Missouri (MO) Asbestos And Mesothelioma General, Medical, & Legal Resources

Missouri (MO) Asbestos Resources & Information:

Among the companies alleged to have exposed Missouri workers to asbestos fibers are two power generation plants, two chemical manufacturers and a motor vehicle assembly plant. In addition, at least one university has had an asbestos problem connected to renovation.

In modern times, whenever there has been heat or fire danger, there was usually asbestos to be found. This substance was also useful when it came to preventing damage and injury from corrosive chemicals.

The term "this substance" is somewhat misleading. Asbestos is actually a generic term for several different minerals that are chemically unrelated, but have similar physical properties; namely, they are soft, flexible and fibrous, yet retain the fire resistance of rock. These mineral fibers can be woven into fabric, much like wool or cotton.

Unfortunately, these fibers can have devastating effects on the human respiratory system, causing fibrosis (an increase of fibrous tissue in the lungs), pleural plaques and thickening, and a variety of cancers--including lung cancer and mesothelioma, a rare cancer of the pleural lining.

Different Asbestos for Different Applications

While all asbestos is resistant to fire, electrical current and corrosive chemicals, some varieties do some jobs better than others. For example, chrysotile, used in about 95% of all asbestos products, was long considered an ideal all-around flame retardant. This is largely what is found in old buildings as flooring, ceiling texture, insulation and pipe-wrapping.

Crocidolite on the other hand was more useful for chemical protection. Also known as "blue" asbestos, it is part of the amphibole classification of asbestiform minerals. Amosite, which was primarily mined in South Africa, was another form of asbestos that was highly resistant to corrosive chemicals and heat; it also had a great deal of tensile strength. For that reason, amosite was frequently used in asbestos cement sheets and pipes, water casings and electrical insulation.

Industrial Uses

The Mack Truck assembly plant in Joplin is similar to auto manufacturing plants when it comes to asbestos issues. Gasket materials and brake linings are two of the components of any vehicle in which asbestos is used.

Power plant workers have some of the highest asbestos exposure rates according to a report carried out in Puerto Rico in 2003 and presented at an occupational safety conference in 2007. Some 13% of all chest x-rays taken of such employees displayed some kind of abnormality.

Another source of asbestos exposure was W.R. Grace & Co.'s Zonolite plant in St. Louis, which processed nearly 105,000 tons of asbestos-contaminated vermiculite ore shipped from the mines in Libby, Montana. During the processing of the ore to produce attic insulation and other vermiculite products, asbestos was released into the air and exposed not only people who worked at the plant, but those who worked, went to school, or lived near it.

Construction and Renovation

Recently, the owner of a major hotel chain was fined for violations related to the renovation of one of its sites in Kansas City. The owner of the building had failed to hired licensed asbestos abatement contractors and acknowledged using untrained employees to do the work. As a result, the owner of this chain was assessed fines totaling $300,000.

Natural Asbestos Deposits

Missouri's Ozark Mountains have two naturally-occurring deposits of amphibole asbestos, one of which is located in an area southwest of Poplar Bluff. The other one is found near the small town of Advance; there is also a serpentine (chrysotile) deposit in the area, in which an asbestos mining operation once existed.

Mortality Facts and Figures

In the 20-year period prior to 2000, 624 Missourians died from asbestos poisoning. Of these, 388 deaths were due to mesothelioma, while the remainder was from complications from asbestosis. The latter disease is actually far more common; however, it is not invariably fatal--whereas mesothelioma patients rarely survive more than 18 months after they are initially diagnosed. Asbestosis if far more treatable if caught early on; mesothelioma on the other hand is an aggressive malignancy with few treatment options.

Overall, most of these asbestos-related deaths were concentrated in urban areas, primarily St. Louis, which accounted for roughly 25%.

Missouri (MO) Asbestos & Mesothelioma Treatment Centers

Today, between 25 and 30% of all Americans will get some form of cancer during their lifetimes. There are many reasons for this, including the modern lifestyle and the poisons that have been put into the environment – of which asbestos is a prime example.

