John signed up for the Navy when he was just a teenager, and he remained in the Navy until he retired decades later. John worked around asbestos insulation and it took its toll. He died of asbestosis after years of suffering. Now his granddaughter would like to know why the Navy doesn’t have to answer for this.

“I was about 18 when my grandfather died,” Deborah said.”I remember that for years – from the time I was a child–my grandfather couldn’t catch his breath, and he had a terrible cough. He couldn’t gain weight. He was sick.

The Navy didn’t warn him properly about asbestos expsosure. He worked in the naval shipyards and one day, on his way home, he was given a pamphlet and told to read it. While he was at work he had to wear a mask all the time, and a suit which he threw out at the end of day, at work. But he would still come home covered in dust. His hair was black and he would come home with white dust in his hair. He was very cautious about what he did at home. And my mother and grandmother were around him all that time.”

John was in great health when he joined the Navy, and for some time afterward, but then he developed a dry cough and the rest of the health problems started to slowly emerge. “When we found out he was dying we took my mother and grandmother to the doctor but they were told there was nothing that could be done for him,” Deborah said. “My grandfather had to sit up to breathe, and he had to sleep sitting up.”

John was 82 when he died and his last years must have been full of suffering. But still, the diagnosis of asbestosis came as a surprise. He died within half a year of being officially diagnosed. He didn’t suspect it, probably because asbestosis and asbestos mesothelioma can literally take decades to emerge–up to 30 years in some cases.

Sadly, no one really knows for sure, because knowledge of the disease is evolving. What is known, however, is that more than 27 million workers were exposed to asbestos between 1940 and 1980. Deborah’s grandfather worked in the shipyards in the late 1940s and 1950s; he was one of those workers.

But workers today aren’t really any safer than John was. An estimated 1.3 million construction workers still face significant exposure to asbestos during renovations, demolitions, and asbestos removal, because the product is still widely used in roofing materials, textiles, friction products, insulation, and other building materials. The Environmental Working Group Action Fund estimates that 10,000 people a year die from asbestos-caused diseases the United States, which includes 1 out of every 125 American men who die over the age of 50.

“I’m irritated by the lack of acknowledgement on the part of the Navy that they subjected my grandfather to something so dangerous without properly warning him,” Deborah said. “And I’m annoyed by way the Navy has treated my grandmother after my grandfather’s death. The navy cut my grandfather’s benefits the month after he died and said that my grandmother was not entitled to any money. He got a check from the navy every month, money they depended on. The benefit amount went from $1200 a month to $60 a month after he died. My grandfather gave his life to the Navy, and this is the best they can do?”

Deborah is also concerned for her mother who has survived 2 bouts with cancer. Deborah wonders if her mother’s exposure to asbestos dust from the time she was a small child could have had something to do with her illnesses. While it’s clearly too late to do anything for her grandfather, Deborah would dearly like to know if there’s any legal recourse open to her to help her grandmother.

The asbestos-caused cancer mesothelioma has resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements against asbestos mining companies along with the manufacturers and users of asbestos products.  Mesothelioma usually appears in the lungs and usually ten to forty years after exposure to asbestos.

In the United States, many of these settlements have gone to asbestos miners, to their family members and to people whose employer manufactured asbestos products or to those who used asbestos during the course of a day’s work.

In the U.S. the most likely candidates for mesothelioma have been Navy veterans, plumbers and pipe fitters, miners and construction workers who used asbestos insulation or roofing tiles.  In Canada, the trends have been somewhat different.

Canada does not maintain a large Navy so their populace did not have widespread exposure to the asbestos pipe fittings and tiles used on Navy ships.   The United States has far more functioning ship repair facilities and has had a far larger wave of post-WW II construction, the years when asbestos was used for everything from ceiling tiles to insulation to shingles.

What the Canadian medical community has seen as a major source of mesothelioma cases is the auto repair industry.  One legal news site quotes from a Montreal physician who says ‘eighty five percent of the cases we see are people who worked in the auto industry’.

Brake shoes and engine gaskets are just two products that were primarily asbestos products since the early days of the auto industry.  People with careers in the auto maintenance business should realize the threat that years of exposure to the asbestos fibers contained in auto parts can be a physical threat, and should consult their physician at the first sign of a cough or shortness of breath.

A Los Angeles jury awarded $9.7 million to a Georgia man who said he developed mesothelioma after he was exposed to asbestos while serving as a Navy machinist’s mate aboard the USS Preble.  The plaintiff is currently a resident of Georgia, but his ship was based in Long Beach CA when he was assigned to service there. He was diagnosed last year with malignant mesothelioma, which the jury agreed was caused by asbestos.

