WORKING with asbestos eventually led to the death of a plumber, a Bury inquest was told.

Alan Fletcher, 60, of Ainsworth Road, Radcliffe, had worked with asbestos, sometimes covered in clouds of the deadly material, at a time when its lethal potential was not fully appreciated.

Eventually, when he was succumbing to its effects, he compiled a graphic background of his experiences in his civil claim for a disability allowance through mesothelioma, the asbestos-related cancer. Bury District Coroner Barrie Williams read out the statement as evidence.

Mr Fletcher, who died in Fairfield General Hospital on New Year's Day, started work as an apprentice plumber, and was employed by the Co-operative Society stripping out bakery ovens at Prestwich. He remembered using a sledgehammer and seeing the asbestos lagging flying. It floated in the atmosphere and covered him.

Then he worked on pipework and flues in which asbestos was also a feature, and Mr Fletcher recalled a "great deal" of dust. No one, he said, had warned him of the dangers of the material, but that was in the 1950s.

Then Mr Fletcher was involved in the house building trade, and worked for a Whitefield heating company as a plumber, and once again in installing domestic central heating he was in contact with some asbestos flue piping.

One in 10 of his jobs would involve work with materials containing asbestos.

In 1977 he established his own company, when new materials were replacing asbestos. The effects of his early exposure did not enter his thinking until he started to become breathless in the middle of 1999 and hospital tests showed the malignant tumour, mesothelioma.

It was inoperable. Mr Fletcher died of broncho-pneumonia, but this was only the terminal event and the cause was the cancer.

Mr Williams recorded a verdict of death due to industrial disease. Asbestos-related mesothelioma had a latency period of at least 20 years and in Mr Fletcher's case, it most likely arose from exposure to asbestos in his early life.