Author: Nancy Meredith

British Salesman Beat the Odds, Enjoyed Life After Mesothelioma Diagnosis

• Nancy Meredith
• Uncategorized

When Jon Matthews received word in April 2006 that he had mesothelioma and only months to live, the retired salesman decided to bet that he could outlive his doctor’s prediction.

Refusing to accept a quick death sentence, Matthews, who lived in Buckinghamshire, England, placed a £100 wager with odds of 50-to-1 that he would live until 2007.  He won £5000—the equivalent of about $7,500 U.S. dollars.

Defying the odds, Matthews placed another bet of the same amount and odds that he would survive until June 1, 2009. He pocketed another £5000.

Bookmaker Graham Sharp, who took what he called the unique bet, told The Daily Mail newspaper that the bets had given Mr. Matthews an incentive to fight the disease, which is closely linked to asbestos exposure. Sharp said he was delighted to pay out the winning bet twice.

Sharp described Mr. Matthews as a positive man who had given much of his winnings to charity, but also spent some of it enjoying himself and betting on horses and dogs.

Matthews placed a third bet of £100 with 100-to-1 odds that he live until June 1, 2010. He would have collected £10,000 if he’d lived another few weeks. But he passed away on May 4 at the age of 60.

Still, he focused on enjoying life after receiving the diagnosis and lived far longer than expected.

Sharp said he was very sad when he heard that Mr. Matthews had died and was delighted that the wagers had given him so much enjoyment.

“He proved that what is often dispiriting news from a doctor doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t make the most of the time you have left,” Sharp said.

Educating Workers On Mesothelioma Has Come a Long Way

• Nancy Meredith
• Uncategorized

By Nancy Meredith

Asbestos is a known carcinogen, a substance that causes cancer, and when airborne asbestos fibers are inhaled into the lungs the person is susceptible to contracting asbestos-related diseases such as mesothelioma, asbestosis and lung cancer. Asbestos was added to a variety of products including insulation, automotive brakes, fireproofing, pipe covering, cements, gaskets, floor tiles and joint compounds, endangering the health of those workers that came into contact with the asbestos fibers.

With a latency period of up to 50 years, many people diagnosed with mesothelioma do not make the connection to exposure of asbestos on the job many years ago. Unfortunately, many of them were not made aware of the dangers of asbestos while they were working with the products even though the health hazards were known as early as the 1920s.

Even after the companies learned about the dangers of asbestos and risk of malignant mesothelioma some still did not issue any warnings to their employees until the 1970s. The companies did not offer protective gear, clothing or guidelines for handling the products containing the mineral. In fact, the worker’s families were also put at risk for developing  mesothelioma simply from coming into contact with the stray asbestos fibers and particles that built-up on the worker’s clothing, shoes, skin and hair.

In 1986 the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) began requiring “Material Safety Data Sheets” for hazardous materials. As opposed to hiding the hazards of working with chemicals, companies are now required by law to disclose information about all chemicals in products having scientific evidence that they pose a health risk regardless of concentrations present in the product.

The Hazard Communication Standard states that “all employers with hazardous chemicals in their workplaces must have labels and MSDSs (Material Data Safety Sheets) for their exposed workers, and train them to handle the chemicals appropriately.” The mandate further states that employees have the right to know the hazards of materials they work with, as well as the appropriate steps they can take to protect themselves.

Information on an MSDS for an asbestos-containing product may include:

• Potential health effect
• Evidence for carcinogenicity
• First aid measures
• Firefighting measures
• Accidental release measures
• Handling and storage
• Exposure controls
• Disposal considerations

Avoiding exposure to asbestos is the first step in preventing the disease. However, being informed on which products potentially contain asbestos, how to handle asbestos products, and what situations to avoid when working with asbestos are other ways in which mesothelioma may be prevented. MSDSs are designed to provide that information.

There is no known cure for mesothelioma once diagnosed, however, educating the workers and the public and removing risk factors can help prevent contracting the disease in the first place.

