'Hugging dad gave me cancer'

A woman who claims that hugging her father caused her to get cancer is to sue the Ministry of Defence for £75,000.

Debra Brewer, 47, has an asbestos-related form of lung cancer called mesothelioma. Her condition is terminal.

Her father, Phillip Northmore, worked as a lagger at Devonport Dockyard in Plymouth for five years in the 1960s when she was a child.

An inquest into his death in August 2006 found he had died from small cell lung cancer linked to asbestos.

Mrs Brewer said she remembered he would always arrive home from work covered in dust but as a young child she never imagined that as she played with her dad, the dust he was coated in could be life-threatening.

She said she first started having breathing difficulties in 1994 but was not diagnosed with mesothelioma until November last year.

John Messham, industrial disease specialist at Debra's solicitor Bond Pearce, said: "What makes Debra's case so poignant is that she has never to her knowledge been exposed to asbestos dust in any other way. Her only exposure was from her father."

Mrs Brewer said she felt "a lot of anger" at developing the disease.

"Not towards my dad because he didn't know. None of this is his fault," she said. "Anger that my future has been taken away, I have got three children and I expect to be there for them, and I don't know if I am going to be. That's very hard to deal with."

Mr Messham said he had spoken to other woman who had been exposed to asbestos in the same way and now had an asbestos-related disease.

"Most have never knowingly come into contact with asbestos other than through washing clothes," he said. "It is a terrible shock for the families involved and I am seeing more and more inquiries of this nature."

It is understood cases of mesothelioma, cancer of the lining of the lung, can lie dormant for 40 years before surfacing.

Mrs Brewer is to make the compensation claim from the MoD through her solicitor, for general damages for pain and suffering.

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