Asbestos World Watch
In SHEFFIELD, ENGLAND, UK, a solicitor raised a call for a national asbestos research center. He was spurred by a report that showed 1 in 17 carpenters from the UK who were born in the 1940s would perish from an asbestos-caused form of lung cancer.
These carpenters were coming of age during the 1960s and 1970s when the use of asbestolux in fire doors was reaching a high level. Workers were exposed to the deadly asbestos fibers in the doors as they did they work, but while they might have felt fine at the time, they had no idea that decades in the future, the asbestos would show its effects on their lungs in the form of lung cancer or mesothelioma. Both of these take years to develop, but once they do, the lack of effective treatment yields a poor prognosis, and the victim is often only given months to live.
Adrian Budgen, the solicitor from Irwin Mitchell, hoped that raising awareness to the problem and putting further study into lung cancer and mesothelioma might give hope to the thousands who are diagnosed and die from asbestos-related diseases annually.
In MERSEYSIDE, ENGLAND, UK, an anticipated law to be passed by the Edinburgh Parliament would give those with “pleural plaques” — also known as asbestosis — compensation. This condition has been shown as a precursor to more serious asbestos-related diseases such as lung cancers and mesothelioma. The compensation would only go to those who were diagnosed with pleural plaques prior to 2007, and future cases would not be covered.
The Holyrood law would offer those with the condition a “no fault” payout in an amount not to exceed “£5,000.” This paltry amount would do little to comfort the victims of pleural plaques, many of whom later develop more deadly cancers of the lungs and its lining. The number of annual deaths in the UK from asbestos-related diseases was projected to reach 2,450 by 2015, a drastic rise from the 153 deaths in 1963.
It can take decades after asbestos exposure before a cancer develops, but mesothelioma and lung cancers have few viable treatment options, and a diagnosis is often a death sentence.
The English Parliament remained stubborn, and they refused to pass a law along the lines of Scotland’s Holyrood law. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) insisted “no causal link has been established between pleural plaques and the development of asbestos-related diseases”.
Bookmark This Article:
| del.icio.us: 
|
Digg: |
Technorati:
|
Newsvine: 
|
Reddit: 
|
Furl: 
|
| Stumble Upon: 
|
Yahoo!: |
Google:
|
News By RSS