Mesothelioma Lawyer News- Many victims of mesothelioma mistakenly believe that because the company they or their loved one worked for is no longer in business, a Mesothelioma Lawyer can not help them recover momentary damages by filing a Mesothelioma Lawsuit or Mesothelioma Claim. This is more often than not untrue. A Mesothelioma Lawyer may be able to file your Mesothelioma Lawsuit or Mesothelioma Claim against one of the many Mesothelioma bankruptcy trusts that have been set up to pay claims to Mesothelioma victims who were exposed to Asbestos by a company that is no longer in business. You should not prejudge your chances of success with filing a Mesothelioma Lawsuit or Mesothelioma Claim until you have discussed the issue with a Mesothelioma Lawyer.

Mesothelioma Lawyer

A Mesothelioma Lawyer is a lawyer that is experienced in filing mesothelioma lawsuits on behalf of mesothelioma victims. Most lawyers are not Mesothelioma Lawyers. It takes years of experience to be a successful Mesothelioma Lawyer. Because State Licensing Agency’s and State Bar Associations do not grant certificates or other documentation that would assist the public in knowing who is and who is not an experienced Mesothelioma Lawyer, it is still very important that any individual or family member that wishes to file a Mesothelioma Lawsuit only deal with an experienced Mesothelioma Lawyer. Mesothelioma Lawsuit settlement amounts vary widely and the Mesothelioma Lawyer that you choose to handle your case can have a great deal to do with the amount your case settles for.

Mesothelioma Lawsuit

A Mesothelioma Lawsuit maybe able to be filed by a victims family after the victims death even if the victim knew they had mesothelioma when they were alive. This type of Mesothelioma Lawsuit may be different than the type of Mesothelioma Lawsuit filed by your Mesothelioma Lawyer while the victim was living however, the family of a victim often has a legitimate Mesothelioma Lawsuit after their family member has passed away. Making a determination on your own that you do not have grounds for filing a Mesothelioma Lawsuit without first talking to a Mesothelioma Lawyer can be a very costly mistake. It is important that you know your legal rights with regards to a Mesothelioma Lawsuit and only an experienced Mesothelioma Lawyer can help you determine if you have the grounds for a Mesothelioma Lawsuit.

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Contact us today to arrange a free consultation with a Mesothelioma Lawyer about your potential Mesothelioma Lawsuit. There are time limits for filing a Mesothelioma Lawsuit and they vary from State to State. If you think you have grounds for a Mesothelioma Lawsuit, the time to act is now and the first step is to take advantage of our offer and get your free consultation with a Mesothelioma Lawyer about your potential Mesothelioma Lawsuit.

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Mesothelioma News – 3/21/2012: You deserve to be compensated if you were exposed to Asbestos and suffered side effects. Contact us today and we will arrange a free consultation with a lawyer experienced in pharmaceutical and medical device ligation that can advise you of your legal rights.

Mesothelioma:  Asbestos has remarkable properties and has been used by humans for many centuries. The word ‘asbestos’ means inextinguishable or unquenchable. Il is flexible and has great tensile strength. These properties make it an ideal compound for use in the construction industry and insulation. Asbestos was initially used for wicks in lamps and candles as far back as 4000 isc. Between 2000 and 3000 bc the embalmed bodies of Egyptian pharaohs were wrapped in asbestos cloths to off­set the ravages of time. In Finland, asbestos was used to strengthen clay pots in the period around 2500 BC. There is anecdotal evidence that Charlemagne (742—814 ad) had a tablecloth made from woven asbestos. The Mediterranean people used chrysotile from Cyprus and tremolite from upper Italy for the fabrication of cremation cloths, mats, and wicks for temple lamps from 1000 AD. Marco Polo visited an asbestos mine in China in the latter half of the thirteenth century. He concluded that asbestos was a stone and laid to rest the myth that it was the hair of a woolly lizard. Asbestos papers and boards were made in Italy from the early eighteenth century. Benjamin Franklin bought a purse made of asbestos which is now in the Natural History Museum, London.

In 1828 a US patent was issued for asbestos insulating material used in steam engines. By 1853 asbestos helmets and jackets were being worn by the Parisian Fire Brigade, and from 1866 molded lagging materials were made from water glass and asbestos. The first asbestos brake lin­ings were made by Ferodo Ltd in England in 1896. In 1900 high-pressure asbestos gaskets were made by Klinger in Austria, and in 1913 the first asbestos pipes were developed in Italy. Standard corrugated sheets were introduced in Australia by Hardies in 1919. During the Second World War the use of asbestos included fireproof suits and parachute flares. Perhaps most appropriately, in the film The Wizard of Oz, released in 1939, the Wicked Witch of the West appeared on a broom made of asbestos. The post-war years saw a rapid expansion in the use of asbestos as many construction projects relied heavily on it, and its use reached an all-time high in 1973. Indeed, in the 1990s the solid fuel boosters of the space shuttle were insulated with asbestos. As a result of its widespread use, asbestos-related diseases, and particularly malignant mesothelioma, have become a worldwide problem. These diseases will have a particular impact in the developing world in the future where fibers are still being sold for building and insulation purposes.

Crocidolite was mined at Wittenoom in Western Australia from 1937 to 1966. From 1943 the principal leases were mined by a single company, the Australian Blue Asbestos Company, a subsidiary of Colonial Sugar Refinery Ltd (CSR), which employed 6500 people mainly for short periods of time (the median duration of employment was 3 months). The employment records of the company have formed the basis for an ongoing cohort mortality study of the workforce. A cohort of 5000 persons who lived in the township but were not employed by the industry has also been assembled. These cohorts, together with data on exposure from compliance monitoring by the Mines Department of the Government of Western Australia (a single survey of dustiness in the industry undertaken in 1966 shordy before the industry closed and periodic dust sampling in the township of Wittenoom up until the town itself was closed in 1990) have allowed detailed exposure—response relationships for mesothelioma (and other diseases) to be obtained. The cro­cidolite exposure estimates used have been validated with lung fiber content analyses The workers’ and residents’ cohorts are unique, as few members ever worked in the asbestos industry elsewhere and were therefore exposed almost exclusively to crocidolite in estimable quantities. The Wittenoom crocidolite industry has had a profound effect on the occurrence of all asbestos- related diseases in the State of Western Australia.

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Mesothelioma: The major types of asbestos encountered in South Africa are crocidolite, chrysotile, and amosite. Hausman, a German geologist, coined the name crocidolite in 1831 from the Greek krokis (wool­ly) and lithos (rock). Also known as blue asbestos, crocidolite was first discovered in South Africa in 1805 and was originally named ‘woolstone’. All commercial asbestos fibres were mined in South Africa. South African mining of crocidolite began in the mid-nineteenth century. Initially, the mining took place with many small digging operations, ‘outcrop mining’. The mining and milling processes are highly labour intensive, with the fibre cobbed from the rock by hand-held hammers, sieved by hand, sorted by a combination of manual and mechanized methods, and transported in hessian sacks (Fig. 2.4). Crocidolite is less heat resistant than other forms of asbestos, but very acid resistant as well as very elastic. It is used mainly as a reinforcing agent for binding with cement, rubber, and plastics, friction materials (brake linings), packing, and joint­ing products. The last crocidolite mine closed in 1994.

Chrysotile is also called white asbestos, although the fibres are pale green. In South Africa the area near Barberton was mined since the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1937 the Msauli mine in South Africa started mining operations in die largest deposit of chrysotile in the world. Operations closed in 2001. Chrysotile fibres have less tensile strength and less resistance to corrosion by acid. They are more suitable for spinning and weaving and more heat resistant than other asbestos fibres, and so chrysotile is used mainly in fire-resistant and insulator materials.

Amosite is a pale silvery fibrous mineral which is also called brown asbestos. Asbestos Mines of South Africa Ltd (Amosa) first mined the fiber at the turn of the twentieth century. It occurs mainly in the area of Penge and has been mined there for the past 80 years, mainly with small operations and crude technologies, causing extensive environmental pollution and exposing the labor force to high levels of dust. The Penge deposit is the largest in the world, and stretches for 40 km (25 miles) Asbestos mining reached its peak in South Africa in 1977, when more than 380 000 tons was exported and 20 000 miners were employed. Asbestos is no longer mined in South Africa. However, given the latency period for mesothelioma, all those exposed during the 1970s and 1980s will be approaching the peak for their risk of this disease. Therefore it can be expected that the mesothelioma epidemic in South Africa will continue at least for the lifetime of those large numbers of people exposed to amphibole asbestos in mining, in industry, and environmentally.

There is a rare form of the disease, taking the form of a localized pleural tumour, which accounts for up to 5 per cent of cases and for which there appears to be no clear relationship to asbestos exposure. It is often almost symptom free and pleural effusions are uncommonly seen. Finger clubbing and HPOA are much more common than in the more usual diffuse manifestation of the disease, and the rare syndrome of intermittent hypoglycaemia has been reported as being associ­ated with it. Spread to the mediastinal lymph nodes is common and probably occurs in about half of cases; a level of 44 per cent was detected in one post-mortem study|. Spread outside the thorax is detected in 54-82 per cent of cases during the course of the disease, although this includes the peritoneum. Metastases have been reported to the liver, the adrenal glands (10 per cent in a small series compared with 37 per cent in a parallel series of bronchial carcinoma), and occasional­ly the brain. Distant metastases appear more common in sarcomatous mesothelioma, Death resulting directly from distant metastases is uncommon. Metastatic disease is being experi­enced more commonly in patients living longer as a result of radical therapies such as extrapleur­al pneumonectomy.

Our use of the term or terms Mesothelioma is for descriptive purposes only. There is no relationship between the owners of this website and the maker of the product discussed in this post. Our use of the words Recall, Class Action Lawsuit and other similar words related to an event do not necessarily mean that this event has occurred. Refer to the website of the United States Food and Drug Administration for information on drug or medical device recalls. If a Class Action Lawsuit is formed in relation to the product discussed in this post we will provide that information at the time the Class Action is formed. A Class Action Lawsuit is not required to exist for you to file a lawsuit if you have been injured by the product discussed in this post.

To keep up to date on Mesothelioma Breaking News visit our site often.

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Mesothelioma Lawyer News (2/29/12): An individual might seek the counsel of a Mesothelioma Lawyer if they believe their workplace was responsible for putting them within reach of the hazardous mineral asbestos. Asbestos can cause the cancer Mesothelioma which has no known cure at this time. If you were diagnosed with Mesothelioma, it may be in your best interest to discuss your options with a Mesothelioma Lawyer. Our website service can connect you with many legal professionals who are qualified to handle these case types. Contact us today through the form to your right to speak with a Mesothelioma Lawyer.

A Mesothelioma Lawyer could offer insight to the best plan of action for receiving possible compensation. Mesothelioma Lawyers understand the costs of treatment and the impact cancer can have on your quality of life. With these factors in mind, Mesothelioma Lawyers will fight to help you recover each possible penny.

The purpose of our company is to provide the public with a trusted avenue to finding the best possible Mesothelioma Lawyer. The words Mesothelioma Lawyer and Mesothelioma Lawyers are used descriptively.

