Today, September 26th, 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.

Popularity: 6% [?]

In a major victory for asbestos workers’ families, the Tennessee Supreme Court has ruled that a corporation has a duty to prevent its workers from going home at the end of their shifts in asbestos-contaminated work clothes when the company should know that the families of its employees could be exposed to the asbestos on the dirty clothing and that such exposure could cause cancer or other asbestos-related illness.

The Tennessee high court handed down its decision in a case filed by Amanda Satterfield, a beautiful young woman who died from mesothelioma on January 1, 2005 when she was just 25 years old. Mesothelioma is a highly lethal form of cancer that is almost exclusively caused by exposure to asbestos. Miss Satterfield was first exposed to asbestos in the late 1970s when she was just an infant. Because her birth was premature, she was required to spend the first three months of her life in the hospital in Knoxville, Tennessee. At the time, her father was employed at the Alcoa Aluminum plant in Alcoa, Tennessee, where he was exposed daily to significant amounts of asbestos. Mr. Satterfield visited his baby girl every day in the hospital immediately after work, still wearing his asbestos-contaminated work clothes. Thus, from the day of her birth, young Amanda was exposed to the asbestos fibers on her father’s work clothes.

The evidence in the case demonstrated that Alcoa knew that the air in its factories contained high levels of asbestos fibers and that its employees were being exposed to these fibers on a daily basis. The company also knew that even intermittent exposure to low levels of asbestos fibers resulted in an increased risk of disease. And by the 1960s, Alcoa had learned that persons living near facilities that made heavy use of asbestos were experiencing higher disease rates, as were the family members of its employees who were being exposed regularly and repeatedly to the asbestos fibers on the employees’ work clothes. In 1972, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”) promulgated regulations prohibiting employees from taking their asbestos-contaminated work clothes home to be laundered. Tests that Alcoa conducted at its Tennessee facilities revealed extremely high levels of asbestos fibers on the workers’ clothes.

Despite everything that Alcoa knew, the company ignored OSHA regulations and failed to educate its employees regarding the risk of asbestos or how to handle materials containing asbestos. Alcoa did not warn its workers that the materials they worked with contained asbestos or that asbestos exposure is dangerous. Nor did Alcoa warn its workers about the dangers of wearing home their asbestos-contaminated work clothes. Finally, Alcoa failed to give its workers protective coveralls, discouraged the use of its on-site bathhouse facilities and did not offer to launder its employees’ work clothes on site. Thus, Alcoa’s employees, including Mr. Satterfield, left the plant each day unaware of the dangers posed by the asbestos fibers on their contaminated work clothes—despite Alcoa’s awareness that its failure to prevent workers’ families from being exposed to the asbestos fibers on its employees’ clothes could cause the families to suffer asbestos-related disease.

Based on this evidence, the Tennessee Supreme Court reached the only logical and fair decision. In denying Alcoa’s motion to dismiss the Satterfields’ lawsuit, the court explained: “Under Tennessee law, Alcoa has a duty to prevent foreseeable injury from an unreasonable risk of harm that it had itself created.” Having decided that Alcoa had a duty to its workers, the case has now been sent back to the trial court for a trial of the plaintiff’s claims against the company.

For the full story, go to Satterfield v. Breeding Insualtion Co., — S.W.3d —-, 2008 WL 4135605 (Tenn. 2008).

Popularity: 3% [?]

Asbestos is a national scourge. It has killed tens of thousands of American citizens and has placed a crippling financial burden on communities struggling to clean up the mess. One of the things that doesn’t get talked about very often, though, is how asbestos can compound the damages and the health risk of a natural disaster. Fires, floods, tornados and earthquakes tear apart structures and can release any asbestos inside.

