Mesothelioma & Asbestos Cancer News: July, 2007
Americans are not the only people suffering from asbestos disease, nor is the U.S. the only nation in which the judicial system has been flooded with asbestos litigation. All over the world, particularly in the U.K., Canada, Australia, Western Europe and Japan, people have suffered from asbestos exposure and are turning to their respective legal systems in seeking compensation for lost wages, pain and suffering and loss of consortium.
Earlier this summer, Dan Hulsing of Hulsing Hotels Missouri, Inc., pleaded guilty in a federal court to violating the Clean Air Act.
The violation occurred during the removal of asbestos in the course of renovations being performed at the Clarion Hotel in Kansas City. Hulsing was the project superintendent. According to court documents, he admitted that he had no training in asbestos handling, nor had any qualified asbestos abatement contractors participating in the renovation project.
Many us born between 1920 and 1960 probably have fond memories of a particular genre of comic books dealing with a type of character known as the “Super Hero.”
A San Diego jury convicted San Diego Gas & Electric on four felony charges, three of which involved the improper removal of asbestos from one of its former properties, and one for making false statements.
Let’s face it, if you have been exposed to asbestos you have a ticking time bomb in your chest, regardless of whether you have contracted mesothelioma, asbestosis or any other asbestos-related disease.
Considering how the large corporate behemoths have increasingly put the demands of profit above the needs of their employees and sometimes even their customers, it should come as no surprise that they also care little about the average American’s health.
A plasterer, who worked in and around San Francisco, California for forty-two years, will receive $2.1 million in a recent settlement with Kaiser Gypsum Company and Hanson Permanente Cement, Inc.
It is no secret that when the World Trade Center towers collapsed six years ago, thousands of tons of asbestos fibers were released into the air and it has been having a devastating effect on the health of many New Yorkers in all five boroughs, not just Lower Manhattan.
Yet another corporation was recently found guilty of willful and malicious behavior in its failure to warn and protect employees from the dangers of asbestos dust.
The corporate defendant in this case was defense contractor Foster-Wheeler, a manufacturer of boilers, steam generators and other equipment.
Last week, Parkland Memorial Hospital announced that free x-ray screenings would be provided to anyone who lived near or worked at the W.R. Grace & Company vermiculite plant in West Dallas.
Can fever kill cancer?
Fever, a rise in body temperature to an abnormally, and sometimes dangerous, level is often an immune response to a bacterial infection as the body attempts to destroy the invader.
It was one of those issues with huge implications for Americans’ health that, thanks to a co-opted and ineffective mainstream media controlled by only five corporations (which have tentacles around everything from defense contracts to bottled water), “flew under the radar.”
To loosely paraphrase the Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon, “…would not that which we call asbestos by any other name be just as deadly?”
Several years ago, an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer appeared which brought to light the fact that children’s crayons contained asbestos fibers!
If you have a loved one or know someone who has contracted an asbestos-related disease, and/or live in an area where asbestos contamination is known to be a problem, you may have some real fears about it.
Such fears are understandable, but are often unfounded. There are many misconceptions about asbestos that cause people unnecessary concern.
If you are part of the “Greatest Generation,” or were alive and old enough to know what was going on in the world in March of 1943, you might have opened a magazine and seen an ad with a picture featuring comical caricatures of three very uncomical figures, sitting atop a pile of food, gold coins, textiles–and a human skull. A sign identifies the pile as “stolen goods,” and the three thieves–Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Hideki Tojo–are looking rather bewildered and not a little disappointed.
There are indications that asbestos litigation reached a high-water mark, and that the courts should be seeing fewer of these lawsuits as time goes on. Still, it is estimated that asbestos claims will ultimately reach $200 billion before it is over, which may not be for decades, since the latency period for asbestos diseases can be anywhere from 20 to 50 years.
One of the challenges of mesothelioma is diagnosing the condition in the first place. Historically, mesothelioma is notoriously difficult to detect; unlike most carcinoma in which tumors appear as lumps, mesothelioma spreads in a sheet-like fashion across the surface of the pleural lining. All too often, the disease is not discovered until it has reached an advanced stage.
LIFE promises to change that.
The First-Century Rabbi of Nazareth, Yeshua ben-Yossef, is quoted in the New Testament as having said, “Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword.” This seems to have been the case with two of the most significant figures in the history of asbestos.
Gone are the days when WalMart founder Sam Walton, whose own personal story read like a Horatio Alger novel, proudly declared that his stores would henceforth focus on goods made and manufactured in the U.S.
When it came to asbestos, corporate behavior was reprehensible. The harm done by asbestos was not confined to the pain and suffering incurred by the victims of asbestos-related disease.
Yesterday, we discussed the particular molecular bonds that create asbestos fibers, which allow them to have the tensile strength of stone and the flexibility of cloth.
With all the news about ongoing asbestos litigation and corporate malfeasance, it’s easy to forget that asbestos is not a man-made substance. It is a naturally-occurring mineral found in many parts of the world–and exposure to such asbestos can be just as deadly as exposure in the workplace.
Before panicking and running down to the local hardware store for a respirator, however, let us put the risk in perspective: as of 2005, statistics showed that the annual death rate in the U.S. from mesothelioma was 2,500. Deaths attributable to secondhand tobacco smoke run about 3,000 per year.
Although well over a year away, the 2008 presidential campaign is shaping up to be one of the most interesting in U.S. history (and can’t seem to come soon enough for most Americans).
If you have spent much time on this website and have read a fair amount of the content here, you know that asbestos is a generic term for several different silicate minerals–essentially rock–that have unique qualities that allow it to be woven into fabric and used in many applications in which using other types of solid, rigid stone (granite, etc.) would be impractical.
But have you ever wondered where it actually comes from and how it is formed?
Watching Home Box Office will probably do nothing to help cancer patients, but undergoing treatment with HyperBaric Oxygen therapy might.
It is an established fact that cancer spreads–and mesothelioma, a malignant and particularly aggressive form of cancer, spreads more than most. Because asbestos fibers are microscopic, they can travel via the bloodstream to any part of the body. Indeed, they have been found and known to have triggered cancer in parts of the body that are quite remote from the lungs proper, such as the intestinal tract and the brain.
One of the latest treatments for cancer is called Photodynamic Therapy (PDT), which uses directed laser light instead of chemical toxins or radiation to destroy tumor cells.
Six years ago, the American Academy of Acturaries Mass Torts Subcommittee published a report on the “litigation environment” regarding asbestos claims. At this time, the number of claims was on the rise.
The number of claims subsequently peaked in 2003. By 2005, Congressional Budget Office figures indicated that there were approximately 322,000 asbestos-related tort actions pending in courts across the nation; at least one company in virtually every industry was a defendant in an asbestos action according to a RAND Institute for Civil Justice report published the same year.
The tragic suffering of the people living in Libby, Montana is well documented. It was thoroughly covered by a series of articles published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer back in 1999 and 2000; more recently, investigative journalist Michael Bowker brought the plight of Libby’s residents to national attention in his book Fatal Deception (Touchstone, 2003).
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