Please fill out the contact form today if you believe a Mesothelioma Lawyer could be of assistance to you. Whether you have a confirmed diagnosis of Mesothelioma or you believe your workplace may have exposed you to asbestos, Mesothelioma Lawyers are available for a consultation. We offer a free, trustworthy method to finding a Mesothelioma Lawyer. Contact us through the above form and we’ll get started with the process of getting you into discussions with a Mesothelioma Lawyer.

Disclaimer: The information provided by this website is not legal advice. Best Legal Source is not a law firm. No confidential relationship and or attorney-client relationship is formed by use of the site. Best Legal Source does not recommend or endorse any particular lawyer or their qualifications. This site is sponsored by attorneys who may receive leads from Best Legal Source. Best Legal Source does not make attorney referrals. The mission of Best legal Source is to assist injured partied in locating an attorney that is willing to review and potentially accept the injured parties legal case.

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Mesothelioma Lawyers (2/29/12): Mesothelioma Lawyers pursue lawsuits for victims of the asbestos-related cancer Mesothelioma. Mesothelioma is generally believed to be terminal and has no known cure. Because of this, many victims seek Mesothelioma Lawyers to represent them against the workplace that put them in the hazardous environment of asbestos-containing materials. Our company has connections with many Mesothelioma Lawyers who are qualified to handle your case. To speak with these Mesothelioma Lawyers, contact us by filling out the adjacent form and we will assist in arranging the free consultation with Mesothelioma Lawyers.

One of the mysteries of Mesothelioma is why it is often misdiagnosed or remains latent for many years. You may want to visit with Mesothelioma Lawyers to discover what legal challenges you may face when filing a Mesothelioma lawsuit. Asbestos has not yet been banned in this country and many industries contain this naturally-occurring fibrous mineral. You can also develop Mesothelioma by exposure from a secondary source such as your spouse’s clothing. The knowledge of Mesothelioma Lawyers is essential to receiving the best possible compensation for damages—physical and financial. Let Best Legal Source find the right Mesothelioma Lawyers for your case.

The terms Mesothelioma Lawyers and Mesothelioma Lawyer are simply used to describe the legal professionals who pursue Mesothelioma case types. We are a respected company with many years of experience connecting injured parties with attorneys such as Mesothelioma Lawyers.

There is a lot at stake in Mesothelioma case types. Perhaps you lost your job because of this diagnosis or maybe you even lost a loved one. We can assist you in finding Mesothelioma Lawyers who can hold responsible the employer who put you or a loved one in harm’s way. Contact us today to begin the process of finding Mesothelioma Lawyers who can best represent you.

Mesothelioma Lawyers News – 3/5/2012: More information about your search

Mesothelioma Lawyers : Exposure to asbestos is the link to the development of mesothelioma. People who end up with this disease usually have had some type of previous exposure to asbestos. How this works is not fully understood. It is thought that asbestos fibers are inhaled and first travel through the upper air passages, which include the throat, the trachea (windpipe), and the large bronchi (large breathing tubes of the lungs). These airways are lined with mucus, and therefore most of the fibers are cleared from these upper airways by sticking to this mucus and being coughed up or swallowed. When the fibers continue to travel and reach the small airways (the alveoli), the body’s immune system is able to sur­round, engulf, and remove the smaller fibers by a process known as phagocytosis.

Malignant mesothelioma is a rare form of cancer that is found m the lining of the chest and lung (the pleura), the abdomen (the peritoneum), or the saclike space around the heart (the pericardium). Although it is rare, mesothelioma is a very serious disease that is often at an advanced stage when the diagnosis is made. In the United States an estimated 2000 to 3000 new cases of mesothelioma are diagnosed each year. Approximately three fourths of these cases start in the chest cavity and are called pleural mesothe­liomas. Another 10% to 20% begin in the abdomen and are called peritoneal mesotheliomas. Lastly, those that start in the lining around the heart are called pericardial mesotheliomas, but these are extremely rare.

In America, asbestosis compensation cases began in 1927 when a Massachusetts asbestos textile worker filed a claim. A group of Johns- Manville workers launched claims in 1929 and by the mid-1930s at least sixty-nine more state compensation suits were brought against the company. During the 1930s, claims were filed against other leading man­ufacturers, such as Raybestos-Manhattan. The latter compensated about twenty cases in the 1930s, with average payments between $2,000 and $3,000, sometimes less. But it was no more than a trickle of cases. The low numbers reflected the lack of state coverage and the fact that the American system was adversarial, involving the court system. Insurers rarely accepted liability without a legal fight. It also reflected the strin­gency of compensation legislation. Here, too, many claims were ‘statute- barred’, so that workers could not claim if they had left the industry more than a year or had worked in more than one state. This was an especially cruel limitation for insulators with their itinerant work practices.

Selikoffs activities in Canada ended abruptly when the Quebec industry was nationalized, but before then trade union agitation at Thetford had triggered a federal inquiry. Published in 1976, it found that dust control was very poor and the lead investigator, Judge René Beaudry, found it ‘shocking’ that in some plants workers were still handling asbestos fiber with their bare hands. He went on to comment on employers: ‘They have kept available information about the dangerous effects of asbestos dust away from the workers and the unions.’ A similar picture was drawn by an Asbestosis Working Group in Ottawa, which suggested that McDonald’s statistics on mesothelioma were underestimated. These reports concluded that the industry was more concerned with medicalizing the asbestos problem through the compensation system and epi­demiology than by spending money on protecting workers from the dust. Revelations were also emerging of poor working conditions at the Canadian plants of Johns-Manville in Scarborough, T&N in Montreal, and Bendix Automotive in Windsor.

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Mesothelioma Lawyers:  Beginning in the 1960s, dust control became a major battleground between government, industry, and the trade unions. Until that time, the global industry had been unregulated, in the sense that no country had set a legally enforceable dust threshold. Dust controls on the South Africa mines, for example, were virtually non-existent. In the US and Europe, dust control in the asbestos-using industries—especially lagging and building work—was also lacking (essentially because the nature of the work meant that dust could not be controlled within the confines of ships, power stations, and high-rise blocks). In most of the asbestos factories in the US and Europe, dust control was scarcely more impressive. In a few factories in the UK (which was probably the world leader in dust control), dust extraction limited some of the worst effects, so that workers found they could see their mates through the haze of the workshops. But even in these factories, some areas were unregulated and workers were offered little protection, apart from inadequate masks. Anyone who worked with asbestos was breathing fibers; so too were asbestos users outside the factories.

The industry leaders gradually developed a range of building and insu­lation products. Johns-Manville first entered the market with stove and boiler insulation and later branched into theater curtains and movie- projection booths. Most fire curtains were clearly labeled ‘asbestos’ to reassure audiences about their safety. In 1899 an Austrian chemist, Ludwig Hatschek, discovered how to combine asbestos with cement and the mineral soon became popular as a reinforcing agent. The next major innovations were brake linings and friction materials for auto­mobiles. Scottish industry was among the first in Western Europe to adopt asbestos for shipbuilding and heavy engineering. The mineral was initially imported from Canada in 1871. Before the end of that decade, the Scottish Asbestos Company, which made engine packing and insulation, was operating its own mines in Quebec. By 1885 there were nineteen manufacturers and distributors in Glasgow alone; a decade later there were fifty-two. In Scotland, as elsewhere, work conditions in factories and shipyards were shaped by rapacious employers, weak trade unionism, and negligent regulatory authorities.

Asbestos was present in cement sheeting which clad many homes and in the pipes which supplied water; asbestos fibre was blended into vinyl floor tiles and in insulation designed to make oil refineries, hospitals, warships, cinemas, and domestic dwellings safe. It was used in rubber and plastic products, mixed with adhesives, cements, paints, and sealants. In automobiles asbestos was blended into gaskets, cylinder heads, spark plug washers, exhaust pipe insulation, radiator blankets, and brake linings. Some of its more exotic uses included cigarette filters, dish towels, surgical thread, banknotes, piano felts, ironing boards, berets, aprons, carpets, tampons and filters for rice, salt, beer, and fruit juice. In the 1920s, one British manufacturer sold mattresses filled with crocidolite or blue asbestos promising that their customers could with safety smoke in bed. The US postal service used asbestos mail bags. At one time toothpaste was fortified with fiber. The burning broomstick of the Wicked Witch in The Wizard ofOz was made from asbestos and the artificial snow in Citizen Kane was probably chrysotile. Asbestos was also a common ingredient in talcum powders, where it found its way into condoms. During the twentieth century, sufficient asbestos cement (a/c) pipe was manufactured in the US alone to circle the earth eight times and still run to the moon and back.

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Mesothelioma Lawyers: The global asbestos industry was born in the second half of the nineteenth century. The first modern mines, which were in Italy’s alpine valleys, began production in the 1850s and for twenty years they enjoyed a monopoly supplying fiber to a small manufacturing market in Western Europe. In 1876; large chrysotile deposits were discovered at Thetford; in Canada. Two years later mining began and from the turn of the century Canada was the world’s largest producer of chrysotile or white asbestos; a position it maintained for almost a hundred years. South Africa sup­plied virtually all of the world’s blue and brown asbestos (crocidolite and amosite).

Anatomical staging is a major prognostic factor in MPM. Almost all prognostic factor studies that include staging in their analysis reveal a significant impact on survival and show that this effect adds to the other prognostic factors. Twelve studies support this statement whilst only two cannot confirm it. Despite this, staging is not generally accepted as a good prognostic factor for several reasons. Firstly, several different staging systems are in use, which makes direct comparison of the papers focusing on this subject difficult, Indeed, the radical multimodality therapy series of Sugar baker, describes a highly significant impact of one staging system on survival, while two other staging systems do not seem to have a predictive value in the same patient population. Secondly, proper staging of MPM requires a surgical proce­dure, which is a major disadvantage. Thorough staging is currently only indicated in patients eligi­ble for major surgical procedures, and most patients tend to be inoperable at presentation. This implies that surgical staging is not routinely performed in all patients, and data on tumor stage are not available for every patient. Thirdly, the tools used for non-surgical staging differ considerably even within the populations from single hospitals.

As MPM is generally seen as a disease with a rapid fatal outcome, quality of life is one of the most important issues for a patient. Although the quality of life might be reflected by the per­formance status, no data are available on the correlation between prognostic factors and quality of life, or on the role of quality of life as a prognostic factor. In this regard the clinical needs do not parallel the academic search for prognostic factors. All prognostic factors in mesothelioma studies, apart from one, focus on survival in an attempt to discriminate patient populations with a relatively good or relatively poor prognosis. Only one study focuses on recurrence-free survival, but no factors have been described that predict other clinical issues. Prognostic factors can be separated into host-related prognostic factors, tumor-related fac­tors, and environment-related factors. The host-related factors typify the patient, the tumor-related factors characterize the disease, and the environment-related factors arc external factors not directly related to either the disease or the patient. The prognostic factors that have been described for mesothelioma studies according to this classification are categorized in Figure 5.1. As illustrated, the prognostic factors may be included in more than one group. For instance, performance status is influenced by both comorbidity and tumor load, and therefore might be considered as both a host-related and a tumor-related factor. A remarkably large number of dif­ferent factors have been evaluated for their prognostic significance, with a large number of bio­logical parameters appearing to have an impact on prognosis. We will focus on the prognostic factors and describe their value as predictors of survival.

