The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) has established stringent new rules designed to protect miners from exposure to asbestos.  Over the last thirty years, research has proven that asbestos can be the cause of mesothelioma, a lethal form of cancer that usually attacks the lungs.  The MSHA regulations were published in the Federal Register on February 29th of 2008.

The new rules are the direct result of a report from the office of the Inspector General, another federal agency that conducted a study of deaths from asbestos exposure among miners and their families in the town of Libby, Montana.  The Inspector General’s report and suggestion to the MSHA occurred in 2005, and has prompted the MSHA to reduce allowable airborne asbestos exposure for miners by 95%.

The level of protection now being mandated for miners has existed for almost all other professions under rules established by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) some years ago.  According to the Occupational Hazards online newsletter, the MSHA claims that there are very few mines operating today that generate asbestos exposure.  Their tests show an extremely low percentage of operational mines that the agency has tested with asbestos exposure problems.

The problem with asbestos related diseases such as mesothelioma is that the symptoms may not appear for decades after the initial exposure.  That means generations of miners may have been exposed to deadly airborne asbestos fibers.  Certainly that was the case in Libby Montana; the dangers of asbestos have been a public issue for thirty years.  Surprisingly, the federal agency charged with protecting miners chose to wait until 2008 to pull its protective regulations into line with those afforded workers in nearly every other profession.

From September 11, 2001 to the present, the evidence of toxic materials impacting World Trade Center responders and volunteers has been overwhelming. During the early stages of the disaster response, the New York Fire Department developed a WTC screening program, which documented a substantial proportion of respiratory symptoms among emergency workers.

The Environmental Protection Agency reported enormous density figures for airborne particles in the hours after the initial disaster. Lesser amounts of pollutants continued to rise from the site for weeks to follow. Exposures from smoldering fires continued until December 2001. The EPA determined that WTC dust “contained pulverized (alkaline) cement, glass fibers, asbestos, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and polychlorinated furans and dioxins.”

A study conducted by a health consortium in New York from 2002-2004 showed symptoms that included a wide assortment of respiratory problems. “Participants experienced numerous other symptoms, including a substantial proportion with incident and persistent musculoskeletal symptoms, such as low back pain and upper or lower extremity pain…Other incident and persistent symptoms included heartburn eye irritation and frequent headache.” – Centers for Disease Control, Newsletter September 2004.

The report concludes that “the findings in WTC examinees are consistent with current understanding of WTC exposures; however, the persistence of symptoms for >1 year after the 9/11 event is a new finding and requires further study.”

Victims of exposure to WTC airborne pollutants are exhibiting many of the symptoms that have been found in people who have been exposed to toxic inhalants and developed life-threatening symptoms years later. The CDC sees the persistence of existing symptoms as a potential warning for World Trade Center disease victims.

According to the EPA, asbestos was just one of the toxic pollutants generated by the 9/11 disaster. As thousands of Americans have learned, asbestos exposure alone can lead to mesothelioma, a lethal form of lung cancer. It is clear that public health authorities expect the medical problems cause by WTC dust and smoke to develop into long-term afflictions for some of the workers and city residents who were exposed. If you are one of those people, contact one of the WTC disease support programs and make sure that your health is carefully monitored for the foreseeable future.

Many of the people who are now suffering from asbestos-caused mesothelioma came into contact with the potentially lethal substance while removing it from buildings or industrial sites.  Over the years, the EPA and other agencies have developed a protocol for asbestos removal that recognizes the danger from exposure to asbestos for workers who are charged with cleaning buildings contaminated with it.

Those safety guidelines, developed to avoid further asbestos-related disease, are also built into state and local laws.  Recently a New Jersey school maintenance superintendent was convicted of a felony and a misdemeanor for providing false information to a federal agent and preparing a false report involving asbestos in district buildings.

The superintendent admitted he told investigators last year he had never removed asbestos from any school district buildings while serving as an employee. It was found he had engaged in numerous illegal asbestos removal actions at one of the district’s elementary schools.   He also pleaded guilty to preparing a false report relating to asbestos inside a district building in 2006.

According to the Asst. U.S. Attorney who prosecuted, investigators found areas where asbestos had been removed and gone unreported.  In those areas, there was still evidence of ‘friable’ asbestos, meaning that those areas of the school were still a health threat.  Mesothelioma and asbestosis are such a foreboding threat that a case of a sloppy maintenance work can become a felony.

There is overwhelming evidence that people who were among the emergency response crews to the 9/11 disaster, and people who live and work in the neighborhood of the World Trade Center site have suffered enormously high rates of respiratory difficulties. The near-term symptoms of these diseases include coughing, wheezing, reduced lung capacity and other pulmonary abnormalities.

Approximately 40,000 people were either first responders to the disaster or were involved in the subsequent search for survivors and remains, and the site cleanup that followed. Virtually all of them were exposed to caustic dust and toxic pollutants in the process. There is concern in the medical community that the continuing symptoms of lung-related disease or injury could lead to development of malignancies such as mesothelioma, the lethal lung cancer directly connected to asbestos exposure.

In order to monitor World Trade Center related health problems the WTC Worker and Volunteer Medical Screening Program was established by the State of New York, OSHA and several New York are medical institutions. According to their data, “Of 9,442 responders examined between July 2002 and April 2004, 69% reported new or worsened respiratory symptoms while performing WTC work. Symptoms persisted to the time of examination in 59% of these workers.” – Environmental Health Perspectives, December 2006.

That is an extremely high percentage of continuing symptoms among a large group of WTC responders. Long term effects of the assortment of respiratory afflictions that persist for these tens of thousands of individuals are unknown. Also not known is how many New Yorkers who suffered exposure from the dust generated by the wreckage have yet to come forward with evidence of the many diseases that can be caused by toxic inhalants. What is known is that cancer such as mesothelioma can take decades to develop after the victim’s initial exposure to lung pollutants.
There are groups of WTC respiratory victims who have begun to petition the government for some sort of support in the cases of those who have been incapacitated by World Trade Center diseases. Support groups are active in the New York area, and some victims have already made the journey to Washington seeking federal relief.

The legal rights of those who exposed themselves to potentially lethal air pollutants remain to be established. However if you feel your health has been impacted by pollutants from the World Trade Center wreckage, consult an attorney to learn what the latest developments are in this growing public health controversy.

The link between asbestos and the lethal cancer mesothelioma has long been established and in the United States, the firms who manufactured and used asbestos in their products have in many cases settled thousands of asbestos related lawsuits and/or established a fund to provide compensation to victims.

Those bankruptcies have created a barrier for at least one Canadian who feels she has a valid mesothelioma lawsuit that she cannot pursue.  The plaintiff, Raven Thundersky, is blocked from suing the U.S. manufacturer according to Canadian law because that firm filed for bankruptcy.   According to Canadian law, that protects the American manufacturer of the insulation, W.R. Grace.  While W.R. Grace did file bankruptcy because of its asbestos liability, it has emerged and is once again in operation.

W.R. Grace is in fact a thriving multinational that has settled over 100,000 asbestos suits and has another 102,000 to go.  An insulation they produced in the 1960s was used to build housing for Canadian ‘aboriginals’ on tribal lands.  The impact on this particular individual has been devastating.

Twelve years ago her sister died from mesothelioma.   Since that first death 12 years ago, Thundersky has buried four more close relatives, three from mesothelioma and one from asbestosis.  Five more members of her family are ill with asbestos-related diseases. She, herself, has asbestosis.