A coroner has concluded the death of a 89-year-old man from Elmswell was contributed to by exposure to asbestos.

Percy Oliver, of School Road, who was known to his friends as ‘Vic’, died on October 3 last year at West Suffolk Hospital.

Mr Oliver has been admitted for treatment for a vocal cord palsy but became unwell soon after.

The inquest heard Mr Oliver has spent eight years in the merchant navy.

Nigel Parsley, area coroner, said: “I would suggest it was that Merchant Navy career where the expose was more likely to have occurred when he was working on a ship.

“Ships at the time were lagged with asbestos.”

He gave the cause of death as type two respiratory failure, aspirational pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and bilateral asbestos related pleural disease.

He concluded: “Vic died of natural causes, contributed to by a known industrial disease.”