Mesothelioma Health News

The government of Japan is expanding their biannual checks for the management of asbestos in buildings throughout the country, increasing the number of structures on their list from 260,000 to 2 million.

An article in The Japan Times states that “The Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry will examine with local officials the 2 million buildings to lessen public anxiety over health hazards caused by asbestos.” The inspections could start as early as March 2009 and will include almost all private-sector facilities nationwide, the report adds.

Buildings such as shops and hotels will be part of the inspection, but schools, private homes, and wooden buildings will not, as they fall under a different jurisdiction.

Prior to this addition of more than 1.75 million buildings, the ministry only did checks on large facilities, including factories that have a floor space of more than 1,000 sq. meters and were built between 1956 and 1989, the article points out. The ministry’s main concern has been whether asbestos is left uncovered and exposed to the air.

The increase in inspections was prompted by a study completed last December, which showed that 7 out of 42 of the inspected facilities – nearly 17 percent – left asbestos uncovered and exposed.

Mesothelioma, an asbestos-caused cancer, has become a growing problem in Japan, particularly in certain prefectures where asbestos products were manufactured and asbestos fibers were leaked into the community, sickening not only factory workers but also those who lived near the factories.

Israel has experienced 100 asbestos-related fires in just one year, prompting the Firefighting Authority to come up with new ways to deal with the dangerous mineral in order to keep firefighters safe and to increase their life expectancy.

“Firefighters around the world have a life expectancy that is 10 years shorter than average, probably due to exposure to smoke, toxins and asbestos,” Israel Fire Commissioner Shimon Romach said in an article in Ha’aretz.

Recently, Romach called on Yitzhak Shalev, Israel’s national asbestos officer, to draw up new regulations for firefighters to follow when tackling fires where asbestos is present. Shalev said he “drafted a method to deal with asbestos fires, including using protective gear and coordinating with various bodies, such as the Environmental Protection Ministry, to remove the asbestos once the fire is out.”

“Nowadays firefighters have protective equipment and I am briefed about every event involving asbestos,” he added.

Shalev adds that there are millions of square meters of asbestos in buildings and garbage dumps around the country and that a recent report by Labor and Welfare Ministry showed that firefighters in Israel have a much higher-than-average rate of serious breathing problems.

Asbestos, a known carcinogen, can be harmless when undisturbed. However, fire causes the mineral to crumble and dangerous fibers to become airborne. The special gear now worn by the firefighters can help avoid inhalation, Shalev reports.

However, individuals living or working near asbestos fire sites should still take care to avoid the mineral, which often spreads after fires. He cited a fire at a fireworks storage house on Kibbutz Afek three years ago, which spread asbestos over a large part of the kibbutz and may have affected those living and working there.

Kyla Sentes, a public health sciences PhD student at the University of Alberta who has been researching problems with Calgary’s roadways, says many of the city’s roads contain asbestos and that roadwork on those streets poses a public health hazard to those who live and work in the vicinity.

City officials, however, maintain that there is no public health hazard. However, Sentes says road crews aren’t wearing the proper protective gear and she fears that they are inhaling asbestos fibers. Asbestos was used in asphalt in many Canada provinces until the mid 1980s.

“People should look like space men when they’re out there - there’s zero excuse for [not wearing protection],” she said, pointing to decades worth of research into the toxic substance. “I was kind of floored that some kind of assessment wasn’t made public to the people in Calgary that this was in their roadways.”

Sentes is also concerned that the city will use recycled asphalt when repaving the roads, creating the same hazards over again.

“It still tops every occupational disease mortality data every year in the country,” Sentes, a member of Ottawa-based Ban Asbestos Canada, says about mesothelioma, a serious asbestos-caused cancer. Sentes’ father died of mesothelioma eight years ago.

Employees at Australia’s Gold Coast Airport are concerned about the potential of asbestos exposure during an extensive airport renovation project even though officials tell them there are no health risks involved.

An article in the Tweed Daily News explains that the potential risk was discovered when a memo to certain employees was leaked to the newspaper. After being approached by the paper, airport officials confirmed the presence of asbestos in the terminal ceiling, which will be disturbed when reconstruction work on the terminal begins in about six months.

The Transport Workers Union of Australia (TWUA), which represents more than 50 baggage handlers at the airport, said they were unaware of the situation until contacted by the newspaper. Union officials say they will remove the handlers from the airport if they suspect asbestos contamination is an issue.