As fire exposes asbestos-containing materials in a building, the strong drafts can pick up asbestos fibers and shoot them into the air, where they can travel and remain suspended for days. During the Southern California fires last Fall, the presence of asbestos and other hazardous materials in the fire debris complicated the clean up significantly. See related story. Asbestos-containing materials require very careful handling and disposal to avoid dangerous exposures, and many residents and cleanup volunteers don’t have the knowledge or equipment to handle the problem safely. For example, a group of 200 seniors in Houston, Texas recently learned that asbestos was released into their apartments during a fire, and that they would have to pay approximately $3,400 to have their personal belongings decontaminated and returned to them.

The recent tornado in Atlanta, Georgia again raised concern about asbestos, commonly used in roofing materials, being released into the environment as roofs were ripped from buildings. See related story. Again, clean up of the tornado debris is complicated by the possibility that moving or handling the debris will release asbestos and cause dangerous exposures.

Residents and officials are still grappling with the problems posed by asbestos in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The storm destroyed so many homes that removing the asbestos before demolition created enormous expense and unbearable delays in completing the cleanup and recovery. In addition, the amount of asbestos-containing debris is simply overwhelming the available disposal sites. In light of the problems being faced in and around New Orleans, EPA officials are trying to find an alternative means of dealing with such disasters in the future. One such experiment involved burning asbestos containing homes in a special incinerator intended to prevent emissions and heat the asbestos at such high temperatures to purportedly render it harmless. See related story.

Dealing with asbestos contamination is difficult in the best of times, but in the midst of a natural disaster, the problems are magnified dramatically. We need to be creative and innovative in approaching this challenge. But it can be tempting the take shortcuts, especially in the midst of a crisis. And the fact that asbestos diseases take many years to develop only increases the temptation for public officials to favor a quick solution today even when it means increased risk of harm in the future.

It’s our future on the line. We need to stay informed—to ask questions and demand explanations that will help us find an innovative approach that can keep us safer from a short-sighted fix that puts us in more jeopardy.

Popularity: 79% [?]

Last fall, we reported that the Senate voted to pass a ban on manufacturing, importing or using asbestos products in the United States.  After the bill was passed by the Senate, it became clear that the proposed “ban” was not all many had hoped.  To garner support from some Republican senators and appease industry interests, asbestos products containing less than 1 percent asbestos were excluded from the ban.  After asbestos was discovered in several household products and children’s toys at the end of last year in levels that would not have been covered by the ban, the limits of the protection offered by the bill became even more stark.

But today, the House Subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous Materials is holding hearings on the Senate bill and its own draft legislation to address some of the problems in the Senate version.  The Subcommittee is expected to hear from representatives of the EPA, the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Public Health Service, as well as private consumer and research groups.

The asbestos ban must still be considered in the full House Energy and Commerce Committee and on the House floor.  Assuming passage, it then must be considered by a conference committee to address the differences between the House and Senate bills.  But Sen. Patty Murray may yet see the passage of the asbestos ban she has championed for six years.

Powerful industry lobbyists will continue to fight the legislation, but after many false starts and decades of continuing exposure to generation after generation of American workers, there is hope that this may be the year the United States finally says NO MORE to asbestos.

Popularity: 61% [?]

In previous discussion of the statute of limitations and the discovery rule, we noted that in Alabama it is very difficult and often impossible for victims of toxic exposures to recover for their injuries. See The Statute of Limitations and the Discovery Rule: Fairness for Whom? Alabama law recognized no discovery rule for people exposed to other toxic substances, giving victims only two years from the date of their last exposure to the toxin to file a lawsuit. The Alabama Supreme Court also decided that a discovery rule for asbestos victims passed by the legislature many years ago could be applied only to cases in which the last exposure to asbestos was after May 19, 1980.

Because most people were exposed to asbestos long before 1980, and toxic substances rarely work fast enough for people to be diagnosed with a disease in the first two years after their exposure, these rules effectively meant that people with mesothelioma, acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) and toxin-related diseases could never sue the companies that exposed them to asbestos, benzene or other toxic substances. Just a year ago, the Alabama Supreme Court upheld the “date of last exposure” rule, finding that it was too late for a man, newly diagnosed with leukemia, to sue the companies that exposed him to benzene six years earlier.

