A LEGAL claim against an engineering firm is being considered after an East Lancashire worker died from an asbestos-related condition.

Widow Mary Carroll said that for years her husband Robert would come home from work covered in asbestos dust, Burnley Coroner’s Court was told.

He initially worked for John Woods, in Guardian Street, Ramsbottom, later moving to Walmsley’s Engineers, Bolton, which became Beloit.

Mrs Carroll told her husband’s inquest: “He used to come home quite often looking like an old man because his hair was white with dust.

“I used to say to him that was what he would look like when he was 70.

“He said he had been working with asbestos.

“Apparently they had a canopy over one of the big driers, which you had in the paper industry.

“And when something went wrong you had to chip it off by hand.”

She told the court he worked in similar condi-tions at other paper plants across this county, and occasionally abroad.

The inquest heard that Mr Carroll, 70, was found dead at his home in Eden Avenue, Edenfield, near Rawtenstall, on March 6.

An autopsy by Dr Walid Salman showed that a malignant tumour had infiltrated Mr Carroll’s diaphragm, chest wall and heart cavity.

Dr Salman said that although the official cause of death was broncho-pneumonia, he believed that the tumour, most likely to have been caused by exposure to asbestos, chiefly contributed to his death.

The inquest heard that Mr Carroll had drafted a statement to solicitor’s Rowley Ashworth, before his death, outlining his working history.

Stuart Hunter, assistant coroner for East Lancashire, recording an industrial disease verdict, said he was satisfied, on balance, that exposure to asbestos had resulted in the fatal tumour.