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Mesothelioma Lawyers: Until recently, the story of mesothelioma within South Africa has been dismal. More than 2700 South Africans are documented as having died of mesothelioma. Government officials failed to prevent the disease and protect citizens. Mine owners focused excessively on profit. The legal system has offered no practical means of redress for patients with mesothelioma resulting from environ­mental exposure, and the medical community has had minimal impact on policy and/or practice. Some recent developments are more encouraging. There has been a concerted focus by the South African legislature on asbestos-related matters. New and more stringent asbestos control regulations exist under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. Asbestos is no longer mined in South Africa and the government has an active programmer of rehabilitating mine dumps. Cape pic, a UK asbestos mining company that left South Africa in 1976, is being sued by more than 5000 former South African employees suffering from asbestos-related diseases in a court case in London. Hopefully, future prospects in mesothelioma prevention and treatment will offer hope to those who are still at risk.

Amosite is a pale silvery fibrous mineral which is also called brown asbestos. Asbestos Mines of South Africa Ltd. first mined the fiber at the turn of the twentieth century. It occurs mainly in the area of Penge and has been mined there for the past 80 years, mainly with small operations and crude technologies, causing extensive environmental pollution and exposing the labor force to high levels of dust. The Penge deposit is the largest in the world, and stretches for 40 km (25 miles) Asbestos mining reached its peak in South Africa in 1977, when more than 380 000 tons was exported and 20 000 miners were employed. Asbestos is no longer mined in South Africa. However, given the latency period for mesothelioma, all those exposed during the 1970s and 1980s will be approaching the peak for their risk of this disease. Therefore it can be expected that the mesothelioma epidemic in South Africa will continue at least for the lifetime of those large numbers of people exposed to amphibole asbestos in mining, in industry, and environmentally.

The major types of asbestos encountered in South Africa are crocidolite, chrysotile, and amosite. Hausman, a German geologist, coined the name crocidolite in 1831 from the Greek krokis (wool­ly) and lithos (rock). Also known as blue asbestos, crocidolite was first discovered in South Africa in 1805 and was originally named ‘woolstone’. All commercial asbestos fibers were mined in South Africa. South African mining of crocidolite began in the mid-nineteenth century. Initially, the mining took place with many small digging operations, ‘outcrop mining’. The mining and milling processes are highly labor intensive, with the fiber cobbled from the rock by hand-held hammers, sieved by hand, sorted by a combination of manual and mechanized methods, and transported in hessian sacks. Crocidolite is less heat resistant than other forms of asbestos, but very acid resistant as well as very elastic. It is used mainly as a reinforcing agent for binding with cement, rubber, and plastics, friction materials (brake linings), packing, and joint­ing products. The last crocidolite mine closed in 1994.

The link between asbestos and mesothelioma was established in the Kimberley area in the Northern Cape region in South Africa. In 1956, Wagner performed a necropsy on a black male shower attendant at a gold mine. He was surprised to find a tumor filling the right chest with collapsed lung in the centre. Tuberculosis had been endemic in the area, but antituberculous treatment, which was introduced in 1952, had a dramatic effect, except for cases from the area west of Kimberley. In 1956, C. A. Sleggs, the Chief Medical Officer of Kimberley Tuberculosis Hospital, collected the radiographs of 14 patients with a similar history. These were biopsied and showed mesothelioma. Most cases lived in the vicinity of asbestos mines. A long latent period with up to 44 years between exposure and mesothelioma was noted. Wagner reported the link between asbestos and mesothelioma in 1960.

Mesothelioma Lawyers News: News and Information

Mesothelioma Lawyers: Malignant mesothelioma is a primary tumor of the serosal membranes (mesothelium) which line the thoracic and abdominal cavities. It is most commonly described in the pleura, which accounts for approximately 75 per cent of cases in most series, but can also arise in the peri­toneum, pericardium, and tunica vaginalis. The UK is currently in the midst of a ‘mesothelioma epidemic. The incidence of malignant mesothelioma has been increasing for more than 30 years, and is predicted to contin­ue rising for at least another decade. The majority of cases of mesothelioma in Great Britain can be attributed to occupational or para-occupational exposure to amphibole asbestos. Although the industrial use of asbestos has been regulated since the late 1960s, the majority of new cases involve men who were exposed to asbestos before regulations were introduced or who worked in unregulated occupations. The risk of mesothelioma induction in the pleura after amphibole asbestos exposure is not entirely dose dependent, and it is unlikely that there is a min­imum safe threshold below which mesothelioma does not develop. Therefore it is possible that many thousands of men may have been exposed to pathologically significant amounts of asbestos during their working lives. In contrast, malignant peritoneal mesothelioma tends to be associated with higher levels of asbestos exposure and the presence of asbestosis.

Lung fiber content was assessed by a local modification of a sodium hypochlorite digestion and filter method. Both light and electron microscopy (with energy dispersive x- ray analysis) were used. Fibers were counted by asbestos type and length but not diameter. All fiber lengths were recorded but because of uncertainties about filter contaminants by <2 micron fibers, only fibers >2 micron (EM) or >5 micron (LM) were considered in analyses. These methods gave a sensitivity, corresponding to one fiber counted, of 15 000 fiber/g dry lung (LM) and 200 000 fiber/g)’ lung (EM). Assuming a Poisson distribution of fibers in the counting units, the upper limit of the 95% confidence interval for the population mean, given a zero count obtained, is 3.69. Thus the EM ‘detection limit’ is about 740 000 fiber/g.” Reports on lung fiber content levels were sometimes used for medico-legal purposes in a fallacious way in that counts were reported as being ‘within the normal range as if this excluded an occupational asbestos exposure and liability.

Our use of the term or terms Mesothelioma Lawyers is for descriptive purposes only. There is no relationship between the owners of this website and the maker of the product discussed in this post. Our use of the words Recall, Class Action Lawsuit and other similar words related to an event do not necessarily mean that this event has occurred. Refer to the website of the United States Food and Drug Administration for information on drug or medical device recalls. If a Class Action Lawsuit is formed in relation to the product discussed in this post we will provide that information at the time the Class Action is formed. A Class Action Lawsuit is not required to exist for you to file a lawsuit if you have been injured by the product discussed in this post.

To keep up to date on Mesothelioma Lawyers News visit our site often.

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Mesothelioma Attorneys News (2/29/12): An employee might look for the advice of Mesothelioma Attorneys if their work setting required exposure to the fibrous mineral asbestos. Asbestos is a dangerous naturally-occurring mineral which can cause the cancer Mesothelioma. Mesothelioma Attorneys are looking into these lawsuits because this cancer often results in fatality. There is not yet a viable cure for Mesothelioma. Consider speaking with Mesothelioma Attorneys if you believe your employer was responsible for putting you in harm’s way. This website offers you a network of connections including a number of qualified Mesothelioma Attorneys.  Contact us today to get into conversation with Mesothelioma Attorneys. You can reach us by filling out the form on this page. We are eager to help you through the complicated legal process of choosing the right representative for you among the many Mesothelioma Attorneys.

Mesothelioma Attorneys represent those who were victims of hazardous materials containing asbestos. You may be eligible to pursue compensation if your health was severely damaged by a workplace setting. Mesothelioma Attorneys know how devastating the costs of treatment and loss of income can be. Mesothelioma Attorneys will work diligently to help you recover losses.

The terms Mesothelioma Attorneys and Mesothelioma Attorney are used as general phrases. The mission of Best Legal Source is to connect injured parties with experienced and resourceful Mesothelioma Attorneys.

Don’t hesitate if you would like to call for more information concerning Mesothelioma Attorneys and the service they provide. Mesothelioma is a serious cancer and should be treated as such. If you suspect you may have encountered asbestos-containing materials through your workplace, you can discuss your options with Mesothelioma Attorneys. We will listen to your specific concerns and assist you in finding the best possible Mesothelioma Attorneys. Fill out the above form and we’ll work to locate the right Mesothelioma Attorneys for you or your loved one.

Mesothelioma Attorneys News – 3/5/2012: More information about your search

Mesothelioma Attorneys:  Data from the United States Department of Health and Human Services show that states with the highest incidence of mesothelioma are all coastal or Great Lakes States. Florida has displaced New York as the State with the highest number of deaths per year from mesothelioma. In 1996, 78 people died of mesothelioma in Florida. The states with the highest age-adjusted mortality rates were Washington and Oregon, probably due to the presence of shipyards. The most frequently recorded occupation on death certificates of people with mesothelioma in the United States was homemaker (10.6 per cent of all deaths), followed by managers and administrators, plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters, production supervisors, laborers, electricians, farmers, carpenters and machinists. The most common industry was construction, followed by ship building and railroads. Other areas with significant mesothelioma incidence were schools and government.

Occupational histories were obtained when possible, the pathology slides were reviewed, and when tissue was available the lung was analyzed for asbestos content. They identified 19 cases (17 men and 2 women) of confirmed mesothelioma; obtained occupational histories for 16, and analyzed lung tissue fiber content in 7. The calculated incidence per year based on their data was 17 cases per million men and 1.9 cases per million women over age 15. Com­pared with data from 1966-1975, this was a marked increase in the incidence rate for men, but no obvious increase for women — similar to the observations by Price in the United States. Fourteen of fifteen men had a history of occupational asbestos exposure, mostly in shipyards, or in construction or insulation work. In the six men whose lung tissue was analyzed, the pulmonary content of chrysotile asbestos was within the range of the general population, but the values for amosite and crocidolite were elevated on average 300-fold compared to a reference population. No commercial amphibole was found in the lungs of the one woman analyzed. They concluded that the cases in women may not have been associated with asbestos, and may represent the background non­ asbestos associated mesothelioma rate in the general population.

Since the end of 1967, all pathologists in Canada (over 400) have been surveyed periodically to identify all cases of fatal mesothelioma diagnosed at autopsy or biopsy. In 1972 the survey was extended for one year to all pathologists (almost 7000) throughout the United States. On each occasion, nearly all responded. The investigators visited the pathologists and collected material for panel review. They selected a control from the same pathology file with metastatic lung disease from a primary tumor outside the chest, matched for date, sex and age. They also interviewed relatives to obtain detailed residential and occupation histories. As of 1972, there were 344 male cases of mesothe­lioma; 188 cases compared with 78 controls Tell into one of five defined exposure groups. Insulation work showed the highest relative risk at 46.1. Asbestos production and manu­facture was next at 6.1. Occupational exposure to asbestos was recorded in only two of 162 female cases, and in no controls. In eight cases and two controls, exposure had been in the home, likely from the clothing of an asbestos worker.