“We are going to pursue it. We will have one of our officials investigate it,” said Hughie Williams, branch secretary of the TWUA Queensland. “The airport will have to take absolute total care, or we will not be having baggage handlers at the airport if there is any chance they will be exposed.

“If there is asbestos then we will be addressing that with the airport. No one should be allowed in the terminal,” Williams added, noting that he was already concerned for the workers’ safety.

“We have a lot of members at the Gold Coast Airport. We will take it up with the Gold Coast City Council and make sure that our people in there are safe,” he said.

Gold Coast Airport chief operating officer Paul Donovan, however, maintained that there would be no risk to passengers or staff.

“No one is at risk. There will not be two million people affected by this,” Mr. Donovan said. “We will be removing it after hours so that neither staff nor passengers will be introduced to it.”

Employees and the general public have not been notified yet, Donovan explained, because it will be half-a-year before the project gets started. Notifications will go out as the renovation nears.

Road crews working on a number of streets in the Toronto area need to wear haz-mat suits and residents in the area have been warned to take precautions because the asphalt used to pave the street was found to contain trace amounts of asbestos.

According to the North York Mirror, Ministry of Labour regulations maintain that the work crews must wear hazardous material suits because the asphalt contains 1 to 3 per- cent asbestos, above the legal limit of .5 percent. The city has also passed out fliers telling residents to keep their doors and windows closed while work is in progress.

Water trucks constantly spray the streets where work is being done in order to minimize the amount of dust circulating through the air. Residents are also informed by police, who are stationed near the construction, not to return home during construction time.

Bill Mason, the city’s superintendent of technical operations in the Etobicoke/York district, says he believes the public health risk is minimal. “There is not a lot of dust involved in this operation,” he said, adding health and safety officials have tested samples to ensure the asbestos is not a threat.

However, the project has continued to upset a number of area residents. One woman was alarmed because she and her neighbors were not notified before work began. Others believe the city is taking all the necessary steps to avoid contamination.

“It’s not as bad as it sounds. They’re just resurfacing the roads,” said one resident. “We’re keeping our windows closed. We don’t go walking during the day. I think by night the dust should have settled. Right now, the water truck is going down the street so they are taking precautions.”

Claiming her husband’s death from asbestos exposure was “maliciously caused” by nearly four dozen defendants, the wife of a refinery worker is suing 44 companies in a Texas court.

According to an article in the Southeast Texas Record, Marilyn Waugh, whose husband Albert Waugh worked for several refineries in The Lone Star State, is suing industrial manufacturer A.W. Chesterton and 43 other companies for “conspiring to mine, process, sell and distribute asbestos products.”

The suits also claims the companies “suppressed the information pertaining to asbestos’ hazardous influence on human health” and also “purposely caused” Albert Waugh’s asbestos-related disease.

“Defendants knowingly conspired among themselves to cause Waugh’s injuries, diseases, and illness and/or death by exposing him to asbestos,” the suit says. “Defendants committed conspiracy by willfully misrepresenting and suppressing the truth as to the risks and dangers associated with asbestos.”

No specific information was given as to the date of Waugh’s death and whether or not he died of the asbestos cancer, mesothelioma.

The article did state, however, the Waugh’s widow is suing for “physical pain and suffering in the past and future, mental anguish in the past and future, lost wages, loss of earning capacity, disfigurement in the past and future, physical impairment in the past and future, and past and future medical expenses, including home medical care costs.”

Punitive and exemplary damages will also be sought in the Waugh case.

The rate of mesothelioma in Nahariya - a coastal town of about 50,000 near the Lebanese border and a popular tourist destination - is ten times higher than it is for the remainder of the Israel.

In an article in Haaretz, the chief doctor of the Health Ministry’s Acre District, Shihab Shihab, to the Knesset Internal Affairs Committee, said she attributes 70% of incidences of mesothelioma to asbestos exposure. She did not indicate what she believed caused the remaining cases but she did note that smoking contributed to the development of meso among those who were exposed to the hazardous mineral.

Head of the Environment Ministry’s Asbestos Department Tamar Bar On said that “between 70 and 150 thousand cubic meters of asbestos can be found scattered across the Western Galilee region.” The material is mostly found in the yards of private homes - especially in Nahariya and the Matte Asher Regional Council, she added.

The Environment Ministry of Israel has earmarked money for the cleanup of asbestos in the Nahariya area in the past, the article notes, but none of the money has been used where it is needed.

