforts at the cheque handover on Monday last week.

Charity chairman Bob Dickie said: “We are incredibly humbled by the supportive efforts shown by the team at Digby Brown.

“It’s generous donations like this that have helped us help others since 1992.

“I would therefore like to extend a deep and warm thanks to this incredible team for their efforts in supporting not just the charity but the individuals and families who will benefit from this donation as a result.”

Fraser Simpson, Partner and Head of Industrial Disease at Digby Brown, added: “Frontline community-led support groups provide vital services that thousands of people have relied on and will continue to rely on in the future.

“It therefore fills us with great pride to play a small part in these efforts because at Digby Brown we see first-hand the physical, emotional and practical trauma experienced by sufferers of asbestos-related diseases and indeed their loved ones.”

Asbestos-related diseases occur when people breathe in asbestos fibre which can lead to benign conditions like pleural plaques where the lining of the lungs calcify or terminal cancers like mesothelioma which can prove fatal just weeks after diagnosis.

Thousands have been affected across Scotland because employers, particularly in construction and shipbuilding, failed to provide workers with safety gear or breathing apparatus.

To this day asbestos-related conditions claim around 5,000 lives in the UK every year – a higher death toll than those killed on the roads.