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Mesothelioma Attorneys:  The adverse effects of asbestos were first observed in the early 1900s and the relation­ship to mesothelioma was suggested in the 1940s. One of the earliest reports linking mesothelioma to occupational asbestos exposure came out of the medical clinic at an asbestos mine in Canada. At a scientific meeting in 1952 Cartier, then in charge of the industrial medical clinic at Thetford Amines, Quebec, reported eight cases of respirator}’ cancer, two of which he described as pleural tumors. He declared that two such rare cancers in a small series of only eight cases suggested an occupational origin. By 1960 the scientific community generally recognized asbestos as a cause or mesothelioma.

Subsequent studies showed an increased percentage of cases attributable to as­bestos exposure. Ruffle and colleagues conducted a retrospective study of 332 patients diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma at several teaching hospitals in Ontario and Quebec between 1965 and 1984. They found 396 patients with mesothelioma, in­cluding 332 of the pleura. Of the patients with pleural mesothelioma, 262 were men and 70 were women. Ages ranged from 22 to 85 years. About 60 per cent of those with history available had identifiable asbestos exposure. Only 3 were known to have had household exposure and 68 per cent of men and 17 per cent of women had identifiable occupational exposure. With more detailed occupational histories, more exposures may have been found. In Sherbrook and Quebec City, almost all of the exposed pa­tients came from the asbestos mining areas of Asbestos and Thetford Mines – most working in asbestos processing, as opposed to mining. In Ontario, an important source of exposure was from asbestos-cement factories, where 21 cases were observed in a cohort of 535. Twenty-five per cent of patients with mesothelioma in Ontario were immigrants who had asbestos exposure in their country of origin.

Workers in various industries in North America were exposed to significant amounts of asbestos. Primary exposure occurred in the mines and mills of Canada, and a few smaller mines in the United States. Secondary exposure occurred for workers involved in the manufacture of asbestos products, including textiles, friction materials, tiles and insulation materials. By far the most significant exposures were in those who then used the asbestos products in construction, insulation work and other capacities. Bystander exposure occurred in those who did not directly work with asbestos but who were present at sites where it was used, as on construction sites. Finally, indirect exposure or house­hold exposure occurred when the asbestos workers wore their dust-covered clothes home and exposed their spouses and children. Particularly significant exposure occurred in the shipbuilding industry during World War II.

Workers born after 1929 may have somewhat lower exposure levels since they have experienced fewer years of exposure at peak asbestos consumption levels, and have benefited from tighter controls on occupational asbestos exposures. Currently the most common uses of asbestos in the United States are in friction products, gas­kets and roofing products. The workers most at risk for asbestos exposure now include asbestos removal workers, workers conducting renovations in buildings with asbestos- containing material, and maintenance or custodial workers in buildings with asbestos- containing materials. These exposures, however, are much lower than were the his­torical occupational exposures.

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Mesothelioma Attorneys:  Asbestos has been used as an insulation material since 1866. In the United States and Canada, until the early 1940s, the only asbestos used was chrysotile, almost exclusively from the Canadian mines. During the 1930s the United States began to use small quan­tities of amosite asbestos imported from South Africa. Amosite was mixed with chryso­tile in making insulation blocks. The insulators likely had heavy though intermittent exposure. Exposures were especially high in shipyards where they ripped out and re­placed old asbestos insulation in the confines of boiler rooms and submarine hulls.

Australia still imports about 1500 tons a year of chrysotile fiber, and about SA13.5m worth of asbestos products a year, over half as friction material but also fab­ricated yarn, fabric, jointing, gaskets, millboard and asbestos cement products. How­ever, a planned phase out of new (chrysotilc) asbestos use is in place. Handling of asbestos in place and removal operations arc subject to a strict National Code of Prac­tice. A series of regulations adopted in the late 1970s and early 1980s by the various States now impose exposure limits of 0.1 fiber/ml for crocidolite, amosite and mix­tures and 0.1, 0.5 or 1.0 fiber/ml of chrysotile (TWA 8 hr membrane filter method light microscopy, WHO fibers). The chrysotile limit is currently under review.

Lung fiber content was assessed by a local modification of a sodium hypochlorite digestion and filter method. Both light and electron microscopy (with energy dispersive x- ray analysis) were used. Fibers were counted by asbestos type and length but not diameter. All fiber lengths were recorded but because of uncertainties about filter contaminants by <2 micron fibers, only fibers >2 micron (EM) or >5 micron (LM) were considered in analyses. These methods gave a sensitivity, corresponding to one fiber counted, of 15 000 fiber/g dry lung (LM) and 200 000 fiber/g)’ lung (EM). Assuming a Poisson distribution of fibers in the counting units, the upper limit of the 95% confidence interval for the population mean, given a zero count obtained, is 3.69. Thus the EM ‘detection limit’ is about 740 000 fiber/g.” Reports on lung fiber content levels were sometimes used for medico-legal purposes in a fallacious way in that counts were reported as being ‘within the normal range as if this excluded an occupational asbestos exposure and liability.

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Mesothelioma Attorneys: Malignant mesothelioma is a primary tumor of the serosal membranes (mesothelium) which line the thoracic and abdominal cavities. It is most commonly described in the pleura, which accounts for approximately 75 per cent of cases in most series, but can also arise in the peri¬toneum, pericardium, and tunica vaginalis. The UK is currently in the midst of a ‘mesothelioma epidemic. The incidence of malignant mesothelioma has been increasing for more than 30 years, and is predicted to contin¬ue rising for at least another decade. The majority of cases of mesothelioma in Great Britain can be attributed to occupational or para-occupational exposure to amphibole asbestos. Although the industrial use of asbestos has been regulated since the late 1960s, the majority of new cases involve men who were exposed to asbestos before regulations were introduced or who worked in unregulated occupations. The risk of mesothelioma induction in the pleura after amphibole asbestos exposure is not entirely dose dependent, and it is unlikely that there is a min¬imum safe threshold below which mesothelioma does not develop. Therefore it is possible that many thousands of men may have been exposed to pathologically significant amounts of asbestos during their working lives. In contrast, malignant peritoneal mesothelioma tends to be associated with higher levels of asbestos exposure and the presence of asbestosis.

The link between asbestos and mesothelioma was established in the Kimberley area in the Northern Cape region in South Africa. In 1956, Wagner performed a necropsy on a black male shower attendant at a gold mine. He was surprised to find a tumor filling the right chest with collapsed lung in the centre. Tuberculosis had been endemic in the area, but antituberculous treatment, which was introduced in 1952, had a dramatic effect, except for cases from the area west of Kimberley. In 1956, C. A. Sleggs, the Chief Medical Officer of Kimberley Tuberculosis Hospital, collected the radiographs of 14 patients with a similar history. These were biopsied and showed mesothelioma. Most cases lived in the vicinity of asbestos mines. A long latent period with up to 44 years between exposure and mesothelioma was noted. Wagner reported the link between asbestos and mesothelioma in 1960.

The major types of asbestos encountered in South Africa are crocidolite, chrysotile, and amosite. Hausman, a German geologist, coined the name crocidolite in 1831 from the Greek krokis (wool¬ly) and lithos (rock). Also known as blue asbestos, crocidolite was first discovered in South Africa in 1805 and was originally named ‘woolstone’. All commercial asbestos fibers were mined in South Africa. South African mining of crocidolite began in the mid-nineteenth century. Initially, the mining took place with many small digging operations, ‘outcrop mining’. The mining and milling processes are highly labor intensive, with the fiber cobbled from the rock by hand-held hammers, sieved by hand, sorted by a combination of manual and mechanized methods, and transported in hessian sacks. Crocidolite is less heat resistant than other forms of asbestos, but very acid resistant as well as very elastic. It is used mainly as a reinforcing agent for binding with cement, rubber, and plastics, friction materials (brake linings), packing, and joint¬ing products. The last crocidolite mine closed in 1994.

Amosite is a pale silvery fibrous mineral which is also called brown asbestos. Asbestos Mines of South Africa Ltd. first mined the fiber at the turn of the twentieth century. It occurs mainly in the area of Penge and has been mined there for the past 80 years, mainly with small operations and crude technologies, causing extensive environmental pollution and exposing the labor force to high levels of dust. The Penge deposit is the largest in the world, and stretches for 40 km (25 miles) Asbestos mining reached its peak in South Africa in 1977, when more than 380 000 tons was exported and 20 000 miners were employed. Asbestos is no longer mined in South Africa. However, given the latency period for mesothelioma, all those exposed during the 1970s and 1980s will be approaching the peak for their risk of this disease. Therefore it can be expected that the mesothelioma epidemic in South Africa will continue at least for the lifetime of those large numbers of people exposed to amphibole asbestos in mining, in industry, and environmentally.

Until recently, the story of mesothelioma within South Africa has been dismal. More than 2700 South Africans are documented as having died of mesothelioma. Government officials failed to prevent the disease and protect citizens. Mine owners focused excessively on profit. The legal system has offered no practical means of redress for patients with mesothelioma resulting from environ¬mental exposure, and the medical community has had minimal impact on policy and/or practice. Some recent developments are more encouraging. There has been a concerted focus by the South African legislature on asbestos-related matters. New and more stringent asbestos control regulations exist under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. Asbestos is no longer mined in South Africa and the government has an active programmer of rehabilitating mine dumps. Cape pic, a UK asbestos mining company that left South Africa in 1976, is being sued by more than 5000 former South African employees suffering from asbestos-related diseases in a court case in London. Hopefully, future prospects in mesothelioma prevention and treatment will offer hope to those who are still at risk.

Our use of the term or terms Mesothelioma Attorneys is for descriptive purposes only. There is no relationship between the owners of this website and the maker of the product discussed in this post. Our use of the words Recall, Class Action Lawsuit and other similar words related to an event do not necessarily mean that this event has occurred. Refer to the website of the United States Food and Drug Administration for information on drug or medical device recalls. If a Class Action Lawsuit is formed in relation to the product discussed in this post we will provide that information at the time the Class Action is formed. A Class Action Lawsuit is not required to exist for you to file a lawsuit if you have been injured by the product discussed in this post.

To keep up to date on Mesothelioma Attorneys News visit our site often.

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Mesothelioma Attorney News (2/29/12): Are you looking for a Mesothelioma Attorney who is familiar with these high-stake cases and qualified to handle your Mesothelioma Lawsuit? We connect victims of Mesothelioma with Mesothelioma Attorneys who are resourceful and knowledgeable about an employer’s responsibility to your health. Contact us today through the form to your right to receive a free consultation with a Mesothelioma Attorney. We will get you in touch with the best available Mesothelioma Attorney for your case.

A Mesothelioma Attorney knows the typical circumstances involved in developing this cancer. Most workers are diagnosed with Mesothelioma after working in an industry that involves direct contact with materials containing the naturally-occurring fibrous mineral, asbestos. If you worked in such an industry, you should consult with your doctor and consider speaking with a Mesothelioma Attorney. A Mesothelioma Attorney can prepare you for future litigation in the case that you receive a positive diagnosis for this cancer. Often Mesothelioma remains dormant for a decade or more before it is diagnosed. It might be wise to stay abreast of the possible legal actions available to you by talking with a Mesothelioma Attorney.

