NY Mesothelioma and Asbestos Attorney Applauds Changes to City’s Building Inspection Oversight
Due to falsified inspection reports by New York City inspectors over the last decade, the New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection has made sweeping changes in the oversight and monitoring of private asbestos inspectors. New York attorney Joseph W. Belluck is applauding the improvements, saying those steps are needed to protect public health. Asbestos is a human carcinogen and is known to cause mesothelioma, lung cancer and other respiratory diseases.
“People have a legal right to breathe air free of cancer-causing asbestos and know with certainty that the buildings in which they live and work aren’t harming their health,” said Belluck, a partner in Belluck & Fox LLP, a personal injury law firm that represents victims of asbestos-related disease. “New York needs to restore confidence that the safety inspection process is protecting the public from asbestos exposure. These changes are necessary and overdue.”
While the use of asbestos has been curbed in the United States since the late 1970s, the incidence of mesothelioma has been increasing in the United States and worldwide in recent decades. The disease strikes 30 to 50 years after exposure to asbestos. The World Health Organization estimates that 90,000 people die each year from asbestos-related lung cancer, mesothelioma and asbestosis. Approximately 3,000 new cases of mesothelioma are diagnosed in the United States each year.
The changes outlined by the Department of Environmental Protection include increasing the annual number of field inspections and office audits of private asbestos inspectors, sharing licensing information with state and federal regulatory agencies, and converting to an Internet-based filing system that will automatically reject reports by inspectors whose licenses have been suspended or revoked.
