Nearly 200,000 people exposed to asbestos in the 1960s and 1970s will die within a decade from related forms of cancer, scientists said.

An epidemic of mesothelioma, a cancer directly related to inhaling traces of the material, will peak in less than ten years, particularly affecting those now in their sixties who worked in the construction industry and their families.

The aggressive cancer affects the lungs and the membrane that lines the chest and abdomen which surrounds the lungs and bowel. It can take forty years to develop but once diagnosed, patients are given between nine and twelve months to live as there is no cure.

Julian Peto, the Cancer Research UK chairman of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, estimated that 90,000 people would die from the disease and said that 30,000 had already done so.

A spokeswoman for the British Lung Foundation said that at least another 90,000 more would die from asbestos-related lung cancer.

Carpenters, shipyard workers, metal workers and electricians born between 1945 and 1950 were particularly at risk, Professor Peto said.

“One in ten carpenters in Britain of that generation could be affected. Mesothelioma has already killed twice as many as cervical cancer,” he said.

According to the British Lung Foundation, more than 2,000 people have mesothelioma diagnosed every year in Britian and someone dies every five hours.

Professor Peto said that there was evidence that women and children who lived with men exposed to asbestos in the 1960s could contract the disease. “It is not a trivial risk — about one in a thousand people seem to get mesothelioma with the absence of any direct exposure.”

He said the dangers of exposure to asbestos had been known since the 1930s: “Historically it is incomprehensible that this has happened.”

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