But on January 25, 2008, in a complete turnaround, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in Griffin v. Unocal Corp. that the statute of limitations does not begin to run until a disease has developed and can be diagnosed. This means that injured workers in Alabama, like most workers around the country, will have a chance to file a lawsuit after they get sick, no matter how long it has been since they were exposed to the toxic substances that eventually made them sick.

The ruling only applies to future cases, however. And even for people who get sick in the future, they may have to show that they were exposed to the toxic substance not more than two years before the decision–the length of Alabama’s statute of limitations. For asbestos cases, because of the legislative discovery rule passed in the early 1980s, the rule will continue to be that plaintiffs must show that they were last exposed to asbestos after May 19, 1980.

Popularity: 55% [?]

The City of Fort Worth, along with the Environmental Protection Agency, has demolished the Oak Hollow Apartments. The rundown apartments were an eyesore and raised crime concerns, so neighborhood residents were excited about having the buildings torn down. But the City of Fort Worth and the EPA had an experiment in mind for an office building within the Oak Hollow Apartments that had at least some local residents concerned.

The Federal Clean Air Act requires that, before demolition can begin on any building that contains asbestos (except one in “imminent danger of collapse”), the asbestos materials must be removed by accepted abatement methods, double-bagged and disposed of at an approved facility. This procedure, called NESHAP, is the safest way to get rid of old buildings without allowing the asbestos in them to be released and expose people in the area to the fibers. Inhaling even small amounts of asbestos fibers increases the risk of mesothelioma, a very aggressive and painful cancer that attacks the lining of the lungs, abdomen or heart.

Removing asbestos materials properly can be very expensive, though, and there are a lot of buildings to be demolished. The City of Fort Worth, with the help of the EPA, has been looking for a way to shortcut this effort and expense for some time. In 2004, the City proposed demolishing the Cowtown Inn using the “Wet Method”—they planned to spray the building with water so less dust would be released and simply knock the building down with the asbestos materials still in it. Fort Worth residents, along with mesothelioma attorneys from Baron & Budd, fought this dangerous experiment, and the City and the EPA agreed to test the method in an unoccupied area, not in the center of Fort Worth.

The EPA’s test of its Alternative Asbestos Containment Method, or AACM, was performed last year at an abandoned Arkansas Army base. The EPA claimed it was a great success, being less expensive that the accepted method. But scientists reviewing the experiment found that it released more asbestos and posed a public health risk. Some of the experts also felt the EPA was exaggerating the costs associated with the standard method of asbestos removal. Most importantly, they also expressed concern that the EPA’s report did not seem sufficiently concerned about the health hazard of its supposedly cheaper alternative.

Although review of the Arkansas test is still ongoing and concerns have been widely raised about the safety of the method, the City of Fort Worth and the EPA have decided to perform a second test of the method—an experimental use of the AACM to tear down a building in the center of a densely-populated Fort Worth neighborhood.

The EPA admits that this is an experiment, but the City and the EPA have tried to reassure people that they aren’t really at risk. But what will a successful experiment be? The EPA says that the goal is simply to have “no visible asbestos in the air.” But asbestos fibers are microscopic. They can’t be seen by the naked eye. The “visible asbestos” test has no correlation to public health and safety.

Baron & Budd attorney Ben DuBose, along with Washington-based not-for-profit Public Justice and Dallas-based attorney Scott Frost, challenged the use of this experimental method in an urban residential area and questioned the adequacy of the information provided to local residents. We know the risks because we work with people who are suffering from mesothelioma because they were exposed in asbestos decades ago. We fought this experimental demolition method because it puts people at risk for developing a deadly disease.

The City of Fort Worth and the EPA will likely report this experiment as a success. The problem is that, while it may save money and speed up the demolition of abandoned buildings today, it may also mean that, decades from now, some people who lived near the Oak Hollow Apartments, especially some of those who are children today, may develop mesothelioma because of asbestos released during the demolition. But those consequences are so far in the future, the City of Fort Worth and the EPA seem to be ignoring them, just as asbestos manufacturers ignored them in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.

