Quoted from http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/07/21/97624/asbestos-us-legacy-may-be-half.html
Asbestos’ U.S. legacy may be half-million deaths
Anthophyllite asbestos fibers viewed through an electron microscope. | U.S. Geological Survey
By Jim Morris | International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
WASHINGTON — The first sign of trouble came as Bill Rogers was mowing his lawn one January morning in 2007. “As I would go back and forth with the mower, I would run out of air,” said Rogers, 67, of Palm Bay, Fla.
Rogers went to the doctor and learned that his right lung was full of fluid. Three days later he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a lethal tumor that occurs in the lining of the chest or the abdomen and almost always is associated with asbestos exposure. “I’d heard of it, but I didn’t really know what it was,” he said. “They told me it’s not a good cancer to get.”
That Rogers is alive more than three years after his diagnosis is something of a miracle. To him, the source of his illness is clear: He worked on or around asbestos-containing automobile brakes, mostly at General Motors dealerships, for 44 years. He and his co-workers had used compressed-air hoses to clean out brake drums, where debris from worn asbestos brake shoes would collect, and had filed and sanded the shoes when installing new brakes.
Although he routinely wore a respirator while sanding plastic filler during bodywork, he said, no one ever told him he needed one for brake work. He sued GM, Ford, Chrysler and seven manufacturers and suppliers of brakes and clutches in 2008 and settled with the last of them in 2009.
Rogers is among hundreds of former mechanics and body shop employees known to have developed mesothelioma after working on brakes, clutches and gaskets, which contained the most common form of the mineral — chrysotile, or white, asbestos — well into the 1990s. Many have sued auto manufacturers and parts makers, litigation that reflects the unceasing burden of asbestos disease in the United States.
Asbestos has decimated the ranks of miners, millers, factory workers, insulators and shipyard workers, some of whom began filing workers’ compensation claims as far back as the 1930s. The modern era of asbestos lawsuits began in the 1970s with claims from these same groups of workers. Many had taken in massive doses of fiber and died of diseases such as asbestosis, which can develop within a decade of initial exposure. Some of the cases involved mixtures of amosite, or brown, asbestos, which is no longer used, and chrysotile.
In court now, aside from a few heavily exposed claimants, are mechanics, teachers from asbestos-filled schools and the wives and children of workers who brought home asbestos on their clothing. Most of these people had relatively light exposures and developed mesothelioma, a disease that can take 30, 40 or even 50 years to appear.
