Mesothelioma Deaths On The Rise As Workers Age

By Louis Hanks on February 27, 2011, 5:06 pm

A map issued by the American Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) indicates that there used to be a huge and thriving asbestos industry in the Arizonian state, focused mainly in and around the Tucson region. It shows that a certain American Asbestos Mines, a segment of the Arizona Asbestos Inc., used to regulate quite a few number of like mines in the 1950s and 60s. Nancy Lopez worked as a judicial administrative assistant for Division 7 in the Jackson County Courthouse for some 30 years before her diagnosis of asbestos-related cancer in 2009. Her original lawsuit, filed March 18, 2010, in Jackson County Circuit Court in Kansas, alleged that dust laden with asbestos fibers had been spread throughout the building from accumulation in and around the heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems (HVAC) since at least 1983.

Asbestos

Like Temkin, many victims of asbestos exposure only become sick years after inhaling asbestos fibers, which explains the high percentage of mesothelioma victims who are of retirement age. But because, even today, asbestos is still widely present, mesothelioma can, and does, strike younger generations as well. That’s become a particular concern for the doctors and mesothelioma lawyers who have seen the catastrophic consequences of the disease all too well—and all too often. “The aggressive cancer-scientifically linked to asbestos exposure, specifically the inhalation of airborne asbestos fibers-can take years to develop, but once diagnosed, a patient’s prognosis is typically grim. There is no cure, and so far, victims have had far more success in the courtroom,” reports Mesothelioma attorneys Cooney and Conway.

 

Chemicals

The July 2010 publication of Annals of Internal Medicine included report of a study lead by Dr. Saul Weiner, physician at University of Illinois Medical Center in Chicago. The study investigated errors in diagnoses and treatment choices as an outcome of providers missing contextual information in patient histories. Contextual information includes data such as work and home environments, and is a source for recognizing conditions caused by contact, exposure or engagement with a biological or chemical factor.