Our first face-to-face meeting for over three years will be held at the STEAM Museum in Swindon, United Kingdom on March 29th. The subject of the meeting will be Asbestos. The event is being supported by the British Occupational Hygiene Society (BOHS). We sent a flyer for this meeting last month with details of the confirmed key note speakers. Since this flyer was prepared we have added two other speakers.

Jennifer Seavor is a local solicitor who has worked on many compensation claims for mesothelioma caused by asbestos exposures in Swindon industries, mostly from the railway works. Mesothelioma is also known as the “Swindon Disease”.

Our other new speaker is Beth Baker. She is Group Conservation Manager for the Science Museum Group. Their National Collection Centre (NCC) is at Wroughton near Swindon. She will talk about respiratory hazards in the museum sector. The NCC holds over 300,000 objects in store and many of them date from the era when asbestos was commonly used for fire proofing, electrical and thermal insulation and other purposes.

For those who don’t know Swindon it is an hour from London Paddington by train and the venue is within walking distance of the train station. It is about 5 miles from both junctions 15 and 16 of the M4 motorway. Fees for the meeting will be £50 for members and £75 for non-members. Corporate members can register more than 2 members at the member rate. We urge you to book as soon as you can for this event so that we can organise the catering. If there are any problems with booking please contact the Secretary immediately.

We attach a map of the car parks near the venue, which is between the railway line and the National Trust headquarters and next to the Outlet Village. You can park in one of the Outlet Village car parks where you collect a ticket on entry. The staff at STEAM will validate this for you when you leave so that you won’t have to pay. Those who need to park close to the museum need to let the Secretary know and he can arrange access through the barrier.

If you are thinking of staying overnight be warned, two of the hotels nearest to the railway station are being used by our Government to house migrants and are closed to other visitors. These are the Holiday Inn Express and The Thistle. The Ibis next to the Holiday Inn Express, also seems to be closed. The Travel Lodge Swindon Central and The Leonardo (formerly Jury’s) are not being used for migrants and are on Fleming Way within walking distance of the Railway Station and STEAM. Other hotels are available in other parts of the town and near Junctions 15 and 16 of the M4 but are not within walking distance of the Station or STEAM. 

A second face to face section workshop has been confirmed for May 18th at the Coventry Building Society Arena (until recently this was called the RICOH Arena), which is about 5 miles north of the City of Coventry in the English Midlands.

This respiratory protection fit testing workshop, which is being jointly supported by the British Safety Industry Federation (BSIF), will cover the last developments in respiratory hazards, fit-testing guidance, standards and technology. The intended audience for this key note event is the fit testing community (and targeted healthcare fit testers), Health & Safety professionals, and agencies, RPE and fit test equipment manufacturers, suppliers and duty holders, and ‘RPE fit’ researchers, amongst others. We attach a flyer for this meeting and registration will be available via the ISRP website after the STEAM meeting.

The website is now open to receive membership payments. It was down for a couple of weeks while a problem with the payment service provider, Stripe, was resolved. Fees are unchanged from 2022 at £75 for individuals. If you benefited from free membership as part of the fees for the 2022 virtual conference we hope you will join us for 2023. The International Society for Respiratory Protection is the key source of impartial information on respiratory protection worldwide.

Ziqing Zhuang has retired from the post of Editor of the Journal of the Society after over 20 years in post. We would like to thank Ziqing for his tireless and diligent work in this role and for his exceptional service to the Society.