A female worker twists raw material on to cores and bobbins for chord making

A female worker twists raw material on to cores and bobbins for chord making. Turner Asbestos Rochdale, 1961. Tand N were one of the world's largest asbestos manufacturers and by the 1950s had a virtual monopoly in the UK. Asbestos was a near perfect material : durable, inert, but most of all fireproof. Post war re-construction relied heavily on asbestos based materials and usage reached a peak during the early 1970s. However exposure to even low levels of asbestos could induce a fatal disease like asbestosis or lung cancer. and thousands of employees and people who came in to contact with the material suffered .The flood of ensuing compensation claims could not be met by ill equipped insurance companies or by Turner and Newall themselves. Photograph by Walter Nurnberg (1907-1991) who transformed industrial photography after WWII using film studio lighting techniques. Photographie ©SSPL/NMeM/Walter Nurnberg