Researchers Observe Epidemic of Mesothelioma in Hong Kong

• Nancy Meredith
• International News, Research

Researchers report an increasing incidence of mesothelioma from 1976 to 2000 in Hong Kong, particularly among older men and women ages 70 or older. Mesothelioma is a cancer of the lining of the lung or abdomen closely associated with asbestos exposure.

The increasing incidence in Hong Kong has culminated in an epidemic of mesothelioma since 2000 that corresponds to peak use of asbestos in the early 1960s, the researchers say in a recent article published in Environmental Health Perspectives. The average length of time from exposure to appearance of symptoms they observed was 42 years.

The researchers from the Australian National University in Canberra and the Chinese University of Hong Kong predict the number of cases of mesothelioma in Hong Kong will peak around 2014 and then slowly decline but not return to background levels. While the country has banned the use of blue and brown asbestos, Hong Kong industries continue to import and use chrysotile asbestos so the researchers say they expect new cases of mesothelioma in the future.

The trend in Hong Kong is similar to trends of asbestos-related disease in recent decades in Western European countries such as Britain, France, Germany and Italy as well as Australia and Norway.

Consumption of asbestos in Hong Kong started to increase in the 1950s in response to booming economic development in construction and shipyard industries. The country also began building massive public housing projects to accommodate the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees from mainland China. The largest amounts of asbestos were used in 1960 to 1963, according to trade statistics.

Workplace exposure to asbestos is considered the leading risk factor associated with malignant mesothelioma. But second hand exposure also poses a risk.

The country has thousands of older buildings containing asbestos shingles and other asbestos-containing building materials that don’t meet modern fire safety codes and are candidates for urban renewal. The demolition of those buildings will unleash asbestos fibers into the environment and potentially increase the risk of mesothelioma in the community, the researchers said.

The researchers said the study provided support for an immediate worldwide ban on asbestos.

New York 9/11 Firefighters Have Abnormal Lung Function Years Later

• Nancy Meredith
• Asbestos Exposure, Featured News, Research

By Wade Rawlins

New York Firefighters and rescue workers who inhaled the noxious cloud of dust, chemicals and asbestos debris at Ground Zero after the 9/11 terrorist attacks still have significantly abnormal lung function years later, a new medical study says.

In a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine, researchers with the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the New York University School of Medicine and the New York Fire Department said they had observed little or no recovery of lung function among firefighters in the nearly decade since they responded to the attacks on the World Trade Center.

The medical researchers compared before and after 9/11 lung function tests of more than 12,700 active and retired New York Fire Department firefighters and rescue personnel — more than 90 percent of those who responded. Their aim is to understand the longer term health effects of the massive exposure to dust and debris at the World Trade Center site based on repeated follow-up lung testing.

The massive exposure to dust at the World Trade Center on 9/11 and repeated exposure to lesser amounts over the subsequent recovery operations led to significant declines in respiratory function in the first year after 9/11 among both firefighters and EMS workers with no history of smoking, the researchers say.

Firefighters had the heaviest exposure to dust and experienced the largest decline in lung function in the first year after 9/11, researchers said. It was more than 12 times the average rate of loss of lung function adjusted for age. Surprisingly, the FDNY firefighters recovered little or none of lung function as shown by follow up tests in a six year period September 2008, the researchers said.

Of those tested, about 13 percent of firefighters and 22 percent of EMS workers who never smoked still had abnormal lung function seven years after 9/11, the study said. Before 9/11, few firefighters had abnormal lung function tests.

Typically, firefighters show no long lasting respiratory effects of smoke inhalation, the researchers said. In the absence of overwhelming exposure, smoke inhalation during firefighting usually causes mild and reversible respiratory impairment.

The researchers said they could not analyze the effect of the use of masks and respirators on lung function, because the use of such safety equipment was minimal during the first weeks after 9/11

Declines in respiratory function also occurred and persisted among non-FDNY rescue workers and volunteers at Ground Zero. other volunteers and workers. But health records were not available among this group to compare lung function before 9/11 to afterward.

