Document 0LJan3ndxkj445EB43owMMmQm

L-_ Sunday, Apnl J. 1071 . ,r Houston Chronicle Seetion t, Page II Medical time bomb ticked away for 30 years before exploding j cancer victim won't give up BY MARK PATINKIN' The biggest body count will be veter "At first I didn't notice," Joe says. "I , (Jolted Press International ans. HEW says that 13 million were ex was too involved in my work and my posed when building ships to fight World family to worry about little things." NORTH SMITHFIELD. R.I. - Hints of War 1L Half may die from it Asbestos Joe talked in the kitchen of his big cancer show in Joe Ruggierfa face and may kill eight times more at home thaa house in a rolling, shaded. North Simth- body, but not In his eyes. the enemy killed ovtrseat. fieid neighborhood. The Dream. t In his eyes there is calm and hope that Dr. Irving J. Selikoff of New York's His wife. Connie, sits beside him. say he plans to live, but his bee is color' Mount Sinai Hospital is the country's David. 13, and Charles. 17, watch TV. less, drained. Slowly, the cancer Is taking leading authority oa asbestos disease. He Denise, 21. Is at college. Lassie, a Collie, its tolL It Is Incurable. It Is also rare, but puts the death statistics in more direct drapes herself on the floor. Taped to the becoming more common. terms. It Is. he says, "a disaster." refrigerator is an old, crayornirawa plac- Doctors say it has killed everyone It has Joe Ruggieri is part of that disaster, but a rd: "To the world's greatest parents." ever touched. They say he has only a few not an idle victim. After a life as a quiet, A year before. Joe Ruggieri had been j months to live. Still. Joe believes, that middle-class businessman. Joe became a an executive with Peterbilt Trucks of | lust maybe, he will be one of the first to fighter. He decided to force the Navy to Faxboro, Maas., making M3.000 a year. beat it. admit it gave him cancer, and to pay for He carried 150 pounds on a trim 5-foot-7 His hope springs from resilience. He is it frame. He Jogged, ho played tennis. His dying.' but he won't Just lay down and let Thousands of other victims, mostly life was rich. It happen. from industry, litve sued asbestos compa Connie remembers waking Is Decem "With all the research they're doing." nies, asking more than $1 billion. Dozens ber 1(77 and staring at her husband as he he says, "maybe they'll come up with have wenrltgirirajp B-ltanfSoet work slept. His complexion wasn't right. something. I have to count on that." ers, a third from Rhode Island, are head "Finally, one Friday I just decided to call His cancer is called mesothelioma, can ed for a Hartford. Conn., court April 24 oa his doctor. I said Joe has been losing cer of the lung lining. It is caused by just such a case. Two yean ago, only nine weight, he's got no appetite." asbestos. EB workers were suing. But the number Tests found fluid in his chest cavity. Joe Ruggieri has known it was tn him grew, and a recent health study indicates The doctors urged him to check into a for a year. The seeds of it have been tn still more may Join the UaL hospital. Woonsocket Hospital was fulL him for 30 years. They were planted in In 1977, Dr. Selikoff completed a survey The blizzard came. Days of waiting turn 1319. in the Brooklyn Naval Yard, in the of 1,000 Rhode island and Connecticut ed to weeks. The pain continued. The fluid belly of an aging tanker. Electric Boat employees. Half, he found, built. Working became a strain. Every day, for four months, a 19-year- showed some evidence of lung'disease; On March 3. 