Asbestos mesothelioma: The last gasp

Quoted from http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/the-last-gasp/story-e6frezz0-1226361023603#

Asbestos mesothelioma: The last gasp

Maryanne Gatt and Lily Gatt

Maryanne Gatt’s (left) father John, died only four weeks after being diagnosed with an asbestos related disease and had no time to claim for compensation. Picture: Rohan Kelly Source: The Sunday Telegraph

Asbestos disease is a quick killer, snatching its victims in agony within just weeks of diagnosis. But a cruel NSW legal logjam means unless victims lodge a compensation claim in their dying days, their bereaved families are left with nothing. Jennifer Sexton reports.

When doctors told Maryanne Gatt her father had mesothelioma, she mouthed to her sister, a nurse, across his hospital bed: “What’s that?”

The diagnosis on Christmas Eve in 2010, that John Gatt had contracted the rampant cancer, came just months after a six-week holiday with his wife, Lily, through his birth country of Malta, and then Greece and Italy.

There were few signs on the trip that the cancer was spreading in a thin tissue across the internal organs of this fit 72-year-old. His appetite had waned and he felt a little tired, but had done a lot of walking.

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Exposure to deadly asbestos led to death of ‘strong’ electrician

Quoted from http://www.thisisderbyshire.co.uk/Exposure-deadly-asbestos-led-death-strong/story-16127759-detail/story.html

Exposure to deadly asbestos led to death of ‘strong’ electrician

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Derby Telegraph

AN electrician who worked in the ship and submarine building industry died after being exposed to asbestos.

Roland Hutchinson was diagnosed with malignant mesothelioma – linked to close contact with deadly asbestos dust – last year.

The 76-year-old, who was described as a “strong and forthright man”, started his working life as an apprentice electrician.

He had a variety of jobs throughout his career, including at a Lancashire shipbuilders, Rolls-Royce and Qualcast in Derby and in the Merchant Navy.

An inquest into Mr Hutchinson’s death heard it was during his working life that he was thought to have been exposed to asbestos.

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Malignant mesothelioma incidence among talc miners and millers in New York State.

Quoted from http://highwire.stanford.edu/cgi/medline/pmid;22544543:

HighWire Medline Abstract

Malignant mesothelioma incidence among talc miners and millers in New York State.

MM Finkelstein
Am J Ind Med, April 27, 2012; .

 

Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Program in Occupational Health and Environmental Medicine, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. murray.finkelstein@utoronto.ca.

 
 
 
 
 
 

BACKGROUND: There is controversy about the potential for dust from the talc mines and mills of New York State to cause mesothelioma. Honda et al. published a study of mortality among New York talc workers and concluded that it was unlikely that the two deaths from mesothelioma were caused by talc ore dust. However, fibers of tremolite and anthophyllite have been found in the lungs of talc workers and Hull concluded that “New York talc exposure is associated with mesothelioma, and deserves further public health attention.”

METHODS: Data concerning additional cases of mesothelioma in the cohort have been posted by NIOSH. I used information from the NIOSH website and the Honda report to analyze the incidence of mesothelioma during the years 1990-2007.

RESULTS: There were at least five new cases of mesothelioma in the cohort and mesothelioma incidence rates were at least five (1.6-11.7) times the rate in the general population (P?<?0.01).

CONCLUSIONS: I conclude that: (1) mesothelioma has been diagnosed among members of the cohort at a rate in excess of that in the general population; (2) fibers of tremolite and anthophyllite have been detected in dust and the lungs of talc workers; and (3) these fibers are known causes of mesothelioma. It is prudent, on the balance of probabilities, to conclude that dusts from New York State talc ores are capable of causing mesothelioma in exposed individuals.

Anger over asbestos mine’s deadly legacy

Quoted from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-01/anger-over-asbestos-mines-deadly-legacy/3981878/

Anger over asbestos mine’s deadly legacy

By Matt Peacock

Updated May 01, 2012 09:45:17

A broken petrol bowser sits in the asbestos town of Wittenoom in Western Australia

More than 2,000 people from Wittenoom have died from asbestos diseases.

Campaigners say they are becoming increasingly angered by the rising toll of mesothelioma deaths from the site of Australia’s biggest industrial disaster.

More than two dozen people are setting out today to walk across the desert from Kalgoorlie to Perth to highlight the urgent need for more research into the deadly asbestos cancer.

Perth is one of the world’s mesothelioma hotspots, mainly because of the now-abandoned blue asbestos mine at Wittenoom in the Pilbara.

More than 2,000 former workers and residents from Wittenoom have died from asbestos diseases and the toll is climbing.

Alarmingly, it is now increasingly the children of Wittenoom who are falling ill.

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Pro-asbestos advocacy group shuts its doors

Quoted from http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/asbestos+advocacy+group+shuts+doors/6537818/story.html

Pro-asbestos advocacy group shuts its doors

By Robert Hiltz, Postmedia News April 30, 2012

A decades-old pro-asbestos lobby group, currently funded by the Quebec government, will be shutting its doors after notifying the federal government of its plan to dissolve.

The Montreal-based Chrysotile Institute issued the notice in the Canada Gazette — the government’s official publication for announcing new laws and other public information. The institute, first formed in 1984, promotes the safe use of chrysotile asbestos on behalf of Canada’s asbestos mining industry.

NDP MP Pat Martin — a longtime critic of the asbestos industry and former miner himself — said the closing of the institute signals the “death knell” of asbestos mining in Canada.

“I see it as a real tipping point in the movement to get Canada out of the asbestos industry,” Martin said. “It’s just another demonstration of the death rattle of the asbestos industry in this country.”

