Not that this will be news to residents of Libby, Montana, but people who have ever lived a short distance from an asbestos-manufacturing plant may have an elevated risk of a rare form of cancer, a new study suggests.
Asbestos is a heat-resistant fibrous material that was once widely used in insulation, fireproofing, tiles and many other building materials. Breathing in airborne asbestos fibers can contribute to lung cancer and mesothelioma, a cancer of the membrane surrounding internal organs.
People who have ever had on-the-job exposure to asbestos — in industries like construction and insulation manufacturing — are at greatest risk of mesothelioma, of course, but new findings now suggest that people who have ever lived near an asbestos manufacturing plant are also at risk of developing the disease, several decades later.
In the study, Japanese researchers found higher-than-expected death rates from mesothelioma among people who lived near a former asbestos cement pipe plant between 1957 and 1975.
The risk steadily declined in proportion to distance plant, with elevated mesothelioma rates seen among people living up to roughly 1.5 miles downwind of the plant.
Residents who died of mesothelioma developed symptoms of the disease an average of 43 years after their first year living near the plant, according to Drs. Norio Kurumatani and Shinji Kumagal. The findings are published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
The researchers based their findings on 35 men and 38 women who had lived near the asbestos pipe plant between 1957 and 1975 and died of mesothelioma sometime between 1995 and 2006. None had had any occupational exposure to asbestos.
The mesothelioma death rate for these residents was four times what would be expected. The greatest risk was seen among men and women living within 300 meters of the plant; with a death rate for women at 41 times the expected rate, while the rate among men was 14 times the expected amount.
The findings strongly support exposure to the asbestos plant as the cause of these mesothelioma cases, according to Kurumatani and Kumagal.
In 2006, the researchers note, the Kubota Corporation, which ran the plant before it closed, established a compensation fund for people who developed asbestos-related diseases after having lived within 1.6 miles of the site during the time it used asbestos.
Kurumatani is at the Nara Medical University School of Medicine in Kashihara, and Kumagal is affiliated with the Osaka Prefecture Institute of Public Health in Osaka.
Mesothelioma can be diagnosed up to 40 years after the exposure to asbestos materials occur. Therefore, these people who lived by the plant may not show symptoms of mesothelioma cancer for quite some time. Hopefully, many will be lucky enough to not contract this horrible form of cancer. God bless