As Renée Eden's stricken family were coming to terms with her death from cancer an hour previously one evening last November, they were astonished to see a police car with flashing lights pull up outside her home on Anglesey and a uniformed officer emerge from it complete with fluorescent jacket and crackling radio.

There had been nothing remotely suspicious about Renée's death: the 69-year-old had passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by her loved ones, from an illness that had been diagnosed six months before. Still, the policeman insisted on interviewing the family about the circumstances of her death and asked her distraught husband, Allan, to identify his wife's body.

This bizarre series of events unfolded because Renée, a retired art teacher, had died of mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer of the lining of the lung or abdomen that is usually caused by exposure to asbestos. Her family believe that she contracted the disease from pinning her pupils' work to boards and walls that contained asbestos, so releasing the minute but deadly fibres.

A death from mesothelioma is classed as “unnatural”, and there are often claims for compensation. So the death must be referred to the local coroner for investigation, and because many coroners' officers do not work out of office hours, this may mean an unexpectedvisit from a policeman.

This is an issue that, sadly, is not going away. While the use of asbestos has been banned for many years, mesothelioma deaths are on the rise because the mineral was widely used in the building trade from the 1950s until the mid-1980s, and the disease manifests itself up to half a century after exposure. At least 20,000 people in the UK are expected to die of the condition over the next decade.

“My mother died at about 5pm; the policeman turned up an hour later,” says Renée's daughter Kate. “It was a shock. The house is in a very rural area and the arrival of marked police car seemed incongruous. It was difficult to deal with - and totally inappropriate. We were still upset and disorientated. The questions he asked were routine and could have been answered the next day or the next week. He kept telling us that we hadn't done anything wrong, that he had to ask these questions. I don't think he knew where to put himself.”

This state of affairs dismays the British Lung Foundation (BLF), which is campaigning for a change in the law to reform coroners' practice, so that relatives are not subjected to an intrusive police visit in the very earliest stages of their bereavement. Last month an Early Day Motion backing the charity's campaign was signed by 105 MPs. The BLF hopes that their recommendations will be incorporated into the draft Coroners' Bill, and that the Bill will be given parliamentary time in the near future - though that does not look likely.

“Relatives say they feel as if they are under criminal investigation,” says Dr Keith Prowse, the BLF chairman. “It is not a question of finding a body. Diagnosis has usually been known for some time and the family has watched a patient go slowly downhill.

“Close relatives may then be subjected to fairly aggressive questioning that would not be out of place on CSI: Miami from police officers who have no training in this area. The whole investigation constitutes a distressing chain of events at an extremely difficult time.”

The police questions usually focus on when and where the patient was exposed to asbestos. The BLF says that this information should be gathered by doctors or nurses after diagnosis and passed on to the coroner following the death. If an interim death certificate could be issued and an inquest opened on the recommendation of a doctor, the coroner's investigations would not have to be carried out immediately.

“This would remove the need for police officers to interview families within hours of their bereavement,” says Prowse. “It should also be possible for one of the healthcare team to identify the body, which relatives may find distressing.”

Mesothelioma is a devastating illness, with an average life expectancy of just 18 months from diagnosis. “It is a dreadful thing to die from,” says Professor Mark Britton, a chest physician at Ashford and St Peter's Hospital in Surrey. “It is like having a vice around your chest that is gradually being tightened.” Treatments include surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, including some new cancer drugs, but as yet there is no cure. “Drugs can only improve symptoms of breathlessness and pain and bring a marginal increase in life expectancy,” says Britton.

More than 90 per cent of mesothelioma cases are caused by asbestos. The substance has been banned in most products since 1993 and its use was greatly scaled down before that, but more than 500,000 non-domestic buildings - including schools - and thousands of homes still contain asbestos - in ceiling tiles and voids, in partitions and wall linings, as lagging for boilers and pipes and mixed with cement. Provided that the material is not disturbed, it is not considered a health hazard.

“Given that the use of asbestos was banned several years ago, people thought that instances of asbestos-related disease would be diminishing,” says Britton. But because of the long latency period between exposure and the development of the disease, we are seeing a growing number of deaths.

“In 1985 there were around 1,000 deaths a year and we are now nudging 2,000 a year,” he says. “We expect the figure to peak between 2015 and 2020 at around 2,800 a year. But that means that a large number of people dying of mesothelioma between now and then.”

Traditionally, the disease affected laggers and shipyard workers, but more and more the victims are those in the building and maintenance trades such as carpenters, plumbers and electricians. The age of onset seems to be dropping and more women are developing the disease (85 per cent of patients are men) but the reason is not clear.

Case study: Debbie Brewer thinks she may have contracted mesothelioma from her father's clothesDebbie Brewer, 48, had mesothelioma diagnosed in November 2006. She believes that she contracted the disease from the asbestos dust that remained on her father's clothes when he returned from work as a lagger in the dockyards in Plymouth in the mid-1960s. She has three children - aged 21, 18 and 11 - and works as a customer service representative for the mobile phone company Orange.

My father started work in the dockyards when I was 4 and left when I was 7. His job was to scrape the asbestos off the pipes. He left his overalls at work, but his clothes would still be covered in dust: I don't remember seeing it myself, but I have been told. He was a wonderful father and there were plenty of hugs for his children. In August 2006 he died of small-cell lung cancer as a result of asbestos. He was 68.

I had felt breathless since about 1994, and had been treated for asthma. When my father became ill I started to do research into diseases linked to asbestos. As I went through the list of symptoms of mesothelioma, I realised that a lot of them applied to me, including choking on my drink and having a pain in my back. It just fitted and I became frightened.

My doctor clearly thought that my X-ray would be clear, but I was called back to the surgery on the same day because they had found an abnormality. Within a couple of weeks I was in hospital having fluid removed from my lungs. The operation not only confirmed the diagnosis, it also changed my life because the pain and breathlessness have greatly diminished. Before, I could not walk upstairs. Now I am pretty fit and well. I am working full time and hope to walk the Race for Life for Cancer Research UK.

I was given six to nine months [to live] in November 2006 and have passed that. It was a nightmare seeing Dad go through chemotherapy and I decided that I could not put my three children though it. Instead, I have changed my diet to a vegan one, with no sugar or dairy, and I am trying complementary therapies such as mistletoe injections. Nothing can cure it, but there are things that can ease the pain and give you a little bit more life. I am fighting to stay here for as long as possible.

I had mesothelioma diagnosed after Dad died, and I am glad - he would have been devastated to know that I was ill because of his work. I would never, ever blame him. I blame the Government of the time, which let men work with asbestos despite knowing that it was dangerous.

British Lung Foundation www.blf-uk.org; 08458 505020 Mesothelioma UK www.mesothelioma.uk.com; 0800 1692409