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To dishonour Bernie Banton’s legacy would be criminal

Quoted from http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opinion/editorial/to-dishonour-bernie-bantons-legacy-would-be-criminal-20120407-1whz3.html

To dishonour Bernie Banton’s legacy would be criminal

April 8, 2012

EDITORIAL

Bernie Banton ... heroically defeated James Hardie.

Bernie Banton … heroically defeated James Hardie. Photo: Andrew Quilty

”I’m thrilled Bernie’s story is being told because asbestos illness is an issue that’s probably never going to be over.”

That chilling forecast was Karen Banton’s reaction to the news a telemovie would be made about her late husband’s fight to win justice for his fellow victims of asbestos disease.

Bernie Banton, who died from mesothelioma in 2007, heroically and with great dignity took on and defeated James Hardie, forcing the corporate giant to pay $4 billion compensation to employees such as Banton who were exposed to the deadly fibres. Ms Banton proudly carries on her husband’s work.

But alarming evidence has emerged that the grand legacy of Bernie Banton is in danger of being betrayed. Asbestos was banned in 2003, but now hundreds of thousands of tonnes of asbestos-contaminated waste is being dumped illegally across NSW, compounding an already massive health problem.

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It killed his grandfather. Now Thomas and his generation are at risk

Quoted from http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/it-killed-his-grandfather-now-thomas-and-his-generation-are-at-risk-20120407-1wi4g.html

It killed his grandfather. Now Thomas and his generation are at risk

Natalie O’Brien

April 8, 2012

.Mr Reg Day,from Seven Hills,is dying of a disease caused by asbestos...when he worked for James Hardie.

Never met his grandson … Reg Day. Photo: Quentin Jones

 

IT WAS the middle of night and Eileen Day woke to strange noises. Creeping out of bed, one night last year, she discovered neighbours secretly removing their old asbestos roof under the cover of darkness.

”Fibres were going everywhere as they broke it up and dumped it in skip bins,” she said. ”They didn’t tell anyone or get permission. They have put the lives of their children at risk and also my grandchildren,” she told The Sun-Herald.

Mrs Day knows too well the effects of asbestos. Her husband, Reg, died of the asbestos-related lung disease mesothelioma 10 years ago. He had suspected he breathed in the microscopic fibres when he was a teenager, 40 years previously, while helping his father build chicken sheds with asbestos sheeting.

Mrs Day now worries for future generations. She has grandchildren to think of, including five-month-old Thomas.

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Professor’s asbestos ties inconclusive – for now

Quoted from http://www.timescolonist.com/business/Professor+asbestos+ties+inconclusive/6421011/story.html

Professor’s asbestos ties inconclusive – for now

Postmedia News April 6, 2012 3:05 AM

McGill University’s preliminary review of the work of retired professor John Corbett McDonald has not found evidence of research misconduct – but enough information is missing that the university is going to continue to study the case with additional guidance from the Research Integrity Officer.

The university has been under fire after a documentary on Radio-Canada recently said McDonald was improperly influenced by his ties to the asbestos industry and that some of McGill’s researchers have colluded with the asbestos industry to play down the mineral’s devastating health impacts. McGill received a formal complaint by dozens of academics, physicians and researchers

accusing some McGill researchers of being controlled by the asbestos industry.

So while David Eidelman, the dean of medicine, said in a memo he was not making a request for an official investigation, he did acknowledge that “it is my conclusion that the faculty does not currently have all required records and data in hand to assess definitively in regard to research integrity.”

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I Heart Asbestos

Quoted from http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2012/04/i-heart-asbestos/

I Heart Asbestos

Why does the town of Asbestos, Quebec want to reopen a mine that’s been giving its residents cancer for a hundred years?


Rebecca Katzman

Laurent Bastien Corbeil
Published on April 2, 2012

In 1949, the town of Asbestos, Quebec was rocked by one of the fiercest labour disputes in the province’s history. Nearly 2000 workers at the Jeffrey Mine – which produced chrysotile, the most common form of asbestos – went on strike to demand higher wages and better working conditions from the Johns Manville Corporation. At the time, “asbestos dust was as omnipresent in the air as the air itself” as the journalists John Grey and Stephanie Nolen put it in the Globe and Mail.    

From the beginning of the strike, the notoriously corrupt government of Quebec Premier Maurice Duplessis, the hierarchy of the Catholic church, and the asbestos industry colluded to break the picketing trade union. Violence was widespread – miners blew up a company-owned railroad track with dynamite, and dozens of strikers were severely beaten by police. After four months of bitter conflict, the union caved.

Although the workers lost their fight, they became folk heroes in the process….

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Asbestos brake pad ban proposed

Quoted from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/03/20/asbestos-brake-ban-proposal-ontario.html

Asbestos brake pad ban proposed

By Sarah Bridge, CBC News

Posted: Mar 20, 2012 9:03 PM ET

Last Updated: Mar 21, 2012 11:04 AM ET

Asbestos brake pads that can release deadly fibres during repairs will soon be banned in Ontario, if one member of the provincial parliament has her way.

Guelph MPP Liz Sandals plans to table a bill this week that, if passed, would be the first in Canada to block imports of asbestos brake pads from entering the Canadian market.

Most mechanics contacted by CBC News believed that asbestos was already banned from brake pads years ago. But figures from Statistics Canada show that more than $2.6 million worth of asbestos brake pads entered the country in 2011.

The federal government doesn’t require Canadian border agents to verify whether companies are properly labelling these imports as containing asbestos.

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