The Halifax Evening Courier is calling for a top-level inquiry into asbestos-related deaths at a Hebden Bridge factory.

More than 700 people are estimated to have died after working at the former Cape Asbestos plant at Acre Mill, with many more suffering from asbestos-related illnesses.

And although the former factory was torn down in 1971, it is believed that a growing number of ex-employees are still falling victim to the deadly dust.

A recent inquest at Halifax Town Hall ruled that three former workers who died earlier this year were killed after being exposed to asbestos dust years earlier by working at Acre Mill.

Now the paper is calling for an independent public inquiry to find out the true scale of what happened - and whether it could have been prevented.

It is also calling for Cape Asbestos to release any information it has, and a guarantee that everyone affected has been fully compensated.

Editor John Furbisher said: "The mass death toll from Acre Mill is arguably Britain's worst industrial disaster in a hundred years. Yet there still seems to be a conspiracy of official silence.

"The link between asbestos and certain lung cancers has been known for decades. These indestructible mineral fibres - mined in Africa and Canada - were suspect even before Acre Mill was turned over to asbestos products in 1939. But nobody warned the workers.

"In a pathetic post-mortem, after Acre Mill was demolished in the early seventies, factory inspectors had their wrists slapped. Nobody was prosecuted.

"But the scandal persists. Even today we still do not know the extent of this insidious mass poisoning of workers.

"We need an official, perhaps judicial inquiry, modelled perhaps on the Shipman Inquiry.

"We owe it to those who have died - and those still dying - to understand exactly how this awful, persistent tragedy came about.

"Staying in denial is not an option when so many hundreds of lives have been cut short."

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