The phrases Mesothelioma Attorney, Mesothelioma Attorneys, and Mesothelioma Lawsuit are used in a general sense. The goal of this site is to help the victims of Mesothelioma get in contact with a seasoned Mesothelioma Attorney.

There is no obligation or cost when filing a Mesothelioma case. In addition, we do not charge for the service of helping you find the right Mesothelioma Attorney for your lawsuit. Were your plans for a long, healthy future demolished with the news of a Mesothelioma diagnosis? Please consider discussing your legal options with a Mesothelioma Attorney who can possibly assist you in reclaiming damages through compensation. Fill out the contact form today to start this process.

Mesothelioma Attorney News – 3/5/2012: More information about your search

Mesothelioma Attorney:  As MPM is generally seen as a disease with a rapid fatal outcome, quality of life is one of the most important issues for a patient. Although the quality of life might be reflected by the per­formance status, no data are available on the correlation between prognostic factors and quality of life, or on the role of quality of life as a prognostic factor. In this regard the clinical needs do not parallel the academic search for prognostic factors. All prognostic factors in mesothelioma studies, apart from one, focus on survival in an attempt to discriminate patient populations with a relatively good or relatively poor prognosis. Only one study focuses on recurrence-free survival, but no factors have been described that predict other clinical issues. Prognostic factors can be separated into host-related prognostic factors, tumor-related fac­tors, and environment-related factors. The host-related factors typify the patient, the tumor-related factors characterize the disease, and the environment-related factors arc external factors not directly related to either the disease or the patient. The prognostic factors that have been described for mesothelioma studies according to this classification are categorized. As illustrated, the prognostic factors may be included in more than one group. For instance, performance status is influenced by both comorbidity and tumor load, and therefore might be considered as both a host-related and a tumor-related factor. A remarkably large number of dif­ferent factors have been evaluated for their prognostic significance, with a large number of bio­logical parameters appearing to have an impact on prognosis. We will focus on the prognostic factors and describe their value as predictors of survival.

Anatomical staging is a major prognostic factor in MPM. Almost all prognostic factor studies that include staging in their analysis reveal a significant impact on survival and show that this effect adds to the other prognostic factors. Twelve studies support this statement whilst only two cannot confirm it. Despite this, staging is not generally accepted as a good prognostic factor for several reasons. Firstly, several different staging systems are in use, which makes direct comparison of the papers focusing on this subject difficult, Indeed, the radical multimodality therapy series of Sugar baker, describes a highly significant impact of one staging system on survival, while two other staging systems do not seem to have a predictive value in the same patient population. Secondly, proper staging of MPM requires a surgical proce­dure, which is a major disadvantage. Thorough staging is currently only indicated in patients eligi­ble for major surgical procedures, and most patients tend to be inoperable at presentation. This implies that surgical staging is not routinely performed in all patients, and data on tumor stage are not available for every patient. Thirdly, the tools used for non-surgical staging differ considerably even within the populations from single hospitals.

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Mesothelioma Attorney:  Asbestos was present in cement sheeting which clad many homes and in the pipes which supplied water; asbestos fiber was blended into vinyl floor tiles and in insulation designed to make oil refineries, hospitals, warships, cinemas, and domestic dwellings safe. It was used in rubber and plastic products, mixed with adhesives, cements, paints, and sealants. In automobiles asbestos was blended into gaskets, cylinder heads, spark plug washers, exhaust pipe insulation, radiator blankets, and brake linings. Some of its more exotic uses included cigarette filters, dish towels, surgical thread, banknotes, piano felts, ironing boards, berets, aprons, carpets, tampons and filters for rice, salt, beer, and fruit juice. In the 1920s, one British manufacturer sold mattresses filled with crocidolite or blue asbestos promising that their customers could with safety smoke in bed. The US postal service used asbestos mail bags. At one time toothpaste was fortified with fiber. The burning broomstick of the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz was made from asbestos and the artificial snow in Citizen Kane was probably chrysotile. Asbestos was also a common ingredient in talcum powders, where it found its way into condoms. During the twentieth century, sufficient asbestos cement (a/c) pipe was manufactured in the US alone to circle the earth eight times and still run to the moon and back.

The industry leaders gradually developed a range of building and insu­lation products. Johns-Manville first entered the market with stove and boiler insulation and later branched into theater curtains and movie- projection booths. Most fire curtains were clearly labeled ‘asbestos’ to reassure audiences about their safety. In 1899 an Austrian chemist, Ludwig Hatschek, discovered how to combine asbestos with cement and the mineral soon became popular as a reinforcing agent. The next major innovations were brake linings and friction materials for auto­mobiles. Scottish industry was among the first in Western Europe to adopt asbestos for shipbuilding and heavy engineering. The mineral was initially imported from Canada in 1871. Before the end of that decade, the Scottish Asbestos Company, which made engine packing and insulation, was operating its own mines in Quebec. By 1885 there were nineteen manufacturers and distributors in Glasgow alone; a decade later there were fifty-two. In Scotland, as elsewhere, work conditions in factories and shipyards were shaped by rapacious employers, weak trade unionism, and negligent regulatory authorities.

The industry leaders gradually developed a range of building and insu­lation products. Johns-Manville first entered the market with stove and boiler insulation and later branched into theater curtains and movie- projection booths. Most fire curtains were clearly labeled ‘asbestos’ to reassure audiences about their safety. In 1899 an Austrian chemist, Ludwig Hatschek, discovered how to combine asbestos with cement and the mineral soon became popular as a reinforcing agent. The next major innovations were brake linings and friction materials for auto­mobiles. Scottish industry was among the first in Western Europe to adopt asbestos for shipbuilding and heavy engineering. The mineral was initially imported from Canada in 1871. Before the end of that decade, the Scottish Asbestos Company, which made engine packing and insulation, was operating its own mines in Quebec. By 1885 there were nineteen manufacturers and distributors in Glasgow alone; a decade later there were fifty-two. In Scotland, as elsewhere, work conditions in factories and shipyards were shaped by rapacious employers, weak trade unionism, and negligent regulatory authorities.

Beginning in the 1960s, dust control became a major battleground between government, industry, and the trade unions. Until that time, the global industry had been unregulated, in the sense that no country had set a legally enforceable dust threshold. Dust controls on the South Africa mines, for example, were virtually non-existent. In the US and Europe, dust control in the asbestos-using industries—especially lagging and building work—was also lacking (essentially because the nature of the work meant that dust could not be controlled within the confines of ships, power stations, and high-rise blocks). In most of the asbestos factories in the US and Europe, dust control was scarcely more impressive. In a few factories in the UK (which was probably the world leader in dust control), dust extraction limited some of the worst effects, so that workers found they could see their mates through the haze of the workshops. But even in these factories, some areas were unregulated and workers were offered little protection, apart from inadequate masks. Anyone who worked with asbestos was breathing fibers; so too were asbestos users outside the factories.

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Mesothelioma Attorney:  Selikoffs activities in Canada ended abruptly when the Quebec industry was nationalized, but before then trade union agitation at Thetford had triggered a federal inquiry. Published in 1976, it found that dust control was very poor and the lead investigator, Judge René Beaudry, found it ‘shocking’ that in some plants workers were still handling asbestos fiber with their bare hands. He went on to comment on employers: ‘They have kept available information about the dangerous effects of asbestos dust away from the workers and the unions.’ A similar picture was drawn by an Asbestosis Working Group in Ottawa, which suggested that McDonald’s statistics on mesothelioma were underestimated. These reports concluded that the industry was more concerned with medicalizing the asbestos problem through the compensation system and epi­demiology than by spending money on protecting workers from the dust. Revelations were also emerging of poor working conditions at the Canadian plants of Johns-Manville in Scarborough, T&N in Montreal, and Bendix Automotive in Windsor.

Ironically, Canada’s occupational health record now looks no better than other industrialized countries. It has failed abysmally to provide safe working conditions for its workers—the consequences of which in terms of ARDs are still being felt. The National Institute for Public Health in Quebec produced a report in 2004 on the Epidemiology of Asbestos- Related Diseases in Quebec, Between 1982 and 1996, it concluded that 832 Quebec residents, 655 men and 177 women, were diagnosed with mesothelioma. The rate for men was calculated to be 9.5 times greater than for the rest of the country and the rate for women was two times greater. Not surprisingly, opponents of asbestos use asked: if a socially and industrially advanced country like Canada cannot provide safe working conditions for workers in the asbestos industry, what about those devel­oping countries to which Canadian fiber was exported?

In America, asbestosis compensation cases began in 1927 when a Massachusetts asbestos textile worker filed a claim. A group of Johns- Manville workers launched claims in 1929 and by the mid-1930s at least sixty-nine more state compensation suits were brought against the company. During the 1930s, claims were filed against other leading man­ufacturers, such as Raybestos-Manhattan. The latter compensated about twenty cases in the 1930s, with average payments between $2,000 and $3,000, sometimes less. But it was no more than a trickle of cases. The low numbers reflected the lack of state coverage and the fact that the American system was adversarial, involving the court system. Insurers rarely accepted liability without a legal fight. It also reflected the strin­gency of compensation legislation. Here, too, many claims were ‘statute- barred’, so that workers could not claim if they had left the industry more than a year or had worked in more than one state. This was an especially cruel limitation for insulators with their itinerant work practices.

Malignant mesothelioma is a rare form of cancer that is found m the lining of the chest and lung (the pleura), the abdomen (the peritoneum), or the saclike space around the heart (the pericardium). Although it is rare, mesothelioma is a very serious disease that is often at an advanced stage when the diagnosis is made. In the United States an estimated 2000 to 3000 new cases of mesothelioma are diagnosed each year. Approximately three fourths of these cases start in the chest cavity and are called pleural mesothe­liomas. Another 10% to 20% begin in the abdomen and are called peritoneal mesotheliomas. Lastly, those that start in the lining around the heart are called pericardial mesotheliomas, but these are extremely rare.

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Mesothelioma Attorney:  Exposure to asbestos is the link to the development of mesothelioma. People who end up with this disease usually have had some type of previous exposure to asbestos. How this works is not fully understood. It is thought that asbestos fibers are inhaled and first travel through the upper air passages, which include the throat, the trachea (windpipe), and the large bronchi (large breathing tubes of the lungs). These airways are lined with mucus, and therefore most of the fibers are cleared from these upper airways by sticking to this mucus and being coughed up or swallowed. When the fibers continue to travel and reach the small airways (the alveoli), the body’s immune system is able to sur­round, engulf, and remove the smaller fibers by a process known as phagocytosis.