The plaintiff blamed the disease on exposure to asbestos-packed gaskets while serving aboard the USS Preble from 1961 to 1965. Mesothelioma usually takes twenty to fifty years to appear after the victim has been exposed to asbestos. The fact that this case was instigated on board a navy ship is no surprise. About thirty percent of all mesothelioma sufferers in the U.S. are veterans; the large majority of those are men who worked on board a ship or in a Navy shipyard.

A Los Angeles Superior Court jury returned the verdict in Brewer’s favor on May 16. Doctors testified during Brewer’s trial that he probably has less than a year to live. While jurors awarded Brewer and his wife $9.7 million, the couple will see much less. The suit had named a dozen parts manufacturers but 11 settled before trial. The major offender is immune from prosecution.

Jurors found the remaining defendant, gasket maker Crane Co. of Stamford, Conn., to be 2 percent liable in the case, meaning it is responsible for only a fraction of the award. Jurors found the Navy 50 percent liable for Brewer’s cancer, although it was not named as a defendant in the suit and was immune from any award.

In recent years, California juries have made several large awards in asbestos-related mesothelioma cases.

For most of a century asbestos was hailed as a product that combined an efficient insulating effect, and acted as a fire retardant.  That was the good news; asbestos has also long been established that exposure to asbestos and asbestos fibers can cause a number of serious respiratory ailments – the worst of which is named after the product: asbestosis.  And the most lethal byproduct of asbestos is mesothelioma, a lethal cancer that usually attacks lungs that have inhaled asbestos fibers.   By 1981, the EPA and other government agencies had all but banned use of asbestos.

Like many domestic industries, the U.S. military made ample use of asbestos in construction of many of its weapons during the first three quarters of the last century.  Nowhere was the use of asbestos more apparent than on Navy ships.  The heat generated by diesel engines was a constant factor on the warships, and onboard fires could quickly become just as lethal as shellfire that may have caused them.  Every ship from 1940 through the 70s carried asbestos as pipe casings, insulating material, in adhesives and gaskets, floor coverings and sealants.

Army veterans also worked with asbestos when fitting out fighting vehicles, building barracks and repairing damaged equipment.  Fittings of every sort used asbestos to insulate and to protect from fire.  Because it often takes 20 to 50 years for mesothelioma to develop after exposure to asbestos, the veterans that are reaching retirement age over the next twenty years are a demographic group that is likely to see high rates of mesothelioma compared to the population as a whole.

Asbestos was a critical element of shipbuilding for many years.  Mesothelioma is the lethal cancer associated with exposure to asbestos fiber – a disease than has a latency factor of 20 to 50 years.  As a result, the disease has lately become an emerging factor among those who worked in and around ships during the period from 1940 to 1970.  Navy veterans probably head the list for groups of retired or retiring individuals who are showing the effects of asbestos exposure.

A study of mesothelioma and published in American Family Physician states that “High-risk populations include persons in construction trades, boilermakers, shipyard workers, railroad workers, and U.S. Navy veterans.”  When you take into account the fact that among these groups Navy veterans are probably by far the smallest population, it becomes clear that mesothelioma is going to be an ongoing problem for former sailors.

The ships built for the U.S. Navy from the beginning of WW II until the 70s were loaded with asbestos.  The miles of pipes and pipe fittings in ships were often coated with asbestos to provide insulation – both for the contents of the pipe and the enclosed quarters that characterize military craft.  The flame-retardant properties of asbestos made it an excellent insulation for isolating compartments aboard ship as well.  Those sailors working in the engine rooms oar with on-board boilers were exposed to asbestos daily.

The Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation is leading a charge on the Pentagon budget for money to fund meso research. Their reasoning is simple:  according to a Capitol Hill newsletter,  “…at least one-third of the people suffering from mesothelioma – a lethal form of cancer caused by asbestos exposure — have either been in the Navy or worked in Navy shipyards across the country.”

More than a dozen senators, aided by an intense grassroots lobby, are pushing for funds to examine asbestos-related cancer. Part of the Department of Defense Budget includes funds for “peer reviewed medical research.” It is this program that the Foundation wants funded. Congress sets the priority for what research priorities are; if falls to the Defense Department to make the grants.

Several senators sent a letter last month to the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Defense panel, including Senators Max Baucus of Montana and Patty Murray of Washington, who have been at the forefront to get more money for research and treatment.

The town of Bremerton in Washington State, near the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, has one of the highest incidences of asbestos-related cancer. And hundreds of people have been sickened or killed because of asbestos exposure from a former vermiculite mine in Libby, Mont.

Last year the Congress approved a Department of Defense budget that included $50 million for the peer review program. A steady flow of research funds for mesothelioma may lead to earlier detection methods – and accordingly, a longer period of survival for victims of the disease.