Mesothelioma & Asbestos Cancer News: October, 2007
Call this one “Darth Cheney’s Revenge.”
Before 2001, most people had probably never heard of Halliburton. Dick Cheney was the name of the sitting Vice President, but beyond that, few people outside of Wyoming knew much about him or his history.
On 23 October, the Associated Press reported that W.R. Grace & Company, the corporation responsible for the poisoning of the town of Libby, Montana, has settled eight of the cases against it as part of its Chapter 11 “reorganization” plan.
The Pittsburgh Urban Redevelopment Authority may add a quarter million dollars to a $750,000 dollar grant from the state of Pennsylvania recently given to a local developer for the removal of asbestos from four Market Square buildings.
Owning rental property carries with it responsibility. Landlords who neglect those responsibilities, particularly when it comes to exposing tenants to asbestos, can wind up paying a high price.
Football fans who are old enough may remember No. 34 Andy Russell of the Pittsburgh Steelers, who played as an outside linebacker between 1966 and 1976. A member of Pittsburgh’s legendary “Steel Curtain” defensive line, Russell played in two consecutive Super Bowl Games (IX and X) and was named MVP in 1971.
Prior to 1963, “Coley’s Toxins”–an infusion of killed bacteria of the types that cause strep throat and urinary tract infections–was used quite successfully in treating a variety of carcinomas (see yesterday’s post, “The Forgotten Miracle Cure for Cancer”).
Some time ago, we brought you a story about asbestos problems at California’s Chico State University. As colleges and universities across the country upgrade their aging buildings, these problems are becoming more prevalent.
You have probably heard of Dr. Joseph Lister, who in the 1860s finally realized that most surgical patients who died did so because of bacterial infections resulting from unsanitary conditions. Because of Lister, surgery today is performed in a sterile environment, and death due to post-operative infections is exceedingly rare.
There was one odd exception to the sterility procedure, however.
According to the Government Accountability Office, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) deliberately neglected to warn millions of homeowners about the cancer risk associated with the W.R. Grace product, vermiculite insulation. The report, based on an investigation undertaken on behalf of the U.S. Congress, accuses the EPA of using “outdated criteria,” underestimating the danger faced by people in over 250 communities where vermiculite ore from the W.R. Grace Mines in Libby, Montana was processed.
On 4 October 2007 the U.S. took a major step forward toward becoming the 41st nation to ban all uses of asbestos. There are still however many countries, primarily in Asia, in which asbestos is still widely produced and utilized and where it continues to pose a major health hazard.
The late Maxine Johnson is not the first woman to have contracted an asbestos-related cancer from washing her husband’s work clothing and subsequently died.
Anyone who has spent time reading the content here at Asbestos.net understands that asbestos + tobacco = almost certain death from cancer. Smokers who are exposed to asbestos run a risk of contracting lung cancer that is 9000% greater than that of a non-smoker.
This fact is now at the heart of an asbestos suit filed in Texas.
In a show of bi-partisanship that has been virtually non-existent for a quarter-century, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed S.B. 742, the “Ban Asbestos in America Act”, on 4 October 2007.
It is a major victory for Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), who first introduced the bill six long years ago.
Earlier this week, we brought you a story about a Texas judge who issued a ruling that would bar physicians from testifying in silicosis cases on the grounds that such testimony was fraudulent.
By now, it is clear to many Americans that many of the big corporations that have such a strong influence in Washington D.C. care little if their actions harm the planet and injure or even kill people–as long company profits can be assured.
With all the coverage here about asbestos litigation, it’s easy to forget the fact that, while there are a huge number of asbestos lawsuits filed every year, very few ever come to trial.
Most of these suits are settled out-of-court in order to avoid lengthy and costly court proceedings.
Contrary to popular conception, not all lawyers and doctors are fabulously wealthy. Most earn a decent living; however, medical professionals are often deeply in debt because of education bills and, for those in private practice, the cost of medical equipment. In addition, doctors are as much victims as their patients when it comes to the oftentimes predatory, for-profit health insurance and pharmaceutical corporations.
