An 80-year-old Newcastle woman was left to live in a room with suspected asbestos for a week after a British Gas workman pulled out her old back boiler behind her sitting room fire.
Sheila Sneddon even swept up the debris left from the work without knowing that she was being exposed to a potentially deadly substance, after the fitter reportedly told her that the hole left in the wall of her sitting room would not be bricked up as part of the £5,000 job.
It wasn't until her daughter and son-in-law, who is a builder, contacted British Gas on Mrs Sneddon's behalf that the company sent out a specialist to test for asbestos, which the family say was found both in the exposed wall where they boiler had been and in a very high reading in the air. The sitting room in Mrs Sneddon's Chapel House bungalow was immediately sealed off and the widow, who has very poor mobility, was forced to live in her bedroom for around six weeks until her sitting room was made safe earlier this week.