Some dust from the World Trade Center collapse contained asbestos and other contaminants, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But the agency said at the time that the majority of air and dust sample monitored at the site did not indicate levels of public concern. Inhaling airborne asbestos is closely associated with respiratory disease including lung cancer and mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lung. Mesothelioma has a long latency period and typically takes 20 to 40 years after exposure for symptoms to appear.

Increased Asbestos Use in Mexico Leading to More Mesothelioma Deaths

• Nancy Meredith
• Asbestos Exposure, International News, Research

Industrial uses of asbestos in Mexico are increasing the number of mesothelioma-related diseases and deaths among Mexican workers, according to a scientific study in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine. The researchers say Mexico should ban the use of asbestos in all production processes as a public health policy to control the epidemic of asbestos-related diseases and safeguard the population and future generations.

Malignant mesothelioma is an incurable cancer of the lining of the lungs or abdomen closely associated with breathing asbestos. The World Health Organization has urged countries to ban the use of asbestos, saying there is no safe level of asbestos exposure.

In their study, occupational health researchers from the Mexican Institute of Social Security and several Mexican cancer hospitals sought to identify the proportion of cases of malignant pleural mesothelioma in Mexico that were attributable to workplace exposure. Despite numerous studies around the world that have underscored the adverse effects of asbestos on workers’ health, the researchers said there was a general lack of recognition of the hazard of asbestos exposure in Mexico.

Because mesothelioma is not recognized as a work-related disease in Mexico, the country’s national health system and Mexican Institute of Social Security, which insures 30 percent of the country’s economically active population, absorb millions of dollars in costs to care for patients with mesothelioma rather than the industries that caused their disease.

In Mexico, chrysotile asbestos —also known as white asbestos—imported from Canada is the most commonly used asbestos fiber and represents the largest threat to workers, the study says. The shipment of asbestos to Mexico is part of an ongoing migration of dangerous industries to less industrialized countries such as Mexico that possess a weak framework for worker protection, the researchers noted. From 1991-2000, Mexico imported about 8 percent of Canada’s total international exports of asbestos, representing $114 million in exports.

Researchers interviewed 472 workers who lived in the Valley of Mexico, an area of central Mexico that encompasses the Mexico City metropolitan area, to assess their potential exposure to asbestos from their jobs as well as from environmental factors such as living near an asbestos factory or having parents who worked around asbestos. More than 100 of the workers had been diagnosed with mesothelioma.

The researchers attributed 82 percent of the cases of mesothelioma in the lining of the lung to workplace exposure to asbestos. They said the pattern of asbestos exposure and disease observed in more industrialized nations in the 1970s is now repeating itselt in Mexico.

“Our results show a clear relationship between industrial use of all types of asbestos and malignant pleural mesothelioma, and in Mexico the major type of asbestos is chrysotile imported from Canada,” the researchers said.

They said deaths from mesothelioma appeared to be underreported in Mexico’s official death records, suggesting the scope of the problem was even greater. Of more than 100 patients diagnosed with mesothelioma, only about a third of patients who had died had mesothelioma listed as a cause of death.

In 2006, the World Health Organization said that all types of asbestos cause mesothelioma, lung cancer and asbestosis and there is no safe level of exposure to asbestos. Even if use of asbestos is eliminated soon, the World Health Organization has estimated there will be 5 to 10 million additional deaths from asbestos. The World Health Organization called for a ban.

But Mexico has not banned asbestos. To the contrary, Mexico’s government supported an effort by asbestos-exporting countries, led by Canada, to block the United Nations from including chrysotile asbestos on a list of recognized toxic substances.

Based of their findings, the researchers called on Mexico to ban the use and commercialization of all forms of asbestos to protect future generations and to require asbestos manufacturers and importers to pay the medical expenses and pensions of diseased workers. The researchers said if asbestos is not banned at once in Mexico, the incidence of mesothelioma would continue to increase in the population for 50 years.