We are concerned, and we speak out, not because of any financial interest. Unlike the City of Fort Worth and the other cities and towns around the country that are watching, we have no financial stake in this experiment. But we understand the risk because we work with victims of asbestos exposure every day.

Despite the media attention and the public concern, the City of Fort Worth and the EPA went ahead with the AACM demolition of the office building within the Oak Hollows complex yesterday.

We will follow the data analysis for this experiment and future attempts to use AACM locally and nationwide. And we encourage you to watch for such projects in your area. Speak out locally and write to the EPA if you are concerned, as we are.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Ariel Rios Building
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20460

Popularity: 73% [?]

Soon, the United States Senate will consider whether importing and using asbestos products should be banned in the United States. More than forty countries around the world have banned asbestos or are in the process of phasing it out, including the European Union countries in 1999. But although many industrialized nations turn away from asbestos, asbestos production globally remains high. Where is this asbestos being used? What population is now most at risk to the death and disease that come with the use of asbestos products?

Asia, it seems.

The International Ban Asbestos Secretariat (IBAS) has issued a report called Killing the Future: Asbestos Use in Asia. Only in the last few years has information become available on asbestos use in Asia, and the IBAS report lays out the available data on asbestos use, as well as the consequences of asbestos use, in several Asian countries.

As asbestos use declines or is banned in western nations, rapid economic growth and the absence of enforceable regulations to protect workers have caused asbestos use to skyrocket in the developing countries of Asia. The experience in Vietnam illustrates the tension between economic growth and public health that is driving the current situation in Asia: although the Vietnamese government has expressed a commitment to banning asbestos, asbestos use actually increased 32 percent between 2000 and 2004 and the transition to phase out asbestos has been difficult and delayed. According to the IBAS report, 90 percent of the countries with the sharpest increases in asbestos use are in Asia, and the majority of people now being exposed to asbestos live and work in Asia. Asian countries account for 70 percent of the world’s asbestos production and nearly 50 percent of the world’s consumption of asbestos products.

Although China is among the top five asbestos producers in the world, it is importing more and more asbestos, primarily from Russia, to meet domestic demands. Approximately 100,000 Chinese workers are being occupationally exposed to asbestos, and the majority of those workers do not have health insurance provided by their employer. Only 8.7 percent of facilities studied had any form of occupational health department or organization, and not one of twelve monitored worksites complied with Chinese safety standards concerning use of asbestos.

Asbestos use in India has risen 30 percent in recent years, putting it second only to China in Asia’s consumption of asbestos. The 49 asbestos-cement factories operating there produced 2.4 million tons of asbestos cement in 2005 alone worth $200 million U.S. Between 2003 and 2006, the production of asbestos cement has risen more than 15 percent each year. Studies have found up to 23 percent of workers in some facilities show signs of asbestosis, and records are not even kept of the number of people diagnosed with mesothelioma.

The asbestos industry understands and has exploited Asia’s economic pressures, placing its own finger on the scale that measures economic issues against public health through a concentrated campaign to downplay the risk of asbestos exposure. In part because of industry propaganda that asbestos use is safe if “controlled” or, incredibly, that exposure to some types of asbestos is safe altogether, Asian workers are not being protected from deadly exposures. The Chairman of India’s Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers’ Association has said that “asbestos cement used in India is safe from all heath hazards.” The propaganda campaign in Asia has been frighteningly successful, leading to pro-asbestos policies in government and high levels of asbestos exposure. And an observer from the AsiaMonitor Resource Center witnessed workers in a Vietnamese factory working without any protection, cutting open bags of asbestos with knives, and beating lumps from the dry asbestos with wooden hammers before putting it in grinding machines. The workers were covered in asbestos dust, and the factory had no ventilation to remove asbestos dust from the air; instead, fans blew the dust around and kept it in the air and in workers’ breathing zones.