Occupational histories were obtained when possible, the pathology slides were reviewed, and when tissue was available the lung was analyzed for asbestos content. They identified 19 cases (17 men and 2 women) of confirmed mesothelioma; obtained occupational histories for 16, and analyzed lung tissue fiber content in 7. The calculated incidence per year based on their data was 17 cases per million men and 1.9 cases per million women over age 15. Com­pared with data from 1966-1975, this was a marked increase in the incidence rate for men, but no obvious increase for women — similar to the observations by Price in the United States. Fourteen of fifteen men had a history of occupational asbestos exposure, mostly in shipyards, or in construction or insulation work. In the six men whose lung tissue was analyzed, the pulmonary content of chrysotile asbestos was within the range of the general population, but the values for amosite and crocidolite were elevated on average 300-fold compared to a reference population. No commercial amphibole was found in the lungs of the one woman analyzed. They concluded that the cases in women may not have been associated with asbestos, and may represent the background non­ asbestos associated mesothelioma rate in the general population.

The adverse effects of asbestos were first observed in the early 1900s and the relation­ship to mesothelioma was suggested in the 1940s. One of the earliest reports linking mesothelioma to occupational asbestos exposure came out of the medical clinic at an asbestos mine in Canada. At a scientific meeting in 1952 Cartier, then in charge of the industrial medical clinic at Thetford Amines, Quebec, reported eight cases of respirator}’ cancer, two of which he described as pleural tumors. He declared that two such rare cancers in a small series of only eight cases suggested an occupational origin. By 1960 the scientific community generally recognized asbestos as a cause or mesothelioma.

Workers in various industries in North America were exposed to significant amounts of asbestos. Primary exposure occurred in the mines and mills of Canada, and a few smaller mines in the United States. Secondary exposure occurred for workers involved in the manufacture of asbestos products, including textiles, friction materials, tiles and insulation materials. By far the most significant exposures were in those who then used the asbestos products in construction, insulation work and other capacities. Bystander exposure occurred in those who did not directly work with asbestos but who were present at sites where it was used, as on construction sites. Finally, indirect exposure or house­hold exposure occurred when the asbestos workers wore their dust-covered clothes home and exposed their spouses and children. Particularly significant exposure occurred in the shipbuilding industry during World War II.

Asbestos has been used as an insulation material since 1866. In the United States and Canada, until the early 1940s, the only asbestos used was chrysotile, almost exclusively from the Canadian mines. During the 1930s the United States began to use small quan­tities of amosite asbestos imported from South Africa. Amosite was mixed with chryso­tile in making insulation blocks. The insulators likely had heavy though intermittent exposure. Exposures were especially high in shipyards where they ripped out and re­placed old asbestos insulation in the confines of boiler rooms and submarine hulls.

Our use of the term or terms Mesothelioma Attorney is for descriptive purposes only. There is no relationship between the owners of this website and the maker of the product discussed in this post. Our use of the words Recall, Class Action Lawsuit and other similar words related to an event do not necessarily mean that this event has occurred. Refer to the website of the United States Food and Drug Administration for information on drug or medical device recalls. If a Class Action Lawsuit is formed in relation to the product discussed in this post we will provide that information at the time the Class Action is formed. A Class Action Lawsuit is not required to exist for you to file a lawsuit if you have been injured by the product discussed in this post.

To keep up to date on Mesothelioma Attorney News visit our site often.

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Mesothelioma Lawsuit News (2/29/12): A Mesothelioma Lawsuit involves employees who were exposed to the hazardous substance asbestos and were later diagnosed with Mesothelioma. If your workplace demands included contact with components such as insulation, brake pads, or other asbestos-containing building materials, you should speak with a physician and start researching the Mesothelioma Lawsuit option. For a number of workers, the inhalation of asbestos fibers can cause Mesothelioma. This serious cancer is debilitating to your lungs and the lining of your organs. Contacting a Mesothelioma Lawsuit lawyer may be necessary to receive compensation for your medical bills and for your possible loss of income. This website helps victims understand the process of a Mesothelioma Lawsuit, and you can utilize our services by using the contact form. We are eager to help you learn more about Mesothelioma Lawsuits.

You might have heard about other Mesothelioma Lawsuits and wondered if your exposure to asbestos caused Mesothelioma. This form of cancer can remain dormant in your body for a long period of time.  It can also be contracted through secondary sources such as exposure to your spouse’s work clothes. Our company knows a network of experienced Mesothelioma Lawsuit attorneys who are happy to arrange a free consultation to discuss your concerns. We will find the right fit for you and your particular Mesothelioma Lawsuit case.

Mesothelioma Lawsuit, Mesothelioma Lawsuits and Mesothelioma Lawsuit attorneys are phrases we use generally to explain the particular case type we are referring to. Our goal is to guide you through this process and take the burden of finding the right Mesothelioma Lawsuit attorney off of your shoulders. During this difficult time, you need an outside party who is knowledgeable about Mesothelioma Lawsuits and can look out for your best interest. We have many years of experience helping injured people. Contact us today to discuss your Mesothelioma Lawsuit concerns and to begin conversations with a Mesothelioma Lawsuit attorney who has the necessary resources to pursue your Mesothelioma Lawsuit.

Mesothelioma Lawsuit News – 3/5/2012: More information about your search

Mesothelioma Lawsuit: The most expensive items in the manufacture of asbestos brake linings and insulation were the raw materials, with wages and labor amounting to less than 40 per cent of the cost of production. That cost structure, which changed little over time, made the price of raw asbestos the key to the industry’s profitability. To ensure a supply of cheap fiber the major US manufacturers operated their own mines, but the problem of sudden fluctuations in output and price persisted. During the early 1920s, a price war broke out between Canadian, South African, and Soviet producers which led to the closure of a number of Quebec mines. Johns-Manville responded by increasing its investments in Canada, while on the domestic front it bought out a number of competitors. In 1928 Johns-Manville took over Banner Rock and Celite, both of which made non-asbestos insulation, asphalt roofing, decorative tiles, and bridge construction mate­rials. T&N followed suit by purchasing seven insulation companies in an attempt to control the market.

To solve the problem of supply, in 1929 Johns-Manville, T&N, Eternit, and Philip Carey arranged a cartel, which in effect divided the global market into spheres of influence. In Western Europe, firms from Belgium, France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Britain, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, and Switzerland participated in the Sociétés Associés d’industries Amiante-Ciment (SAIAC) which had its secretariat in Switzerland. According to T&N’s management, the agreement was designed to stan­dardize the product and secure fiber on the best terms. ‘This miniature League of Nations’, T&N told its shareholders, has a great future before it, for it is based upon the principle of mutual help, which now replaces the previous atmosphere of distrust and suspicion’. In practice, the arrangement created a framework which enabled the big companies to dominate mining and manufacture.

Chrysotile was first incorporated into brake linings in the UK in 1908, and it was soon taken up by American automobile manufacturers. By 1930, brake linings made from woven fiber constituted around a third of US industry revenue. Ten feet of lining was needed for each new car and the typical linings used in family automobiles were 80 per cent asbestos and 20 per cent cotton. Leading manufacturers such as Ford and Chrysler had short lead times, with raw materials going in one door and finished products out the other. Such hectic production schedules had an impact upon work conditions.

Asbestos was a useful additive for industrial paper to enhance the retention of moisture. After pulping, beating, screening, and cleaning, the fiber was mixed with other wet-end materials, formed into sheets, pressed, rolled, and then dried. Millboard was made in a similar way, except it was passed through a hydraulic press and after drying, cut into sheets. Shingles, which consisted of around 30 per cent asbestos, were also subjected to tremendous hydraulic pressure. Magnesia insulation used for pipes and boilers was a standard Johns-Manville line and by the early 1930s it was the company’s biggest seller. The product consisted of 85 per cent magnesia and 15 per cent asbestos. Magnesia contains masses of minute air cells which make it a poor conductor of heat, but it lacks strength. That came with the addition of chrysotile. The mix was shaped into strips to encase pipes or cut into blocks to cover boilers. The railways were the largest market for ’85 per cent Magnesia’.

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Mesothelioma Lawsuit: The industry’s recovery from the Great Depression was helped by the development of new products. The sprayed asbestos insulation known as Limpet was devised in 1932 by J.VV. Roberts, a T&N subsidiary. A spray made from blue asbestos and cement was used initially on railway coaches to reduce noise and condensation. Limpet was also later adapted for fireproofing and insulation. The fireproofing blends were 5-30 per cent fiber, while the thermal insulation used on turbines was often pure asbestos. In power stations, spraying allowed turbines to be completely encased, thereby improving efficiency and safety. Sprayed insulation was introduced into the US in 1935. The material could be easily shaped and it became popular for the decoration of night clubs, restaurants, and hotel foyers.

While conditions in UK factories did improve during the 1930s, they were never safe. In 1938, T&N established a factory at Clydebank to manufacture a/c sheets. The plant operated until 1970 and at its peak it employed more than 300 workers. After delivery in hessian sacks, raw asbestos was stacked by hand in a warehouse. Bag handling was a dan­gerous job as the fragile bags often broke showering workers with fiber. There was no protective clothing and cleaning was done with a brush and shovel. The waste was used to surface the car park. One Clydebank resident remembers that Agamemnon Street, adjacent to Turner’s factory, was covered in white dust which settled on cars and window sills.

In 1940, the US Congress voted funding to build a two-ocean navy, and in the following year Lend-Lease saw US dockyards made available for the repair and maintenance of British vessels. Between 1939 and 1945, almost 6,000 ships were built at US naval yards. At its peak in November 1943, there were 1.7 million workers on shipyards, and during the war a total of 4.5 million men and women were employed in the industry. Shipyards are dangerous places and hectic production schedules resulted in numerous accidents. American workers were also exposed to silica dust, solvents, lead, mercury, and, of course, asbestos.

Because of its light weight, low conductivity, and impervious to salt water amosite was preferred to magnesia in the construction and repair of ships. Following a national conference of work conditions, in 1943, the Navy Department issued a set of minimum safety requirements which covered all aspects of shipyard work from traumatic accidents to insidious injury. The authors identified handling, sawing, cutting, molding, and welding-rod salvage as the major sources of asbestos dust. Among other provisions, they called for respirators for those working with silica, asbestos, solvents, acids, gases, and metal fumes. Dusty work areas were to be segregated, ventilation installed, and workers given regular medicals. Unfortunately, the pressures of work meant that those measures were not put into effect.

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Mesothelioma Lawsuit: The war encouraged the use of asbestos in a number of unlikely prod­ucts. Although they were never required on the battlefield, large num­bers of gas masks were manufactured, and as a preventative measure US and British troops were trained in their use. The masks made in British factories for the Ministry of Supply contained blue asbestos, which was believed to be an ideal filter. The filters were assembled in layers, inserted into the canisters, and soldered in place. The 1,200 women who assembled masks at Boots factory in Nottingham worked in clouds of dust. A number of factories also operated in Canada using the same specifications as the British Army. The crocidolite was initially processed at a textile plant in Asbestos, Quebec, where wool and fiber were carded in layers, cut into individual pads, and packed into boxes for dispatch to Ottawa and Montreal. There they were assembled by female workers who reduced the pads to a correct weight and volume by the manual removal of surface layers. The pads were then inserted into the canisters and tested. The finished canisters contained about 20 per cent crocidolite, by weight. The women, who assembled the masks, like the men and women who wore them in training, inhaled millions of crocidolite fibers.