According to Internal Affairs Committee Chairman Ophir Pines-Paz, “residents pay for this hazard with their lives, and instead of running from minister to minister with budget requests, the city council is busy planting flowers.”

“The city council’s aim to prevent panic and avoid harming the area’s tourism looks like one of the reasons that the subject hasn’t received the appropriate emergency treatment up until now,” added local politician Yossi Beilin.

The Internal Affairs Committee has promised to address the problem in the near future.

An apartment building in Boulder, Colo. that rented to many University of Colorado students remains off-limits today after inspectors found asbestos in the drywall mud.

According to an article in the Daily Camera, a fire Saturday at the Hill House apartments displaced 50 people, mostly university students, and though there were no injuries, it is expected that some tenants will lose everything. Complicating the issue is the presence of asbestos.

Police told the media that air quality tests were being done and that tenants could not re-enter the building until it was determined that asbestos fibers in the air were within the legal limits. Officials also noted that some items may not be salvageable because of the level of asbestos contamination inside the building.

“This is incredibly traumatic,” CU spokesman Bronson Hilliard said, noting that some of the students whose apartments burned lost possessions such as lap tops, cell phones, wallets, and passports, as well as clothes and other personal belongings. One student told a counselor that all she had left were the shorts, shirt, and flip flops she was wearing when the fire broke out.

Hilliard said the university is “still trying to determine exactly how many students were affected.” During the summer, many students sublet their apartments and some may have been out of town for travel. The university is available to help with emergency housing needs as well as meals and other necessities, he added.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been conducting air monitoring tests in several towns affected by the recent floods in Iowa, hoping to keep an eye on the level of asbestos in the air caused by the damage and demolition of homes in the area.

According to an article in the Daily Iowan, the EPA notes that the tests are “purely precautionary” and part of normal procedure after floods like the ones that hit Iowa late last month. Similar measures were taken last year after serious flooding occurred in Kansas and other states along the Mississippi.

 Marion Burnside, the Iowa asbestos coordinator for the National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants, said the main concern with asbestos is that it is light and easily airborne as well as strong and durable, so it’s able to subsist through the flooding. Burnside said asbestos was once used in more than 36,000 building materials, such as acoustic insulation, thermal insulation, and fire proofing, and that many of the damaged homes and commercial buildings in the area probably contained some asbestos materials.

“When you disturb [asbestos], it can break,” he explained. “Friable” or crumbling asbestos is easy to inhale, Burnside added. When asbestos is inhaled, it can lodge in the chest area and eventually cause serious pulmonary diseases such as asbestosis and mesothelioma.

Testing, says on-site EPA coordinator Kevin Larson, will continue for at least a few more weeks until officials are satisfied that no risk exists.

“We are trying to be proactive,” Larson said. “I think our message here is a positive one.”

With the busiest beach weekend of the summer behind us, frequenters of Chicago’s Illinois Beach State Park remain concerned about the hazards presented by the asbestos rock readily found on this 6.5 mile stretch of sand along Lake Michigan.

According to the Chicago Sun Times, a story printed in their newspaper in 1997 first broke the news about possible asbestos contamination at the popular beach. Eleven years later, there are few answers as to whether or not casual users of the beach are in danger of eventually developing diseases such as mesothelioma.

State and federal officials have maintained that the beach is safe yet last year, after 10 years of inaction, a special team from the U.S. EPA’s Environmental Response Center conducted further tests to determine safety levels. These tests came about a year after a 2006 study showed “significantly elevated” levels of asbestos at the park, including amphibole asbestos, which is the most toxic form of the mineral.

The article notes that asbestos rocks found at the beach appear as “normal” rocks to young visitors who enjoy building sandcastles. And despite warning signs that ask visitors not to handle the rocks, beachgoers often don’t know the difference between safe rocks and asbestos-containing materials.

Investigators have identified five different sources that may have caused the pollution along the beach, including a massive Johns-Manville site located just south of the park. Johns-Manville currently faces thousands of asbestos-related lawsuits from employees and others who’ve used their asbestos-containing products in the past.

Though the 2007 tests maintain that the beach is safe, advocates for asbestos reform disagree with the findings. An environmental watchdog group known as The Illinois Dunesland Preservation Society believes all the efforts have been inadequate and stress that exposure to asbestos, even at low levels, can cause significant health problems in the future.

Yet the EPA said just last week that a preliminary analysis “confirmed previous studies showing low levels of potential asbestos exposure for recreational users of the beach.” There is no cause for immediate action, they add.