Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

The Israeli news agency Haaretz.com reported recently that the northern coastal city of Nahariaya and its surrounding area has one of the largest concentrations of people diagnosed with mesothelioma, in the world. Until 1997, the city was home to the only asbestos plant in the country. Mesothelioma is directly linked to asbestos exposure.

Mesothelioma is a rare and deadly form of cancer that most often affects the lining of the chest cavity, spreading to the lungs. This is called pleural mesothelioma. A more rare form of the disease is peritoneal mesothelioma, which affects the lining of the abdomen. About 10-15 percent of mesothelioma is peritoneal.

According to a recent report presented by Dr. Micha Bar-Hana, director of the Health Minsitry’s cancer registry, mesothelioma affected 5.72 per 100,000 residents between 2002 and 2008, the news agency reports. This puts the Nahariaya area only behind Genoa, Italy, which reports the highest rate of asbestos-related cancer in the world.

Among the article’s most striking statistics, there were a total of 606 cases of mesothelioma in Israel between 1990 and 2008, with almost all of that number having died from the disease. In addition, in recent years there have been about 30 new cases of mesothelioma reported each year.

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