Document YrDx5Qv9ww6Q1RjK4kJJM3y50

,% p w Lancer tUiU. Lause 'S Middlesex General Hospital in, New Brunswick, N.J., a lew miles from the nation's largest asbestos ' plant, one that employs 5900 workers. .Tuesday. No stale lists die disease in its workmen compensation In the past three years, no J laws, so nobody afflicted wit',! By THOMAS O'TOOLE Washington Post disease brought on by years fewer than 19 cases of' it can be paid damages for his of breathing asbestos dust. Mesothelioma passed through affliction. Even now, the first WASH l.VGTO.V -- A fata! Dr. Selikoff also found that Middlesex General. Only two test cases are in the courts, cancer cf the chest and 45 cf the mean had died of of the 19 were not workers at where they may conceivably abdominal cavities is cropping lung cancer, a rate 6.6 times the nearby asbestos plant, one stay for the next five to 10. up among the nation's higher than that in the normal a woman who apparently years. asbestos workers. adult male population. Even. inhaled asbestos dust in The fagt that nobody knows So rare that 20 years ago it more surprising, he found five, laundering her husband's how much exposure to wasn't even in the medical deaths due to Mesothelioma < work clothes, the second a asbestos can bring on the textbooks. ` The cancer is "This incidence of more than spinster who lived one block disease has created called Mesothelioma, and 1 pet cent," said Dr. Selikoff, from the plant. .controversy, too. seems almost peculiar to people exposed to asbestos. Ironically, those stricken with the deadly disease "is strikingly high for a tumor a relatively "new" disease,, Most laws stipulate that which is generally considered to be extremely rare." Mesothelioma is also one of the most difficult diseases to asbestos workers be in an Dr. Selikoff then launched a confront modern medicine. environment where there is no include a nurse whose father worked in. an asbestos plant and a man who handled asbestos for no more than a 1 month while he insulated the plumbing in his own house. Mesothelioma was first spotlighted in 1960, when South African doctor found 32 cases among the people living and working in the Cape of Good Hope asbestos fields. A---l-e--r-t-e--d---t-o-----t-h-e- ---p-r-o-b--l-e--m--,---.-t-h--issmaomree cdaosecstorin tuthrneednexutp tw5o7 follow-on study of 307. consecutive deaths among asbestos insulation workers throughout the whole' Northeast. Again, to his surprise, he turned up 10 deaths due to Mesothelioma- About the same time, the Pennsylvania State Department of Health began a; blind study to find how Mesothelioma might be It is almost impossible to' more than five million treat. Middlesex General's Dr. particles of asbestos-dust per Maxwell Borow says that ever. one cubic foot of air -- a the most potent anti-cancer regulation that many in the dings have no effect on it. asbestos Industry fought years About all that radiation to get approved, treatments do, he says, is . But with Mesothelioma, the remove some of the fluid that disease might be brought on builds up in the lungs from, by exposure to as little as one- the disease ' tentb or one-hundredth that "The disease is 100 percent ?ver a affecting the more than 5000 aasbboeusttothse swtaoterk. e.rs scattered fatal.," .Dr.. .Bo.ro.w.states, "and, ausftuearl^lydtiaagkensosliesss ttohanruanyeiatjrj a^dooccttooerrI,'o.^n,"`B*escaounsee- stales,,onf, we don t Dec. 26_ }.%7 years. Southeastern part^f the stale' Nobody knows why it< ^ ^hat to recommend." Nobody knows how many Americans have had Mesothelioma. Even today doctors have trouble spotting it -- whether they're trying to diagnose it in a person still they sent a questionnaire, asking the hospitals to report all Mesotheliomas diagnosed between 1958 and 1953. attacks some asbestos workers and not others, or -Why some victims of the . disease get it after an Despite obstacles like these, research has begun in a handful of places to find out more about the ailment. Mount Sinai's Dr. Sch'-rMf is Back came 42 documented : apparently mild exposure to mnniirvin-r -i,P alive or pin it down at an cases of the disease, only 11 asbestos. The University of th. autopsy. In three separate studies in of which could not be to asbestos exposure. traced ; Michigan cites one School of case of a Medicine man who Work'ers * Union0,1 in metropolitan New York. The the last three years, doctors Ten victims of the disease was exposed to asbestos for philadeiphia local of the same in three states have turned up turned out to be men who about a month while he 71 cases. Oddly, 11 of them worked in asbestos plants. insulated his house. Six years union has started a similar appeared to have had no real Eight were people who lived later, he- was dead of program , with Hahneman exposure to asbestos. The near asbestos plants most of Mesothelioma. Hospital to uncover more other 60 could all be traced to asbestos contact, either because they worked with it, lived with people who did or lived in' neighborhoods where the air was heavily laden with asbestos dust. The first American study was one run in 1964 by Dr. Irving J. Selkkoff of New York's Mount Sinai Hospital, who began the study to see if cancer in any way affected the lives of the asbestos insulation workers in the New York Metropolitan area. Tracing the lives of C32 members of the asbestos workers union who were on the union rolls before Jan. 1. 1943. Dr. Selikoff found that 255 of them had died by Jan. 1, 1963. Some of what he found did not surprise him -- that 12 of the 235 died of asbestosis. a long-known but decrcasingly their lives. Three were Even the nature of the information, members of families who had disease is little understood - Middlesex General's Dr. one cr more asbestos worker ; While it's generally Known that i members -- a three-year-old the disease attacks the lining Borow says that he is in the girl whose- father was an of the chest and abdomen,. process of setting up a asbestos engineer, a nurse nobody knows how it gets. traveling exhibit to bring whose father had worked for there. attention to the disease. He's 35 years in an asbestos plant When asbestos dust is. doing it with, a 3500 dollar and a woman with two sons inhaled, the fibers get trapped grant from the Papermakers who worked as asbestos insulators in a shipyard. in the lungs, where they form . gummy deposits. This' Union, which represents the asbestos workers in the New Of 10 deaths which seemed "questionable" asbestos exposures, two turned out to be almost bizarre. One was a Swiss cheese maker, who explains how asbestosis gets started, and perhaps even. lung that cancer. One the gummy tshuebosrtyanicse', that builds up around the ! Jersey plant Dr. Borow studied. It wasn't easy getting the money. Dr. Borow went to 40 organizations before he got it worked almost his entire life asbestos fiber lodged ip the ' -- including the American around a large boiler covered with Asbestos insulation that lung can elsewhere in cause cancer the body.* But : Cancer Society Health Service. and the Public flaked off at the touch. how docs it do it? Nobody Any attention the disease Another was a worker in a knows.__ . __ : gets might come none too brewery, where it turned out that beer is filtered through pulp filters made essentially of cotton fiber and asbestos. The most convincing study Because it is such a re-.v and little understood disease. seMocemo=neootmncicshecpr,uirooaub,s.liesmassl.sioc-ieil, rra:>tmuu,j. soon. More than 1 million tons of asbestos is consumed these rdt.he.a^apynosr.t3,,ei0,,nd.,,0,,0,fthoseer` ptahUreaSt,.ef,awussitt-ehgsro.bmweom.inrgeg is the most recent one -- faial (due to antibiotics) conducted by a team of ARCH 18745