Many people in South Africa’s mining communities fear being diagnosed with mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs or abdomen that is strongly associated with asbestos exposure. Tens of thousands of South African workers have been diagnosed with asbestos-related diseases, concentrated largely in the mining communities of South Africa’s Northern Cape province–where some studies place the incidence of asbestos-related disease as high as 50 percent of the population. South Africa was one of the world’s largest producers of asbestos for much of the century. Asbestos mining ended in South Africa in the mid-1980s. Children played around the mines, and some earned pocket money crushing asbestos-containing rock. Now, decades later, many of those children and young men who worked and played in and around the mines are getting sick or have already died.
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