health<\/a> officials disagree on the dangers associated with fibres in drinking water.<\/p>\nThe\u00a0World Health Organisation\u00a0does not consider ingestion of asbestos in drinking water to be a serious risk.<\/p>\n
However, experts fear we could be on the cusp of a new wave of asbestos cases in the UK but will not know the full extent of the harm for decades.<\/p>\n
Adrian Budgen is national head of asbestos and occupational disease at law firm Irwin Mitchell: \u201cI think 50 years to replace these pipes is absurdly long. That\u2019s several generations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe latency period for most asbestos-related illnesses is upwards of 20 years so it can often be 30, 40 or 50 years after you have exposure that you find out, and it just strikes like a lightning bolt.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s now over 25 years since asbestos was banned in the UK and we are only just seeing a third wave of asbestos cases, this time from background exposure in schools or offices where it was present and then disturbed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say this could be in that category but we just won\u2019t know the full extent until many years from now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scottish Water said it invests around \u00a335-40 million a year to renew water mains and is \u201cproposing\u201d to significantly increase the replacement rate for asbestos cement pipes.<\/p>\n
Homeowner pulls up 70s carpets hoping to find \u2018gorgeous parquet or tiles\u2019 underneath & instead discovers the \u2018stuff of nightmares\u2019<\/p>\n
A spokesman added: \u201cThere are strict standards in place for any materials we use on our water network to ensure public health is the primary concern and these standards are guided by the World Health Organisation, which has concluded there is no evidence to suggest that drinking water from AC pipes is a health risk.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SCOTS are facing a growing risk from asbestos in water pipes with more than a quarter of pipes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5009],"tags":[748,207,1102,918,4884,426,218,211,712,437,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-56256","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scotland","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-cancer-disease","10":"tag-edinburgh","11":"tag-glasgow","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-health-warnings","14":"tag-mental-health","15":"tag-nhs","16":"tag-scotland","17":"tag-section-healthnews-health","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114413116091087999","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Water](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/crop-14377780_b8881b.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n