1973. Joe Ruggieri was old Navy seaman named Ruggieri helped either asbestosis, a strangling respiratory admitted to Woonsocket. It was s Friday. overhaul the Sabine, scraping, painting, illness, or cancer. More than 100,000 have On Monday, the doctor put e needle in his cleaning Above and around mm, others worked at Electric Boat's shipyards. side and inserted a tube Into Ms lung tore cover from pipes and sandblasted the Joe's fight was lonelier then the legal cavity. hull. bgttles of industrial victims because Joe More than a halfgallon of fluid drained Asbestos dust Oiled the shipi Day and is a veteran. He challenged the Navy, not out The doctors studied the Quid and night. Joe inhaled it Millions of fibers an asbestos company. Many have won found malignant ceils, but it was baffling pierced the soft, moist air sacks In his private cialmx, but only a handftd of because there was no sign where the ceils , lungs, and over the decades, tamed them veterans have gotten Uw Navy to pay. had come from. They knew Joe had can to useless feather. The government his a rule for disabil cer, but st first, the cancer had no name. ; Now he is dying He Is not alone. ity compensation. It demands the illness Mesothelioma is not a viewable tumor. Eleven million Americans have been occur in the service or, at the latest, a It clings like tree bark to the lung. Often, exposed to dangerous doses of asbestos year later. only specialists can detect iL The tests i sine.-1940. That a the estimate of Hie U.S. Joe Ruggieri's cancer did "of come for went on. t'epi.r.swnr of Heafth. Education and -N years, three decades from 'he time of T tried not io be depressed." Joe re Welfare. Tits exposure was heavy for half his exposure. Joe had to prove the Navy calls. "I was just keeping my fingers -- putting them at high risk for mesothe was responsible anyway. He eventually crossed." Nas i lioma. it is an insidious disease. The fibers tick inside for 20,30, 35 years. Then, suddenly, cancer. succeeded, although the compensation is limited and small in comparison to what might be awarded in a civil suit. He Is seeking now to find the company that His voice is calm. Somehow, he has overcome the horror of it. Not Connie. The hurt and fear that should be in Joe's eyes show instead tn hers. a 40 o Uo) i The licking. tw. Is beginning to peek. The peak will last a long time. HEW esti mates 67,000 Americans will die from asbestos aiscase every veer tor 30 vearsT the legadjot aecadei of negligence in ihe supplied the asbestos in the first place. In August 1977, when the cancer's symptoms fust appeared, he was 47. It started subtly, first with a shortness of breath on the tennis court, then with a On March 20, 1973, the tubes came out. Joe was wheeled into the operating room so a sample could be taken from his lung. The biopsy turned into a major operation. They cut Joe open from his left shoulder a. 3 a wofKpwce. slow loss of weight. blade to his middle chest. They scraped DU 004159 tlie lining from his lung, doing the best they could to stop the spread of the un stoppable. Through his fog of pain. Joe accepted the reality. He had cancer. He also had hope. "I thought it was a cancer that could be cured." he says. "I figured U wasn't In the bones, it wasn't spreading. The Xrays didn't show any tumor, t figured they'd go in and cut it out and it'd be out of my system." Soon he learned it was far more serious. The word mesothelioma meant nothing to him. He asked for more information. It was then, for the first time, that lie heard the other word. "They said mesothelioma was almost slways caused by asbestos." Joe recalls. "So they asked. `Hava you avtr worked with asbestos?' I said. `No.' I said my whole life, I never worked with it I've been a businessman." He smiles. Then it dawned on me. The Navy yard." Just out of high school in 1919, Joseph Angelo Rugglen joined the Navy as a path to a career In business. His first duty: deckhand on the CSS Sabina; a creaky old tanker tn need of a complete overhaul. Almost every inch of the ship was dou bly insulated with asbestos. Joe was never given a breathing mask or any other protective gear. For weeks he worked scraping the hull below the waterline. Every time he scraped, sprays of asbestos churned up. Above him. men on platforms sandblast ed the ship. Clouds of dust came down over him. He lived and breathed dusty air laden with asbestos fibers so tiny it takes 250,000 of them, end to end. to make an inch. "Of course it got to ine." he mys. "For ti'rec mor.lhs. than: was oimptete dust. " hen we ate. there was dust all over the place. Even when we slept.". Joe' Euggieri. 49. strolls with his wife, Connie. He is a victim of mesothelioma, a cancer of the lung lining caused by asbestos. DUP 0508094 DU 004161