Mesothelioma Awareness Day: What You Don’t Know Can Kill You

Sep 26, 2008

Today, September 26^th, is Mesothelioma Awareness Day, in many parts of the country.  It was with interest turned to outrage, then, that I read this morning the recent musings of a student at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse who was learning firsthand about the devastatingly painful effects of mesothelioma on the human body.  Mesothelioma is an aggressive and incurable cancer caused almost exclusively by exposure to asbestos.  The author was part of an anatomy lab in the process of studying the cadaver of a man who had died of pleural mesothelioma—the most common form of the disease, which attacks the lining of the lung.  Describing the diseased lung as something like a “chunk of concrete,” the student imagined how the deceased man must have been “laboring for breath from his one good lung as his heart hammered against the hostile, inflexible mass that no longer permitted it any room for expansion.”  That’s powerful stuff, I thought; the guy really got that right.

The anatomy student then went on, not so long after the seventh anniversary of 9/11,  to ponder over the health of lungs of the men and women who rushed in to save the lives of those injured in the attacks on the World Trade Center.  He recalled that CNN had reported at the time in 2001, that the firefighters and other heroes who worked tirelessly for days and weeks in the midst of soot and asbestos-laden debris often had no respiratory protection or inadequate protection.  The rescue workers experiencing what had been dubbed “World Trade Center cough” sought treatment at the I.J. Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.  Now the hospital is reporting that its five-year study of patients seen between July 2002 and April 2004 reveals that 59 percent are still experiencing respiratory symptoms.  What’s worse, twenty percent of nonsmokers examined by the hospital exhibited evidence of reduced lung capacity, an alarming fivefold increase above the national average of four percent.

It was at this point in his discourse, however, that the anatomy student took a flat-out wrong turn to the political right.  The author relied on none other than Steven Milloy (a big-business advocate paid by the tobacco and oil industries who still doesn’t believe in global warming) to suggest that the 9/11 rescue workers weren’t really experiencing chronic respiratory problems, they were just getting the flu or suffering from “hypochondria.” (Hmmm, sounds a bit like just a few weeks ago, when John McCain’s oh-so-astute then economic advisor, Texas republican Phil Gramm suggested that the problem with the nation’s economy was nothing more than a “mental recession” in the heads of a few “whiners.”)  Mr. Anatomy then went on to prognosticate that because diagnoses for certain respiratory conditions in the New York area have returned to pre-9/11 levels, we can all “take comfort in the likelihood that none of these heroes will ever experience the indignity of having a nosy student like myself pulling a rock-hard lung from their chest wall.”

To quote Ricky Gervais: “Are you havin’ a laugh?”

To study mesothelioma, you need to look at more than its gruesome result; you need to be aware of what causes the disease.  It is not, unfortunately, associated only “with long-term occupational exposure to asbestos.”  Instead, mesothelioma is caused by even short term exposures to asbestos lasting only weeks or even days, especially when the exposure is heavy.  (Like maybe when the sky is literally falling with asbestos-containing debris from two 110 story buildings built in the late 1960s and early 1970s when asbestos use was in its heydey!)  One of the horrors of the disease is just how little exposure it takes.  Steve McQueen died of mesothelioma at the age of  50, when his only exposure to asbestos had been as a merchant marine and race car driver.  Warren Zevon was a rock musician who died of the disease at the age of  56.  For that matter, a young woman only 28 years old just died of the disease in England after exposure as a schoolgirl.  See related story.

What’s more, it takes decades for the disease to develop and manifest its symptoms.  Of course, physicians are not seeing mesothelioma in the 9/11 rescue workers as a result of their exposure seven years ago.  But firefighters who stepped into the fray on 9/11 were exposed to an estimated 400 tons or more of asbestos.  Tragically, they may very well see an increased rate of the disease in decades to come. 

Mesothelioma is a horrific cancer that strikes 3,000 new victims each year in this country.  The only way to guard against the disease is to avoid exposure to ANY asbestos.  If it’s found in the home or the workplace or in schools, it should be removed or encapsulated only by a professional.  Exposure to asbestos is seriously dangerous business.  A little bit can not only hurt you, it can kill you.  It’s something to be aware of.

The story referenced above can be found at the University of Wisconsin’s Racquet.

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