« Libby, Montana Gets Its Day In Court | Home | Man Dies From Mesothelioma; Body Taken Back By Defendants From Funeral »
Study Finds UK Has Highest Rate of Mesothelioma Deaths in World
By asbestoshub | March 9, 2009
The rate at which workers exposed to asbestos die of mesothelioma is higher in the UK than anywhere else in the world.
According to the BBC:
One in 17 UK carpenters born in the 1940s will die of the asbestos-related lung cancer mesothelioma, researchers predict.
They also calculated the deadly disease would strike one in 50 plumbers, electricians and decorators and one in 125 other construction workers.
2005 saw the deaths of 1,749 men from mesothelioma in the UK, according to a study in the British Journal of Cancer.
The researchers calculated the lifetime risk of the disease among workers exposed to asbestos for more than a decade before the age of 30 and found overall, the projected lifetime risk of fatal meothelioma in all British men born in the 1940s was about one in 170.
There was also a small increased risk in those who had lived with someone who had been exposed to asbestos.
More than 2,100 people are diagnosed with mesothelioma in the UK each year.
Lead researcher Professor Julian Peto, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Institute of Cancer Research, said,
“The risk is highest in people who were exposed to asbestos before age 30.
“By getting information on all the jobs people had ever done we have shown that the risk in some occupations, particularly in the building industry, is higher than we previously thought.
“Also, other potential ‘risk factors’ such as residence in certain types of housing, living near industrial sites, or engagement in DIY activity, were not associated with an increased risk.”
Well that’s small comfort.