Some Asian countries have banned asbestos or are trying to phase out its use. Japan has recently banned asbestos, but deaths from its history of asbestos use will continue far into the future. The public outcry that led to the ban followed disclosure of scores of asbestos-related deaths at the Kanzaki asbestos cement pipe plant. The first asbestos-related death at the plant was in 1979, and by March 2006 fully 10 percent of Kanzaki’s former employees who worked at the plant for more than one year had died of mesothelioma. There will likely be many more casualties to the use of asbestos in Asia.

Asia has also become the preferred site for dumping asbestos-contaminated ships. Called “ship-breaking,” breaking down and scrapping ships contaminated with asbestos, mercury, lead and PCBs is a complicated and expensive process if done correctly. But it can be done much more cheaply in Asia where unprotected workers tear down the ships in primitive conditions, pulling asbestos off with their bare hands and with their faces covered by nothing more than a scarf—worthless to filter out the microscopic asbestos fibers that fill the air.

Certainly, asbestos is not an isolated example of industry exporting to developing nations the products and substances that become illegal or difficult to distribute in their own countries. It’s the perfect way to avoid the legal liabilities they might face in their own countries while continuing to profit from asbestos—or pesticides or other chemicals. The workers of Asia, or Central America or Africa, will almost certainly never be able to hold these companies accountable for the harm they cause, unless the laws there change.

We are fortunate our legal system still allows us to hold those accountable who injure us or kill a member of our family. Hopefully, we will soon have the protection of a ban on the importation and use of asbestos products in the United States. Western laws however should not only protect workers in Europe and the United States, but also govern acceptable conduct by American and European companies wherever they operate.

Asbestos use in Asia is rising as Asian nations follow the same path western countries traveled before them. Rather than export our mistakes, we should share the benefits of our experience, the safer alternatives we have found, so that generations of Asian workers will not suffer the same fate as the thousands of American workers who die each year of asbestos-related diseases like mesothelioma.

Popularity: 80% [?]

People who have been hurt and need legal help are often at their most vulnerable. The legal system can seem confusing and mysterious. What’s more, people are often concerned about how much it will cost them to hire a lawyer. Worried that they will be charged hundreds of dollars an hour, some people put off talking to a lawyer, or even seeking legal help at all, if they have been wrongfully harmed.

But some lawyers, like the mesothelioma attorneys at Baron & Budd, don’t get paid for their legal services unless their clients receive compensation.   Instead, they receive a “contingency fee”—a percentage of the total recovery from settlements or a court judgment. Contingency fees are sometimes the only way many people who could not otherwise afford an attorney get the legal help they need and deserve.

Under a contingency fee contract, your attorneys will file your case for you and pay all the costs associated with litigating your case (like filing fees, expert witness fees, etc.). Only if you recover money, the attorneys receive payment for their services as a certain percentage of the amount recovered in the lawsuit. Your attorneys would also be reimbursed the expenses of the litigation that they paid on your behalf. Depending on state law, if you do not recover money through your lawsuit, your attorney may even agree not to be reimbursed for the money they spent on your case. In this way, a contingency fee agreement allows you to hire an attorney without any out-of-pocket cost to you.

The contingency fee has a long and respected history in this country as a way to level the playing field between injured people and mammoth corporations. Judge Michael Musmanno of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, who also served as a judge in the Nuremberg trials, wrote over 40 years ago about the importance of contingency fees in protecting the injured from the powerful and wealthy:

If it were not for contingent fees, indigent victims of tortious accidents would be subject to the unbridled, self-willed partisanship of their tortfeasors. The person who has, without fault on his part, been injured and who, because of his injury, is unable to work, and has a large family to support, and has no money to engage a lawyer, would be at the mercy of the person who disabled him because, being in a superior economic position, the injuring person could force on his victim, desperately in need of money to keep the candle of life burning in himself and his dependent ones, a wholly unconscionably meager sum in settlement, or even refuse to pay him anything at all. Any society, and especially a democratic one, worthy of respect in the spectrum of civilization, should never tolerate such a victimization of the weak by the mighty.

Richette v. Solomon, 187 A.2d 910, 919 (Pa. 1963).

