USING hand-held vibrating tools has left Selby miner Brian Wood with a lifelong painful legacy.

He has been awarded an interim payment of £8,000 three years after being diagnosed with vibration white finger (VWF).

But the Wistow pitman says no amount of money can compensate for a crippling hand condition that could leave him on the unemployment scrap heap.

Mr Wood, who is among the first batch of VWF claimants at Selby to receive a Government pay-out, said the long wait was a scandal.

The 47-year-old father-of-two said he suffered several attacks a day when his fingers turned white, followed by pins and needles.

He told the Evening Press today: "The attacks can last up to half an hour and there's nothing you can do, apart from put on some woollen gloves. You can't even fasten up a button.

"Sometimes it wakes you up during the night."

Mr Wood, of Hempbridge Close, Selby, said most of the damage was done in the 1970s when he was working as a coalface worker and tunneller.

He said: "We used hand-held borers. They were horrendous things and used to shake your bones. No one ever told us we were harming ourselves, and we just got on with the job.

"I started having problems with my hands in 1989, but I didn't know what it was then. I thought it was a bit of arthritis.

"We deserve some compensation because the truth was hidden from us."

Mr Wood believes that he and some other victims have been "undercut" by the payments.

He said: "Wistow will shut in a few years time. Who is going to employ a 50-year-old man with VWF?"

Almost £1.8 million has been paid out so far to Selby miners suffering from VWF and lung diseases.

The Department of Trade and Industry admits there have been "bottlenecks" in the system.

A DTI spokesman said: "These schemes are the biggest in the world. Claims are coming in at the rate of a thousand a week, and it's a huge and complex task.

"We are doing everything we can to speed up the process."

Updated: 14:25 Thursday, December 13, 2001