The number of clinics and hospitals that specialize in oncology have increased in response to the growing number of patients. Below is a list of the cancer treatment centers located in Missouri (MO) that we feature on Asbestos.net:

Clinical Trials Serving Missouri (MO):

A clinical trial is when new medications and treatments are tested on human subjects. Participation in such studies can entail some risks, but for some who are facing an invariably fatal disease, they also represent an opportunity – not only for personal relief, but to serve the greater good in the advancement of medical knowledge.

Below is a list of clinical trials with locations in Missouri (MO):

Missouri (MO) Legal Resources: Asbestos, Asbestos Cancer & Mesothelioma

A search through the Missouri Federal District Court Cases for asbestos-related personal injury product liability lawsuits turns up only one recent lawsuit, Schauf et al v. 3M Company et al., filed in December, 2006. Although only one case was listed, asbestos and mesothelioma cases are a concern in the state. Missouri is ranked 17 in the U.S. for mesothelioma cases. With a mesothelioma mortality rate of 11.35 per million, Missouri has a crude mortality rank of 31 in the country.

In 2007, a new Missouri case saw a defendant denying it used asbestos. The judge in the case reprimanded Rancho Cordova's Aerojet for falsely denying it had ever used asbestos in the rockets and missiles it has produced since the early 1950s. Judge Robert Dierker of the Missouri Circuit Court in St. Louis barred the company from presenting its key defense in a lawsuit over the death of a 42-year-old woman who died of an asbestos-related-cancer. The jury awarded $5.1 million to the woman's family. In court papers, Aerojet claimed to have not used asbestos in manufacture, a claim that deeply offended the family of the victim. Attorneys for Aerojet denied they had deceived the court. An attorney with Aerojet's parent corporation, GenCorp, claimed the company had difficulty locating documentation and former workers to verify the use of asbestos, despite Aerojet having 32 tons of the carcinogenic material stockpiled at the plant in a 1988 inventory filed with Sacramento County.

The case is being credited with shedding light on the plight of aerospace workers, many of whom were exposed to asbestos on the job. The case also highlights a "third generation" of mesothelioma sufferers. The first generation was the miners who extracted toxic fibers. The second was the people who worked with asbestos products. The third generation is made up of young people who were exposed to asbestos indirectly, often when parents who worked with asbestos arrived home with asbestos fibers on their clothing.

In another key case, Bennett v. Owens-Corning Fibreglas Corp., the Missouri Supreme Court upheld significant compensatory damages for the widow of a worker who died after contracting an asbestos-related disease. The court, however, ordered a new trial to determine punitive damages.

Another Missouri asbestos case of note saw hotel operator Dan Hulsing charged with violating the Clean Air Act while working as a superintendent of a Clarion Hotel. The charges stem from allegations, to which Hulsing pled guilty, that Hulsing Hotel Missouri Inc. illegally removed asbestos without supervision from the hotel during renovation work. The company was fined $200,000 in federal court after it was discovered that hotel guests may have been exposed to asbestos. Under The Clean Air Act, property owners must correctly remove asbestos, abiding by all regulations for such removal, before construction work begins.

Missouri has seen other complaints and cases involving illegal removal asbestos that exposed the public to risk. Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, a national public interest law firm, together with Families for Asbestos Compliance, Testing and Safety (FACTS), a local environmental group, filed a lawsuit in May, 2005, against the City of St. Louis and Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. The lawsuit alleged that the city and its airport authority violated two federal environmental statutes and endangered the public health by demolishing more than 300 asbestos-laden buildings using the illegal and experimental "wet method" of asbestos removal. The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri in St. Louis on behalf of FACTS, a grassroots group comprised mainly of Bridgeton, Missouri, residents who live near the demolished buildings and who are concerned about the public health hazards of the asbestos fibers released by the demolitions.

Those interested in filing lawsuits should know that the statute of limitations for personal injury law in Missouri is five years with a discovery rule that states that this amount of time begins when the problem (in this case the mesothelioma) either was discovered or should have been discovered. There is no specific statute about asbestos. It should be noted that wrongful death cases are limited to a three-year statute of limitations with an accrual rule.