Contingency fee agreements help keep the courthouse doors open to everyone who has been injured or wronged, regardless of their financial circumstances. The mesothelioma lawyers at Baron & Budd are proud to represent our clients under contingency fee contracts so that they need not fear that protecting their rights is beyond their means.

Popularity: 77% [?]

Senator Patty Murray is trying for the third time in six years to get Congress to ban the use and import of asbestos in the United States. According to the World Health Organization, more than 40 countries have banned or are in the process of phasing out the use of asbestos. The United States should be in that group.

Many Americans assume that asbestos is a problem of the past and would be shocked to learn that more than 3,000 different asbestos-containing products are still being imported and used in the United States today. These products continue to be used despite the fact that asbestos exposure has been known for decades to cause mesothelioma as well as lung cancer and various other diseases and despite the fact that asbestos kills an estimated 10,000 people a year in the U.S. alone.

In North America, the only generally-accepted causes of mesothelioma - a cancer that kills approximately 3,000 Americans each year- are asbestos as well as thoracic or abdominal radiotherapy . Mesothelioma usually takes decades to develop, and cannot be diagnosed until as long as 20 to 60 years after asbestos exposure. Because of this latency period between exposure and diagnosis, the incidence of mesothelioma has still not peaked, and it is believed that the number of cases of mesothelioma diagnosed each year will continue to rise until sometime between 2010 and 2020. Mesothelioma is now being diagnosed in younger people and more frequently in women: according to a recent report by the Asbestos Disease Awareness Association (ADAO), the median age at diagnosis of mesothelioma patients who contact the organization has dropped to 51, with women representing close to 50 percent of new cases. By contrast, in 1986 the median age of mesothelioma patients was nearly 70, and approximately 80 percent of mesothelioma patients were men.

Mesothelioma is not the only asbestos-related disease that has affected and killed American workers. Asbestos exposure also causes asbestosis, progressive scarring of the lungs that causes shortness of breath and, if severe, can suffocate its victims. Asbestos exposure has also been connected to a variety of cancers, including lung cancer, laryngeal cancer, stomach cancer and colon cancer. Again, these diseases will not manifest and cannot be discovered for many years—generally 20 years or more after the asbestos exposure. It is estimated that during the next decade, 100,000 Americans will die of asbestos-related diseases—averaging 30 a day.

It has been known for many decades that asbestos can cause dangerous diseases, including cancer. Scientists determined by 1930 that asbestos exposure caused asbestosis. By the 1930s and 1940s, there was evidence that asbestos exposure could also cause lung cancer, and by 1960, it was clear that asbestos exposure caused mesothelioma. In 1918, the asbestos industry knew than some insurance companies would refuse to insure asbestos workers because they “were at increased risk of dying.” None of this information is new, and still we import and use thousands of asbestos products every year in this country when safer alternatives are available.

In June, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held hearings on Senator Patty Murray’s proposed bill to ban asbestos use, import or distribution in the United States. Senator Murray’s office reported that the U.S. currently imports over $100 million a year in asbestos-containing products, including brake pads, cement pipe, and floor and roofing tiles. Senator Barbara Boxer, cosponsor of the bill, noted that world production of asbestos actually increased in 2005. The last U.S. asbestos mine closed just five years ago, and in 2005 the U.S. imported 2,530 metric tons of asbestos, along with 90,000 metric tons of products that contain it.

Senator Murray has announced that she is close to working out an agreement on the proposed asbestos ban that would completely phase out asbestos within two years (three years for the chlorine industry, where asbestos is used in chlorine processing) and provide $50 million in federal money to research causes and treatment for asbestos-related cancers such as mesothelioma. The bill would also require the federal government to embark on a public education campaign about asbestos risks. It is important that Senator Murray’s bill passes this year and that the United States stop importing asbestos that we know will kill more Americans in future decades. We have alternatives that will keep us safer, and it’s time to rely on them.

Popularity: 69% [?]

