Asbestos Exposure
It was once thought that only asbestos miners, shipyard workers, and pipe fitters were in danger, because of their occupations, of coming into contact with dangerous levels of asbestos fibers. However, it is now known that asbestos fibers are a ubiquitous pollutant of the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink. According to Laurence Malloy, a New York-based asbestos investigator, asbestos fibers are in the air throughout the U.S. and we breathe them in on a daily basis without realizing it. Consider, for example, that every single time an automobile or train applies its brakes, thousands of potentially lethal asbestos fibers from the brake linings are released into the atmosphere. Every time there is an unskilled effort to remove or abate asbestos from a building—a dangerous process that involves ripping and scraping asbestos fibers from a building's superstructure—hundreds of thousands of asbestos fibers may be released. It is estimated that significant amounts of asbestos are present in 20% of all U.S. public and commercial buildings, a total of 733,000 structures. At present, there is considerable debate as to the true hazard of the millions of tons of such "in place" asbestos. Every time there is a rainfall or windstorm, there is an erosion of asbestos fibers from asbestos mining sites. As a result of this activity, it is estimated that the typical American breathes in, unwittingly, about one million asbestos fibers a year.
Although this passive exposure is not necessarily considered physiologically harmful, the fact remains that there is no "safe" dosage or tolerance level of asbestos, and even low levels may cause some lung disease, such as bronchitis. Further, asbestos fibers have been declared the "prototype environmental carcinogen;" this means that even low level exposure over extended periods of time may result in cancer.
If these considerations seem daunting, as they should, consider the plight of the prospective asbestos-injury client who has been exposed to copious high-level quantities of asbestos fibers, often occupationally, over the course of a number of years. It has been known for some time that such long-term exposure is causally associated with a host of seriously debilitative diseases, some of which are ultimately fatal. These diseases include asbestosis, mesothelioma, lung cancer, and cancers of the digestive tract (esophagus, stomach, intestines, and rectum). Because onset of symptomatology has a latency period which may last anywhere from 10 to 40 years, at the time of diagnosis the client may be too seriously ill for treatment to have any ameliorative effect. Even if diagnosis is early, it may be too late to forestall a slow and painful death. This is because of three disquieting facts relative to the chemical nature of asbestos, and the physiology of the human organism:
• Once larger asbestos fibers are breathed in or swallowed, they become trapped in the mucous linings of the nose and throat; they remain lodged there permanently and can never be purged.
• Smaller asbestos fibers find their way deep into the mucous linings; from there they can migrate to almost all other parts of the body, including the brain and sex organs.
• Following exposure, once the process of lung tissue deterioration has begun, it will—even without further inhalation of asbestos fibers—continue throughout the latency period.
Despite abundant medical and case study documentation of the dire effects of asbestos-fiber exposure, and efforts since 1973 by the federal government to regulate and ultimately ban the use of asbestos in all non-essential commercial and industrial products, astonishingly, some 800,000 tons of asbestos ore continue to be mined and processed in the U.S. each year to make about 3,000 different products, two-thirds of which are presently used in the construction industry.
If you or someone you know has been injured by exposure to asbestos call the Law Office of Harold D. Thompson right away.
