DIED: Roger ChalkAN inquest is expected to be held into the death of Roger Chalk, the former assistant director of Age Concern Wiltshire, who died in June at the age of 56 from cancer of the bladder.

Mr Chalk, who worked in Devizes, spent his early career in the textile industry, working at cloth mills in Trowbridge and then Stroud, Gloucestershire.

Two of his colleagues at Samuel Salter's cloth mills in Trowbridge, where Mr Chalk worked after leaving school in 1964, also died of bladder cancer.

At an inquest in February 2001, Wiltshire coroner David Masters brought in open verdicts on the death of Edith Lewis and Frederick Barrett as he said that there was insufficient evidence to bring in another verdict.

Mr Chalk's widow, Maggi, is deeply concerned that other former workers at cloth mills could be at risk of bladder cancer without knowing it.

She said: "Roger never had a day's illness in his life. If it had been found earlier, he might have survived. That is why I am anxious that this is given publicity, so that other families can be spared the grief."

Mr Chalk's aunt, Florence Noyes, died in 1979 of bladder cancer. She, too, worked at Salter's cloth mill. Roy Berrett, former manager at Salter's Mill, urges caution in making a connection between bladder cancer and chemicals used in the dyeing process. He said: "Only one of the three who have died worked in the dyehouse, and the chemical suspected of causing bladder cancer was withdrawn from use around 1976."