The SS United States, which on its maiden voyage in 1952 established a record for the fastest Atlantic crossing, was full of blue and brown fiber. In addition to bulkhead insulation and Marinite boards, the lounge chairs, cushions, sea chests, curtains, and even bedding blankets on that ship were made from asbestos. In the construction industry, sprayed asbestos proved an important innovation. Before the invention of Limpet, steel girders on tall buildings had to be encased in concrete to prevent buckling. By reducing the weight of frames, building costs were also reduced. From 1950 the US National Gypsum Company marketed its own brand of spray called Thermacoustic. The first use of ‘mineral fiber for a large multi-storey building was on the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City in 1958. The sixty-floor structure was fireproofed with over 1 million square feet of sprayed mineral fiber, mostly Limpet. A thirty-storey building would use around 200 tonnes of fiber and by 1970 half of the large multi-storey buildings in the US were insulated with sprayed asbestos.

From the early 1960s, Armstrong-Cork, Congoleum Industries, GAF, and Johns-Manville began manufacturing asbestos paper. Specialty products, many of which were almost pure fiber, included flame barrier papers used in aircraft and ships and facial tissues. Asbestos papers were also used to filter pharmaceuticals, wines, and beer. The market grew rapidly and by 1975 over 326,500 tonnes of asbestos had been used as an additive in paper marketed in the US. At that time there were thirteen manufacturers. Johns-Manville and T&N used similar production techniques, but their market strategies were very different. T&N looked towards the British Empire and opened factories in colonial states. From the 1930s, T&N operated a/c plants at Kymore and Calcutta, in India, while in Africa it had factories in Nigeria, Kenya, Zambia, South Africa, and Southern Rhodesia. In contrast, Johns-Manville grew by opening new facilities within the vast US domestic market.

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Mesothelioma Lawsuit: Several parallels and convergences exist between the asbestos and tobacco industries. In the decade after the Second World War cigarette consumption in the US rose dramatically. By 1952 every citizen over the age of 15 consumed, on average, nearly 200 packs of cigarettes a year. The market was dominated by six companies selling a limited number of brands which were more or less identical. The American cigarette was a cylinder of plain thin paper, three inches long, filled with a mixture of burley and flu-cured tobacco. Each manufacturer sought to impress its brand upon consumers and, to that end, by the early 1950s the industry was spending over $50 million a year on advertising. Lorillard, one of the smaller producers, had a tiny share of the market.

In the midst of its commercial success the tobacco industry was faced suddenly in 1952 with medical evidence linking smoking with lung cancer. The release of that knowledge into the public domain saw a sharp fall in the demand for tobacco products. The industry response was to introduce mentholated and filter-tipped cigarettes and in 1954 alone nineteen new brands or new versions of old brands came onto the market. Cigarette filters were made from a variety of materials, including absorbent cotton, crepe paper, and cellulose acetate fibers. Lorillard was keen to increase its sales by introducing a brand which could be promoted for its unsurpassed safety. In 1951 its management became aware of a secret filtering material which had recently been declassified by the US Army. That material, which was so fine that it could trap particles as small as one micron, was the African blue asbestos used in gas masks.

Asbestos was associated in the public imagination with safety and Loril­lard was quick to recognize that it was an ideal material with which to assuage smokers’ fears. Lorillard subcontracted the work to a factory near Boston, which made the new ‘Micronite’ filters from a mixture of crocidolite, crimp paper, and cotton acetate. The production process was entirely dry, which resulted in high dust levels within the plant. The new brand was given a clean white package to appeal to female smokers and named Kent, after Lorillard’s retiring president Herbert A. Kent. The cigarette was a prestige product selling for 8 or 9 cents above the price of regular filter tips. It was promoted by Lorillard as ‘the greatest health protection in cigarette history’.

Our use of the term or terms Mesothelioma Lawsuit is for descriptive purposes only. There is no relationship between the owners of this website and the maker of the product discussed in this post. Our use of the words Recall, Class Action Lawsuit and other similar words related to an event do not necessarily mean that this event has occurred. Refer to the website of the United States Food and Drug Administration for information on drug or medical device recalls. If a Class Action Lawsuit is formed in relation to the product discussed in this post we will provide that information at the time the Class Action is formed. A Class Action Lawsuit is not required to exist for you to file a lawsuit if you have been injured by the product discussed in this post.

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Mesothelioma News (2/28/12): Mesothelioma Lawsuit options are available to those who have been diagnosed with this form of cancer. The most common cause for Mesothelioma is occupational or secondary asbestos exposure. Asbestos is a naturally-occurring fiber found in components such as insulation, ship materials or brake pads. Individuals who work in industrial settings are especially at risk to being exposed to asbestos. Secondary exposure resulting in Mesothelioma can occur after contact with the asbestos fibers on another person’s clothes or body. If you were diagnosed with Mesothelioma, you might consider speaking with a Mesothelioma Attorney who is qualified and works specifically on Mesothelioma Lawsuits. This website connects victims of asbestos with experienced Mesothelioma Attorneys. You can get in touch with our company by filling out the form to your right.

Typically, there is a great deal of time between a person’s exposure to asbestos and the development of asbestos-related health issues such as Mesothelioma. Mesothelioma has been associated with a long-latency period that could possibly last 20 to 50 years. When pursuing this kind of legal case, you need a Mesothelioma Attorney with the resources and knowledge to handle your case.

The terms Mesothelioma Lawsuit, Mesothelioma Lawsuits, Mesothelioma Attorney, and Mesothelioma Lawyer are used to describe the case type and the legal professional who is knowledgeable about the challenges involved in Mesothelioma cases.

There is not a known cure for Mesothelioma. If your workplace exposed you to a harmful substance that has threatened your health and finances, you might want to consider seeking legal counsel regarding your Mesothelioma diagnosis. We can provide you with connections to a network of seasoned Mesothelioma Lawsuit attorneys. Call us today for prompt attention from one of our team members. We can guide you through the crucial process of finding the right Mesothelioma Lawyer to represent you.

Mesothelioma News – 3/5/2012: More information about your search

Mesothelioma: Work conditions in the US industry remained largely unchanged from 1930 to the late 1960s. Basil Whipple began work at the Ruberoid plant in Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1935. For twenty years he was employed on a paper- drying machine before moving into the mill board department. Ruberoid bought scrap gaskets from various suppliers, which Whipple would feed into a speed hammer mill. The mill ground the waste into a powder to which new asbestos would be added. The old gaskets came in burlap sacks as did the asbestos, which was purchased from Johns-Manville and the Ruberoid subsidiary Vermont Asbestos. The beating room and the trimming machines were in a single building, but the grinder created so much dust that Whipple was forced to close the door when the machine was operating. There were no warning labels on the asbestos bags, no ventilation fans, and no warning signs in the mill. The union complained to the management about the dust/ but Ruberoid always said it was harmless: ‘Nobody was scared of asbestos then’/ Whipple later recalled: ‘They didn’t understand it.’

Asbestos dust scattered well beyond the factory gates. The streets around T&N’s Roberts’ plant in Leeds were awash with fiber and in the words of one resident: ‘It was as though we were practically eating dust. I remember dust and fiber all around the streets near the factory. You could see the dust in the air. I have seen it blow around like a snowstorm.’ In addition, workers brought dust home on their clothes. A physician who worked for an American manufacturer described that problem in the following way: ‘Once asbestos gets into the home, carried home by the workmen, it is there virtually permanently—it gets into the rugs, into the carpets, it gets suspended by movement and actually you are getting 24 hour/day exposure.’ Most American, British, and French workers who came into contact with asbestos did not work in the primary industry, but were employed at oil refineries, shipyards, on building sites or in auto-repair shops. In addition to their exposure to a known hazard they shared a lack of knowl­edge about the dangers they faced. The actor Steve McQueen, who died from mesothelioma at the age of 50, and who is said to have worked in shipyards and for a time in a brake-repair shop, is typical of the casualties.

The US market for drum brake linings was dominated by Raybestos- Manhattan Inc. Its brake and clutch pads were marketed under the brand names Raybestos and Grey-Rock and sold to automotive warehouses, distributors and jobbers, car dealers, and repair shops. Raybestos also sold direct to ‘do-it-yourself’ car owners. Most drum linings were by weight between a third and three-quarters pure asbestos. Disc pads also contained chrysotile. According to the Asbestos Information Association, by 1972 worldwide over 300 million motor vehicles used asbestos-based brake linings. In that year in the US alone, more than 50,000 tonnes of asbestos was used in their manufacture. As one manager of an auto-repair shop commented in 1975: ‘Almost everything that moves uses some form of asbestos friction material.’

Those exposed to airborne fiber included workers in garages and shops, suppliers, re builders of brake shoes, and those employed in car dealer yards. The industry created further problems through the casual disposal of waste. It is possible to gauge just how dusty repair shops were by the reaction of employers in 1975, when the American health and safety body, the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), proposed to introduce more stringent dust regulations. Jim Lewis who ran two small auto shops in suburban Dallas estimated that it would cost him $45,000 to comply with the new standard. As a result, his employees would not receive a deserved wage rise and his consumers would pay more to have their brakes repaired.

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Mesothelioma:  In a letter to the Department of Labor Lewis wrote: ‘Almost everything uses some form of asbestos friction material. Before long, with all the new safety standards coming into effect we may have the safest country in the world, but very few people will be able to afford to live here.’ Roy Watts, the manager of the Hastings Company, in King, North Carolina, ran a small shop rebuilding auto parts. He estimated that in order to comply with the new OSHA standards he would have to seal off the ‘tear down’ and relining areas used for brake shoes and clutch discs, install filter exhaust ventilation in all work areas, provide respirators and protective clothing for employees, install showers and change rooms, put up warning signs, and introduce sophisticated monitoring equipment. Few repair shops ever conformed to such standards.

The situation was no better in the construction industry. In 1968 the International Association of Heat & Frost Insulators & Asbestos Workers had 18,000 members, with probably the same number working outside the union. The insulation trade consisted of a large number of small businesses. By the mid-1960s, there were more than a thousand employers each on average employing less than twenty men. Small employers lacked the capacity to make workplaces safe. Those few that did had little impact on the wider industry as men would move from one job to another or from one employer to the next.

Western societies could enjoy the benefits of asbestos in a vast range of products only because of the output of the industry’s mines. The asbestos mines were important in another way: the major companies derived the bulk of their profits from them. The sale of fiber was crucial to Johns- Manville and as production levels rose, so too did the amount of asbestos it sold to other manufacturers. In 1951, sales of Canadian Johns-Manville were in excess of $58 million, of which just over half went to outside companies. During 1957, which marked Johns-Manville’s centenary, its four Canadian mines produced 568,000 tonnes of asbestos: less than 20 per cent went to Johns-Manville factories. The $60 million the company invested at that time in expanding and modernizing its Canadian plants was financed largely from the sale of fiber.

