Category: Featured News
Insulators Face Workplace Exposure to Asbestos, Declare War On Mesothelioma
Labor leaders for the International Association of Heat & Frost Insulators have declared war on mesothelioma, an asbestos-related cancer that affects many workers employed in the insulation industry. Insulators are at much greater risk of developing mesothelioma because of the long-time use of asbestos in many insulation products.
Nearly one out of every 10 insulators dies of mesothelioma, according to Dr. Andrew Todd, a professor of preventive medicine at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York. Dr. Todd said the incidence of mesothelioma among insulation workers is about 1,000-fold higher than among the public at-large, based on 2008 statistics. Dr. Todd said the diagnosis of mesothelioma among insulators has remained very high for more than two decades, so the prevalence of asbestos disease is not decreasing.
At the International Insulators’ national convention in Las Vegas this month, convention delegates voted for every insulator in the U.S. and Canada to contribute four cents of each hourly wage they receive to fund research to find a cure for mesothelioma and to support a new Insulators’ Tissue Bank. The tissue bank will be a repository for asbestos-related tumor tissue donated by insulators affected by mesothelioma and asbestos-related disease. The Insulators’ Tissue Bank will be located and administered by the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine.
James A. Grogan, general president of the union, has advocated for increased attention on mesothelioma. According to a union press release, Grogan told delegates that the union now had a well-funded plan of attack against mesothelioma that emphasizes prevention and early detection and better medical care for insulators and their families. Grogan called upon insulators to donate tissue to the bank if they are treated for mesothelioma.
Asbestos was widely used as an insulation material for much of the 20th century and much of it remains in older houses and buildings. When the old insulation is torn out and replaced, workers may be exposed to asbestos dust. Therefore, insulators have an increased risk of occupational exposure to asbestos and of developing mesothelioma.When inhaled, microscopic asbestos fibers can penetrate deep in the chest cavity, remaining there for decades, causing inflammation, scarring and eventually disease.
Approximately 2,500 to 3,000 people die of mesothelioma each year in the United States. Symptoms of asbestos disease typically appear 30 to 50 years after exposure to asbestos.
More information about mesothelioma here.
International Epidemiology Panel Predicts Public Health Disaster of Asbestos-Related Disease
A committee of scientists from 13 epidemiology societies issued a statement this week calling for a global ban on mining, use and export of asbestos. The Joint Policy Committee of the Societies of Epidemiology put forward a position statement laying out clear evidence that all forms of asbestos cause mesothelioma, lung cancer and other diseases.
“Continued use of asbestos will lead to a public health disaster of asbestos-related illness and premature death for decades to come, repeating the epidemic we are witnessing today in industrialized countries that used asbestos in the past,” Dr. Stanley Weiss, chair of the Joint Policy Committee said in a statement.
The Joint Policy Committee coordinates policy actions among 13 U.S., Canadian and international epidemiology societies. The group’s 25-page statement details the latest scientific evidence about asbestos and expressed “grave concern” that the governments of Brazil, Canada, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam are putting their own citizens and others in peril by allowing asbestos mining.
Weiss said the committee considered it to be critically important to support the objective scientific evidence that all use of asbestos should stop. Most industrialized countries have ceased or sharply curtailed use of asbestos and more than 50 countries have passed laws banning its use. Consequently, the asbestos industry is working to establish new markets by promoting the use of asbestos in low to moderate income nations, which have weaker worker safety laws. Many of these countries are unaware of the health hazards posed by asbestos. The proportion of asbestos used in Asia has increased sharply.
“We call specifically on the major asbestos exporting countries—Brazil, Canada, Kazakhstan and Russia to respect the right to health by ceasing the mining, use and export of asbestos, and providing transition assistance to their asbestos-mining communities,” said Dr. Robert Hiatt, representing the American College of Epidemiology.
According to the World Health Organization, more than 107,000 people die each year from mesothelioma, lung cancer and asbestosis caused by workplace exposure to asbestos. Mesothelioma is a cancer of the lining of the chest cavity and abdominal cavity caused by inhaling asbestos. One in every three deaths from occupational cancer is estimated to be caused by asbestos.
In the United States, approximately 2,500 to 3,000 people are diagnosed with mesothelioma each year. Most are older workers, retired workers and veterans who were exposed to asbestos in a workplace.
The symptoms of asbestos disease typically take 20 years to 50 years to appear. But once the disease develops, it advances aggressively. Mesothelioma is incurable, but there are treatments to control the disease if it is diagnosed at an early stage.
More information about mesothelioma treatments.
British Study Finds Many Workplace Cancer Cases Involve Asbestos Exposure
About 13,600 new cases of cancer and 8,000 cancer deaths in Great Britain each year are linked to workplace exposures, particularly jobs involving exposure to asbestos or diesel engine fumes, a new study shows.
The study, funded by the British Health and Safety Executive, a government work safety agency, found that nearly half of the cancer deaths were among male construction workers who are most likely to encounter asbestos, a known carcinogen and other carcinogens such as silica and diesel exhaust. Breathing asbestos is associated with serious respiratory diseases including lung cancer, malignant mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lung, and asbestosis, a chronic scarring of the lung.
The study, published in the British Journal of Cancer, indicated that four in 10 work-related cancer cases and nearly half the occupation-related deaths in Britain involved construction workers. Around 70 percent of the occupation-related deaths in construction workers were linked to asbestos.
Even though asbestos is no long used in new construction, remodeling and maintenance on older buildings containing asbestos materials can put workers at risk of exposure to the asbestos fibers.
“This study gives us a clear insight into how the jobs people do affect their risk of cancer,” Dr. Lesley Rushton, an occupational epidemiologist at Imperial College London said in British Journal of Cancer press release. “We hope these findings will help develop ways of reducing health risks caused by exposure to carcinogens in the workplace.”
