'Fibro' families latest asbestos victims

FIONA Watterson remembers playing with bits of fibro brought home by her carpenter father when she was a young child growing up in Southport.

Ms Watterson, 44, now realises that it was most likely this contact with asbestos-laden fibro in the 1960s that caused her to contract mesothelioma.

She is one of a younger generation of victims of asbestos – the children of those who worked with fibro and brought home asbestos fibres on clothing or who renovated fibro homes.

Lawyer Thady Blundell of Turner Freeman, who is representing Ms Watterson in a compensation claim, said more people in their 30s, 40s and 50s were now being diagnosed with mesothelioma.

"It does seem to be on the increase," Mr Blundell said.

"This is just the start of another wave of victims. The first wave was the miners, people working with these products in the building industry was the second wave, and the third wave are the wives and children inadvertently exposed in the domestic setting."

Ms Watterson, who has two sons aged 13 and 16, has had two doses of chemotherapy since being diagnosed with the cancer, caused by asbestos, in August.

She had been healthy before she began struggling to breathe in June.

"I was really stunned when they told me – I didn't know what to think," Ms Watterson, of Arundel, said.

She remembers her father storing sheets of fibro under their home, and she and her brother and sister playing hide-and-seek under there.

"We played with everything. We used to roll marbles down the fibro."

Lawyer Carl Hughes, of Slater and Gordon, said about 10 per cent of asbestos cases he dealt with involved women who contracted asbestosis or mesothelioma after handling their husbands' work clothes.

Brisbane mother-of-two Rita Charlton, 63, is paying the price for being a good wife back in the 1960s and '70s.

When her husband, Michael, would come home from work covered in dust, Mrs Charlton would sweep up whatever he trailed into the house and pop his clothes in the wash.

Today Mrs Charlton has asbestosis, cancer of the right lung and suspected mesothelioma – believed to be from asbestos fibres carried on her husband's work clothes.

"I always shook things out and I guess I breathed it in," she said.

Slater and Gordon is seeking compensation for Mrs Charlton from companies that employed Mr Hughes.