The source of corporate profits becomes even more obvious if Johns-Manville’s annual reports are examined closely. In 1972, it had 25,000 employees and total sales of almost $800 million. Construction materials was the largest of the company’s five divisions with sales of $347 million and a profit of $41 million. But in terms of profits the most important part of the company’s operations was its thirteen mines which had sales of $88 million and profits at $20 million. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the profits from the mining division were often in excess of 20 per cent. By contrast the construction materials division returned barely half that figure. In 1973 sales to foreign countries, including fiber, accounted for less than 20 per cent of total sales, but over one-third of the group’s profits. Thus, the steady, sometimes spectacular, rise in Johns-Manville’s profits after 1930 was heavily reliant on mining.

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Mesothelioma: Far away from the corporate boardrooms in New York and London, workers toiled to produce asbestos fiber. One of the peculiarities of asbestos is that it tends to be mined in beautiful places. The Cassiar mine in British Columbia and the Libby Mine in Montana are set like ‘jewels’ in the North American mountain wilderness. Chrysotile Arizona was established at the bottom of Ash Creek Canyon, in the shimmering desert area east of Phoenix. The Shabanie mine in Zimbabwe is surrounded by conical hills, which could have been lifted from a Ming dynasty painting. The now deserted Penge mine in South Africa is adjacent to the Kruger National Park and nestles in the midst of steep hills which are cut through by the Oliphants River. The bleached landscape around Kuruman in the Northern Cape is offset by the blue Asbestos Mountains where ‘eyes’ of subterranean water form striking oases. Havelock in Swaziland lies in the midst of spectacular mountains and forests. The long-abandoned Wittenoom mine in the Pilbara region of Western Australia is framed by intense blue skies, bright red earth, and the hauntingly beautiful ghost gums which line the Wittenoom Gorge. Such physical beauty forms a sharp contrast to the work conditions on the mines and the impact of mining upon the health of local communities.

Asbestos miners faced many of the same problems as other miners, including low rates of pay, dangerous conditions, and intractable manage­ment. There are in addition technical factors which make asbestos mining particularly hazardous. Although the methods of extracting asbestos ore have varied from open-cut to depth-mining, the aim of processing fiber is always the same, namely to preserve the mineral’s physical properties. For that reason asbestos is milled dry. After arriving at a mill, ore is fed into primary crushers, then crushed and sorted.

In 1878, mining began at Thetford in Canada, but the methods of extraction were primitive and returns depended upon the richness of the ore. The Canadian mines were mostly open-cut and the covering soil, which was up to twenty feet thick, had to be removed in summer; in winter the ground froze. Quarry mining appealed to management as it required no ventilation or timbering and offered easier supervision of the workforce. There were no such advantages for labor and from November to April the men who toiled in the quarries were exposed to snow and ice. Most of the cobbing or hand processing was done on contract by teams of women who were paid between 30 and 35 cents per hundred-weight. The cost of labor was so low that a tonne of fiber could be cobbed for less than $8. The Canadian mines enjoyed the advantage of proximity to the huge US market thereby avoiding the freight costs which hit Southern African and Russian producers. Initially, only long fibers, which accounted for around 2 per cent of Canadian output, were bagged and the remaining ‘shorts’ were discarded. The discovery that short fibers could be combined with pulp to make asbestos paper, with cement to make shingles, or magnesia to make insulation, revolutionized the market.

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Mesothelioma:  The conditions on the Quebec mines were harsh. In January 1949, the Montreal newspaper Le Devoir carried a series of articles on the village of East Broughton, a poor community in Canada’s poorest province. The author, Burton LeDoux, interviewed miners and their families and described the deplorable conditions under which they lived and worked. The sole source of employment for the village’s 3,000 inhab­itants was the Quebec Asbestos Corporation, a subsidiary of Philip Carey The mine lay next to the Corporation’s factory, which operated six days a week. The rates of pay were low and the work conditions were hard. The mill was bitterly cold in winter and there was no place for the men to eat away from the dust and noise. To keep the costs of production to a minimum, the Corporation relied upon manual labor and even the cleaning of the mill was done by hand. There was no safety equipment and workers would themselves buy goggles to keep the fiber out of their eyes. Every part of the operation, from mining to processing, to the bagging of asbestos, created clouds of dust. Le Doux found that by the end of each shift the men’s clothes were encrusted with grey-green fiber, as were their faces, eyebrows, ears, and hair.

The provincial government in Quebec was aware of the situation, according to LeDoux, but chose to do nothing. In February 1949, min­ers at Johns-Manville’s Asbestos mine began a strike for better pay and conditions. The strike, which soon spread to Thetford, lasted five months and became a turning point in the history of labor relations in Quebec. It did not, however, end the threat of occupational and environmental dis­ease. Johns-Manville’s management told its shareholders that the miners wanted excessive wage increases and absurd leave entitlements. It made no mention of their demands for improved work conditions.

During the 1950s there was little improvement on Canadian mines. When T&N’s company physician Dr John Knox visited Thetford in December 1964, he found there was less dust on the pavements and roofs of domestic dwellings than on his previous visit twelve years earlier. But he noted that none of the new houses or the schools had been ‘posi­tioned with the idea of avoiding dust blown off the encircling (asbestos) dumps’. He was particularly concerned that fiber from the 250 tonnes of waste generated each day at Bell Mine was blown over the district. A decade later T&N’s senior physician, Dr Hilton Lewinsohn, found the area heavily polluted. Even the new mill at Lake Asbestos was choked with dust and he lamented that the ventilation system had been designed to enhance output rather than improve occupational safety. There were ten active mining companies in the region, employing about 6,200 work­ers, at the mining towns of Black Lake, Thetford, and Asbestos. In places, the miners’ homes were sandwiched in valleys created by the dumps.

Working conditions were always hazardous and visitors commented that in the mill, visibility was less than six feet. There was no dust extraction system, simply a rusty tube vented to the mill’s exterior/ and workers described conditions as being akin ‘to constant snow’. There were no respirators or showers and no proper place for the men to take meals. In 1963 a journalist who visited Canari described it as ‘a truly white hell’. In the early 1960s, local authorities became concerned that the dumping of asbestos waste into the sea was discouraging tourism. Public debate about the mine’s environmental impact coincided with labor disputes over wages and working conditions. In 1965 Etemit closed the mine.

The exception to the rule of profitable mines was Wittenoom in Western Australia. The mine, which was operated by the Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR) from 1944 until 1966, was the only crocidolite mine outside South Africa. As its name suggests, CSR was a sugar-processing company and its management never came to terms with the demands of an unfamiliar industry. Wittenoom was unable to produce fiber compet­itively against imports from South Africa and the mine recorded losses for most years of its operation. By 1955, it had accumulated debts of A$ 1,600,000. At the mine’s closure that figure had grown to A$2.5 mil­lion. The failure of Wittenoom was due to a number of factors. They included the mine’s isolation (it was 1,000 miles north-east of the state capital, Perth), the high cost of transport, the hardness of the host ore which destroyed ducting in a matter of hours, and CSR’s lack of expertise. The major factor was the high cost of labor. To attract workers to such an inhospitable site, where summer temperatures were often over 40“C, it was necessary to pay high wages. The wages for unskilled labor were seven times higher than in Perth and many more times higher than those paid to black miners in South Africa.

Our use of the term or terms Mesothelioma is for descriptive purposes only. There is no relationship between the owners of this website and the maker of the product discussed in this post. Our use of the words Recall, Class Action Lawsuit and other similar words related to an event do not necessarily mean that this event has occurred. Refer to the website of the United States Food and Drug Administration for information on drug or medical device recalls. If a Class Action Lawsuit is formed in relation to the product discussed in this post we will provide that information at the time the Class Action is formed. A Class Action Lawsuit is not required to exist for you to file a lawsuit if you have been injured by the product discussed in this post.

To keep up to date on Mesothelioma News visit our site often.

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Asbestos Exposure and Veterans

(June 14, 2011)

There are currently 25 million individuals who have served in the United States Armed Forces according to the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of veterans living today may have been victims of asbestos exposure during their service in the armed forces. Asbestos was widely used by all of the military branches because of its durability, fireproofing abilities and heat resistance properties.

Almost all military divisions used asbestos for insulation purposes with over 300 products that contained asbestos used. However, the navy primarily used it from the 1930s all the way to the 1970s. Every ship built and used by the navy was incorporated with a large amount of asbestos-containing products and materials. The products and materials were generously used in the boiler and engine rooms plus any areas below deck for the purpose of fire safety. Any navy personnel working below deck were unfortunately exposed to heavy amounts of asbestos, and any former navy crew members are still at risk because asbestos was present in their sleeping quarters, navigation rooms and mess halls. Products like gaskets, brakes, cement adhesives and valves contained asbestos. Other items such as floor and pipe coverings contained dangerous levels of asbestos as well and, between the 1930s to the mid-1970s, practically every section of the typical navy ship had products made with asbestos. Studies have proved that navy veterans and shipyard workers are one of the biggest groups at risk for developing any asbestos-related diseases.

A significant amount of Americans diagnosed with mesothelioma were exposed to asbestos during their armed forces service and, due to typical military practices, veterans who served in any of the armed forces between 1940 and 1970 have the risk of developing an asbestos-related illness. Navy personnel and crew who worked in shipyards from the 1930s to the 1970 face an even greater risk for developing an asbestos-related illness. If you were a veteran during any of the time frames mentioned and are suffering from asbestos exposure or veterans mesothelioma, you should contact an asbestos or mesothelioma law firm at once.

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(June 14, 2011)

Mesothelioma is described as a rare cancer type that develops within a protective lining that covers the multiple internal organs labeled as mesothelium. The common area that is likely to be infected is the pleura (the internal wall of the chest and the outer lining of the lungs). Mesothelioma can also develop in the peritoneum (lining surrounding the abdominal cavity), the pericardium (sac that surrounds the heart) and the tunica vaginitis (sac that surrounds the testis). Studies have shown that asbestos exposure is the leading cause of mesothelioma. However, even though no definite association has been made between smoking and mesothelioma, it has been concluded smoking dramatically increases the risk of developing other asbestos-induced cancers. Individuals may have mesothelioma and not be aware of its presence because symptoms and signs may not appear for twenty to fifty years and, in some documented cases, over fifty years.

It is reported that people who developed an asbestos-related illness had an occupation or worked in an environment where they inhaled glass particles, asbestos fibers and dust or handled the material in some way. Family members or anyone living with workers exposed to asbestos are also at risk, because it can be carried home from work on the hair, clothing and shoes. Industrial and commercial products have been made with asbestos since the early twentieth century and, since that time, asbestos exposure has been labeled a dangerous occupational health hazard.

Being cured of mesothelioma is exceedingly rare and people diagnosed with this disease are typically expected to have a poor prognosis. The life expectancy of mesothelioma is usually limited, but there have been a number of notable individuals who have survived the condition or lived well past their given life expectancy. Numerous mesothelioma lawsuits have been filed against companies who manufactured products made with asbestos and neglected to implement any safety measures or inform their employees about the dangers of asbestos exposure. If you or a loved one are at risk of having mesothelioma, a mesothelioma attorney should be contacted at once.

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