The researchers cautioned that the estimates of cancer cases and deaths related to occupational exposure are conservative and could be high as new work-related risk facts are identified.
Asbestos remains the most important occupational risk factor.
Dame Helena Shovelton, chief executive of the British Lung Foundation, a non-profit group, said in a BBC news report that asbestos-related diseases kill more people in Great Britain than traffic accidents and the number of deaths is projected to continue increasing in Britain until 2016.
Millions of houses and building were built in Britain and the United States during the decades when asbestos was a widely used building from World War II to about 1980. As long as people are living or working in the buildings, they are at risk of exposure to asbestos if the material is disturbed.
When inhaled, microscopic asbestos fibers typically lodge in the lungs, causing inflammation that can eventually lead to malignancy. Symptoms of mesothelioma and other asbestos diseases typically take 20 years to 40 years to appear. People recently diagnosed with mesothelioma may have been exposed to asbestos in the 1960s or 1970s.
Approximately, 3,000 people are diagnosed with malignant mesothelioma each year in the United States. Most are older workers, retired workers and veterans who were exposed to asbestos in a workplace such as a factory, shipyard or construction site. Construction workers and demolition workers are among the occupations most at risk today of asbestos exposure.
Higher Risk of Mesothelioma Among Workers at Chlorine Chemical Plant, Study Finds
A new study published in June issue of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine reports excessive rates of pleural mesothelioma and bladder cancer among workers at a major chlorine chemical plant in France. Pleural Mesothelioma is an aggressive cancer of the lining of the lungs associated with exposure to asbestos.
The study, performed by French researchers in Grenoble, France, analyzed the incidence of tumors from 1979 to 2002 among 2,742 men who worked at the chlorine plant. The study found an significant excess of mesothelioma tumors among workers hired before 1964.
France now bans asbestos because it’s a known cause of cancer, including pleural mesothelioma, peritoneal mesothelioma and lung cancer. But for many years, asbestos was used in the diaphragm-cell process of making chlorine. Asbestos is still used in chlorine manufacturing plants in the U.S. Workers may be exposed to asbestos when transporting sacks of asbestos or when cutting open and emptying sacks of asbestos into mixing tanks. The handling of the empty sack also presented an exposure hazard.
Unlike France, asbestos is not banned in the United States, though its use has dropped significantly since its peak in the 1970s. But the chlorine manufacturing industry remains a significant consumer of asbestos in the U.S. Many older chlorine plants in the U.S. use asbestos diaphragms and gaskets as part of the production process, putting workers at risk of exposure to asbestos. Some have converted their chlorine manufacturing processes to more environmentally friendly, safer technology that do not use asbestos.
According to the 2012 United State Geological Survey of mineral commodities, U.S. industries consumed 1,100 metric tons of asbestos from January through July 2011. The chlorine manufacturing industry, which uses asbestos diaphragms in the manufacturing of industrial chemicals, accounted for about 30 percent of asbestos consumption, the report said.
As a result of past asbestos use in the U.S., Americans are now dying from asbestos cancers and asbestosis, a chronic scarring of the lungs, at the rate of 10,000 people per year, according to Barry Castleman, an environmental and public health consultant who testified before the U.S. Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee in June 2007.
Symptoms of mesothelioma typically take 20 to 50 years to appear after workers inhale microscopic asbestos fibers. Many workers exposed to asbestos in the 1960s or 1970s may only recently have begun noticing symptoms such as pain beneath the ribs or shortness of breath or only been diagnosed with mesothelioma or asbestos disease.
For more information about mesothelioma, click here.
New British Research Suggests Link Between Asbestos and Heart Disease, Stroke
A new study of British workers finds that asbestos may cause other serious illnesses in addition to mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer that produces tumors in the lining of the lung.
The study, published in the latest issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, reports that workers in Great Britain exposed to asbestos in the workplace are more likely to die from heart disease than people in the general population.
Asbestos is recognized as a cause of serious respiratory disease in humans, including asbestosis, a scarring of lung, lung cancer and mesothelioma, a cancer of lining of the lungs and abdomen. But it hasn’t been established whether asbestos exposure is a risk factor in cardiovascular disease.
But it’s well established that inhaling or swallowing asbestos causes inflammation. And inflammatory processes are involved in the development of cardiovascular disease, which includes diseases of the heart and blood vessels.
So researchers, led by Anne-Helen Harding of Britain’s Health and Safety Laboratory, analyzed the presence of cardiovascular disease and death rates among nearly 100,000 asbestos workers between 1971 and 2005. Many of the workers had jobs that involved asbestos removal.
The researchers reported a significantly higher number of deaths from ischemic heart disease and stroke among asbestos workers than the general population. Male asbestos workers were 63 percent more likely to die of a stroke and 39 percent more likely to die of heart disease.
The researchers also observed a correlation between the length of exposure to asbestos and the likelihood of developing ischemic heart disease, a reduced blood supply in the heart muscle. The researchers said the findings provide some evidence that workplace asbestos exposure contributes to heart disease in exposed workers.
Asbestos exposure is the leading cause of work-related deaths in Great Britain, accounting for approximately 4,000 deaths per year, according to the Health and Safety Executive, a British government agency that oversees workplace safety. In the United States, approximately, 2,500 to 3,000 people are diagnosed with mesothelioma in the United States each year and similar numbers of people die of mesothelioma each year. Symptoms of asbestos disease typically take 20 years to 40 years to appear, so workers exposed in 1970s may only recently have begun noticing symptoms such as shortness of breath, pain beneath the ribs and a persistent cough.
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