A 79-YEAR-OLD man died of a disease caused by exposure to asbestos in his early twenties, an inquest heard.

Richard King spent between six and eight months working as a research assistant for the company British Oxygen in the 1960s.

His job involved using the chemical regularly in the tests he carried out on materials in an industrial laboratory.

The inquest heard Mr King’s own account of working with asbestos made prior to his death.

In the statement he said: “I always used asbestos. It came in a powdered form. There wasn’t any safety equipment. I wasn’t warned of the dangers of asbestos and I wasn’t trained on how to use it. Had I known the dangers I would have left earlier."

He said he often kept the same clothes he wore underneath his white laboratory coat on once he got home for the evening and never wore a mask while handling the materials. He said none were provided.

In 2010 he was diagnosed with lung asbestosis. Over the following years he developed several other conditions and his health gradually worsened, the coroner was told.

He began to deteriorate around six months before his death, becoming house bound and bed bound. He was reliant on oxygen and started receiving palliative care.

The inquest heard how he contracted bronchopneumonia which affected his lungs and airways, before he died comfortably at his home in Hove surrounded by his family and cared for by hospice staff on January 11.

The assistant coroner Catharine Palmer said the dangers of asbestos did not really emerge until the 1980s when safety measures began to be put in place.

She added that while a company might be named during an inquest, the inquiry does not rule on civil liability.

She recorded a conclusion of death caused by industrial disease.