Word: mesothelioma
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...precisely because of this accelerating use that the fiber's threat to health has become apparent. Twenty years ago, mesothelioma was a disease so extremely rare that it was thought to be a freakish although invariably malignant chance happening. Until recently, most medical books did not include it in their descriptions of tumors, and the World Health Organization's Classification of Diseases omitted it altogether. It is now found in only one of every 10,000 autopsies performed in the United States. But because of the increasing presence of the mineral fiber in the air we breathe, the incidence...
...sooner had the history of the South African epidemic been reported in the medical literature than new outbreaks of mesothelioma began to crop up all over the world, wherever asbestos was mined or used in manufacture. It became evident that the onset of exposure to the mineral fiber among those who had died in Johannesburg had coincided with the beginning of asbestos mining operations, the first in the world, in South Africa. As the industry had grown, spreading into different geographical areas, successive generations were becoming increasingly affected. It was clear that the problem was proliferating like a juggernaut. Since...
...asbestos is now found in singlevial doses of injectable drugs. This feeds directly into the bloodstream, the equivalent of a week's exposure to asbestos at an area of high industrial exposure. Injections are a frightening form for the exposure to take, in light of the fact that mesothelioma and other miscellaneous tumors, or neoplasms, have been induced in rats by arterial injection of asbestos fibers...
...Irving J. Selikoff of the Mount Sinai School of Environmental Health has suggested that the persistence of the fiber once it comes into contact with lung tissue may result not only in asbestosis but in other sarcomas and cancers besides mesothelioma. Selikoff, the leading authority in this area of asbestos research, subsequently examined mortality figures for 18,000 American and Canadian asbestos workers. He found that the death rate among them from lung cancer was six times that found in the general population. Deaths from gastro-intestinal cancer or cancer of the esophagus were respectively four and six times more...
Chances are that those of us developing mesothelioma will not be afflicted by it for another 30 or 40 years. Perhaps an increasing cancer or sarcoma mortality rate is one of the "occupational hazards" of being an urban dweller. Our generation will have to take such things in stride. But what about those ahead of us who will be exposed not only to that asbestos produced in their own lifetimes but also to all of the residue produced in our own? Perhaps in a university like ours, endowed with such a wealth of creative talent and scientific resources...