Asbestos exposure has been the greatest tragedy ever to hit American workers: it kills approximately 10,000 Americans every year. Some companies that once made asbestos-containing products sometimes claim that they were unaware of the risks of asbestos and did not know that their products would kill and injure people. They argue that, if they did not actually know about the dangers of their products, they should not be held responsible for the harm their asbestos products caused to generations of Americans. But according to the law in most states, manufacturers have a duty to the public to know the risk of their products and take measures to protect the public from those risks.

The law says that manufacturers are treated as experts on their products. They are assumed to know anything that the scientific community knows relevant to their products; they are expected to test their products, and they are required to make their products safe or to warn about the dangers so consumers can take steps to protect themselves. Manufacturers are in the best position to investigate potential dangers of their products and to make them safe. But if they were responsible only for the dangers they actually knew about, there would be no incentive for them to investigate and recognize hazards in their products. They would be better off knowing nothing, and the people injured by their products would pay the price. Companies cannot be allowed to profit from ignoring potential hazards of the products they sell to the public.

So what was known about the risk of asbestos and when was it known? In 1898, British factory inspectors recognized the asbestos exposure was a health risk for workers. More than 100 years ago, in 1906, a London physician found asbestos fibers in the lungs of a worker who died from pulmonary fibrosis—scarring in his lungs. And in 1912, scientists used animal studies to show that asbestos inhalation causes pulmonary fibrosis. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in 1918 the “unusually high death rate” among asbestos workers.

By the 1920s, asbestosis was receiving increased attention from scientists. A series of papers appeared in British Medical Journal in 1924 on asbestosis—the disease named for the mineral that causes it. In 1930, two scientists, Drs. Merewether and Price, published a historic report on the asbestos textile industry and found a “definite occupational risk among asbestos workers as a class.” Highlights from the Merewether and Lewis report were republished in two prominent medical journals, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and Lancet, including the astounding finding that “80% of asbestos workers employed for 20 years or more develop asbestosis.”

In the 1930s, scientists began to connect asbestos and cancer. Following the publication of several articles between 1933 and 1936 connecting asbestos exposure with cancer, German physicians identified lung cancer as an occupational disease of asbestos workers in 1938. And by 1945—more than 60 years ago—it was accepted by the medical and scientific communities “in all countries” that asbestos is a carcinogen. In 1955, an important study showed that asbestos exposure increases a worker’s risk of lung cancer ten times. The link between mesothelioma and asbestos was reported in 1960.

Finally, in 1964, Dr. Irving Selikoff presented a now famous study of insulators at a well-attended conference in New York City. This study broke through the scientific and medical community and brought the scientific information about the health hazards of asbestos straight into the popular press. By that date, however, there were already over 700 articles in the medical and scientific literature on the health effects of asbestos.

Despite what was known about the dangers of asbestos exposure, world-wide asbestos mining and production grew rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s until it reached a peak of 45,000,000 tons around 1980. Maybe even more shocking, world-wide asbestos mining and production in 2000 was more than 20,000,000 tons—higher than it was in 1960.

The truth is, many asbestos manufacturers knew a good deal about the risk of asbestos exposure but tried very hard to keep that information private. Some companies paid for scientific research but claimed ownership of it to prevent its publication, for example. Some companies “requested” that any information on the hazards be kept confidential and not published. Other companies decided to take what Johns-Manville called an “ostrich-like attitude which has been evidenced from time to time by some members of the Industry”—in other words, choosing to hide their heads in the sand and ignore the risks their products could cause. But none of these companies was innocent.

Asbestos workers and their families understandably were not looking for articles on asbestos in JAMA and Lancet, but the asbestos companies were, or certainly should have been. With more than 700 articles available in the medical and scientific literature before 1964, it would be bad policy indeed to reward companies for ignoring this evidence, to the extent they did or could. And the law will not reward companies for taking an “ostrich-like attitude.” Companies owe it to the public to look for information on their products, to know the dangers, and to make those products safe or warn consumers of the risk. The question we should ask is not simply what did the manufacturers actually know, but rather what did scientists and experts know? What should the manufacturers have known to satisfy their duty to the public?

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