Those with a nervous disposition please look away now.
 
In the decades of the 1970s and 80s when the author was running businesses involved in the restoration of antique chairs and the use of hair lime plasters, advice was given against the use of imported horsehair, from Siberia in particular, due to concerns about grass-fed domestic animals harbouring the deadly anthrax bacillus.
 
Editions of SalvoNEWS in 1995 and 1997 contained snippets about anthrax (see the attached pics). Since then, thanks to the internet, Salvo has discovered that the only recorded occupational death by anthrax in the UK building trade seems to be when the disease was also known as splenic apoplexy or Siberian plague in Edwardian England. In 1908 Nelson Baker, a Huddersfield plasterer's labourer, was believed to have contracted the disease from mixing Indian goat's hair into a lime plaster or mortar. No deaths seem to have occurred specifically due to upholstery although a number have, in the past hundred years in the hair, hide and wool treatment trade.
 
The most recent UK occupational anthrax deaths have been of farmers, and two drum makers who co-incidentally contracted anthrax at different times preparing imported animal hides for drums.
 
For the risk-averse or need-to-know professionals please see the links to the HSE and government publications and note that samples may be sent for testing to the friendly people at Porton Down who are anthrax experts.