Ambrose Poss was another unsung American hero whose labors helped to build the USA into the strong democracy it became in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Kanawha County (West Virginia) Circuit Court is one of the country’s hotspots when it comes to asbestos litigation. Small wonder: in the 22-year period between 1979 and 2001, over 700 people in West Virginia died of asbestos-related diseases, 172 of them in Kanawha County.
The plight of the people of Libby, Montana, was poignantly documented in a series of articles by reporters Andrew Schneider and Lise Oleson, which appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in late 1999 and 2000. This series was followed up by the publication of Deadly Deception: The Terrifying True Story of How Asbestos is Killing America by investigative journalist Michael Bowker.
According to Bernd Schaefer, when he purchased a former Air Force Station in Cambria, California, two years ago, he paid out $75,000 to an asbestos abatement company to deal with the problem of cleaning asbestos insulation out of the buildings still standing on the property.
“I feel an abatement company would do the right job. I paid $75,000 and they gave me a list of buildings that was cleared of asbestos so I had no worry,” he says.
It’s no secret that big-money corporate lobbyists have enormous influence on American government. It is also obvious to anyone who gets news from sources other than Fox, ABC, CBS or NBC that the American people are becoming increasingly disenchanted with this state of affairs.
As U.S. infrastructure continues to deteriorate in the wake of rampant privatization, one of the consequences is that the public is at increased risk of asbestos exposure.
Living in Detroit–once the center of the auto industry before some of the same corporations that poisoned American workers with asbestos started abandoning them for cheaper labor abroad–you’d think that Dr. Michael Harbut sees a lot of asbestos disease cases.
You’d be right.
According to the Environmental Working Group, a Washington D.C. non-profit organization, the yearly death rate due to asbestos is now around 10,000 per year, some 2,500 of which are caused by mesothelioma.
According to Dr. Michael Harbut, director of the National Center for Vermiculite and Asbestos Related Cancers, the actual number may actually be much higher, due to “significant underreporting.” This is because of misdiagnoses that frequently identify mesothelioma as something else, usually as a smoking-related disease. This is not uncommon, because many respiratory diseases have similar symptoms.
Many Americans who longingly cast their eyes north of the border, envying the low-cost, quality health care available to every Canadian, should realize that it wasn’t always that way–nor was it the generosity of the Canadian government in Toronto that brought it about.
As we reported previously, a bill passed by the Georgia State Legislature (HB 416) bars asbestos victims from suing corporations unless they already have symptoms of an asbestos disease.
Cook County, Illinois, is following suit. Judge William Maddux is now sidelining all asbestos cases in which the plaintiff has no actual symptoms. In addition, he is denying continuances more frequently, allowing counsel no more than a year in which to prepare their cases. (The difficulty of this becomes apparent when one understands that many–if not most–asbestos cases involve over fifty defendants.)
Some people never learn.
Every year, big corporations and small businesses alike try to save on asbestos removal costs by attempting to do the job themselves.
Another interesting thing that happens when government abdicates its responsibilities and hands them off to the private sector is a phenomenon in which a private corporation with friends in the government is awarded a “no-bid” contract, then turns around and subcontracts the job to a second company, which in turn hires a third subcontractor, and so on. Each corporation takes a cut of taxpayer money while performing no work, and the folks at the end of the chain wind up doing a sloppy job, which is no surprise, since by that point, workers are paid next to nothing.
Last week we presented news on two Fullerton, California, high schools where asbestos fibers have posed a health hazard for students and faculty.
A complaint filed with the Indiana Department of Labor now alleges that workers were exposed to asbestos while working on the renovation of Central High School in Muncie earlier this year.
Last summer, we reported that Chief U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy disallowed the use of certain evidence against former asbestos manufacturer W.R. Grace & Co. and dismissed several charges that were key to the federal government’s case against the company.
On 20 September, a panel of judges for the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals restored those elements, clearing the way for the prosecution of six W.R. Grace corporate executives (the seventh–a mining operations manager–died earlier this year of lung cancer).
In a lawsuit filed in Madison County, Michigan, on 21 September 2007, Herschel Belt names 46 different corporations as defendants whom he alleges are responsible for the asbestos to which he was exposed over a 31-year period.
An insulation worker, Belt was employed by the Heat and Frost Workers Union Local 37 of Evansville, Indiana, between 1965 and 1996. He was diagnosed with mesothelioma last summer.
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