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  • Home > The American Asbestos Epidemic – Exposure Disease

The American Asbestos Epidemic – Exposure Disease

“The highly politicized controversy in Washington over asbestos litigation has overshadowed a quiet and directly related crisis in public health: an epidemic of asbestos-caused diseases in the United States that claims the life of one out of every 125 American men who die over the age of 50.

Ten thousand Americans die each year — a rate approaching 30 deaths per day — from diseases caused by asbestos, according to a detailed analysis of government mortality records and epidemiological studies by the EWG Action Fund. Asbestos kills thousands more people than skin cancer each year, and nearly the number that are slain in assaults with firearms. The suite of diseases linked to asbestos exposure overwhelmingly affect older men.

Even more disturbing, deaths from asbestos in the United States appear to be increasing. Mesothelioma and asbestosis mortality rose steadily from 1979 through 1998. Asbestosis mortality, however, rose at more than three times the rate of mesothelioma, at 7.8 percent per year, compared to 2.3 percent annually for mesothelioma over the 24-year period 1979-2001.

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As in the United Kingdom (Treasure 2004) and Australia (Leigh 2003), there are many reasons to believe that the peak of the U.S. asbestos disease epidemic may not be reached for a decade or more.

Asbestos use and exposure crested in the United States in the mid 1970s when a number of factors converged: more than 3,000 consumer and industrial products on the market at that time contained asbestos; asbestos product factories were polluting nearby neighborhoods; asbestos workers were heavily exposed on the job and were bringing home substantial amounts of asbestos dust to their wives and children; and asbestos was commonly used in public buildings and workplaces for soundproofing, fireproofing, and insulation. Meaningful workplace safeguards were not in place until at least 1980, and for many industries, such as construction, levels in excess of the pre-1980 standard persist even today (NIOSH 2002).”

CONTINUE READING THIS REPORT AT EWG.ORG