All it took was one fibre to change a family forever

Steve Ashton was an architect, a rally driver, a husband, a father. His buildings still stand across Australia; Hamer Hall, the Shrine, Perth Stadium, the National Museum in Canberra. But one asbestos fibre, from a university holiday job working on racing car brake pads, would take his life more than forty years later.

Long-time Aftershock supporter James Nixon shares his perspective as a loved one caught in the ripple effect of a cancer diagnosis, and what he wants the world to understand about a disease that too many people still get wrong.

Can you tell us a little about the person you lost and what they meant to you?

Steve Ashton was my brother-in-law, as well as being the A in ARM architects, he was a top rally driver, and involved in the administration rallying within Motorsport Australia. He was wise, with a great sense of humour, he was a husband and father.

I see him in his buildings around Australia, Storey Hall at RMIT, Hamer Hall, the Shrine, and the William Barak building as I look up Swanston Street; The MTC and Recital Hall; the Geelong Arts Precinct, Perth Stadium, and the National Museum in Canberra.

When did you first hear the word Mesothelioma, and what did you know about it at the time?

Ours was a mining family, my father was Corporate Manager of Research for CRA, now RIO. From an early age I knew of the disaster of the Blue Asbestos Mine owned by CSR, a rival to CRA, near their Hamersley operations in W.A. 

The mining town called Wittenoom was ground zero of the new disease, then called ‘Asbestosis’. The takeaway was that about 10% of the 2,000 people who lived and worked near the mine eventually died from it.

Ironically, it was said that the miners themselves rarely got it, but their wives, who washed their overalls, did.

All it required, to get the disease, was one asbestos fibre in your lungs.

I have always wondered if the tar in their lungs from smoking protected the miners from getting it. I have known three men who died from it, each over 40 years after being exposed, and neither of them ever smoked.

Their exposure time was short:

• One got it after exposure in the Government Aircraft Factory, in Fisherman’s Bend, building aircraft as a young man.

• Another worked for only one week, after coming to Australia as an 18 year old, in the Johns & Waygood elevator company in Port Melbourne adding asbestos sheeting to elevators.
• My brother in law, who, during a uni holiday job, got it when working on racing car brake pads.

It was a wonder product, and probably saved hundreds of thousands of lives from fires worldwide, only to come back 40 years later, and cause misery.

What was the experience like navigating a diagnosis with a cancer that so few people understand?

I was living overseas at the time, working in an industry where it is well-understood. The hard part was not being home, and knowing that there was no chance of a cure.

Looking back, what do you wish more people knew about Mesothelioma?

I want people to understand that acquiring Mesothelioma was not their fault. It was not because they were doing something wrong.

People need to understand how, at the time, asbestos was seen as a wonder product —a natural fiber that could be bent, twisted, folded, turned into uniforms, added to powder, put inside doors, and elevator walls, to make them fireproof, with-standing temperatures up to 890 Celsius without being treated or modified in any way.

It allowed firefighters to wear protective clothing to allow them to rescue victims from flames, and fight aircraft fires. It allowed ships to contain volatile engines in small spaces without setting-fire to internal components. 

It allowed workers to tend furnaces wearing protective clothing which allowed the production of steel and iron, aluminium and copper, in shipyards and boilers, metal smelters and foundries,  power stations, and refineries. It was truly awesome. 

Asbestos brake pads allowed trams and trains to become larger, and amost silent compared to the cast iron, sparking and screeching brakes beforehand.

Who would have thought at the time that this natural fiber was so resilient that one tiny fibre could sit in your lung lining for forty years, one fiber, before causing Mesothelioma? 

Because that’s all it took.

So I'm sad that the current generation seems to treat Mesothelioma as, ‘Well, serves you right.’ The same way lung cancer victims get that eye-roll ‘Yeah, but he was a smoker…’

No one deserved to get this disease. It wasn't anyone's fault. If anything, it's the fault of having such an ingenious society that went with the amazing modernization of the planet since the 1940s.

Why do you think it’s important to raise awareness and fund research for cancers like this?