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FILE NAME: Newspaper & Magazine Articles (NMA) DATE: 1967 Dec 25 DOC#: NMA119 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION: The Washington Post - Rare, Fatal Cancer Is Showing Up Among Those Handling Asbestos Rare, Fatal Cancer Is Showing Up Among Those Handling Asbestos By Thomas O'Toole Washington Post Staff Writer The Washington Post, Times Herald (1959-1973); Dec 25, 1967; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The Washington Pot Rare, Fatal Cancer Is Showing IJp Among Those Handling Asbestos By Thomas O'Toole in the United States, more Washington Post Staff Writer than half of whom did not A fatal cancer of the chest begin working with asbestos iand abdominal cavities is until 10 years ago. cropping up among the Na In terms of the number of tion's asbestos workers. persons involved, the apparent So rare that 20 years ago it asbestos peril may be even wasn't even in the medical greater than that posed by textbooks, the cancer is called uranium mines. Last May mesothelioma, and seems al Labor Secretary W. Willard most peculiar to people ex Wirtz established the first posed to asbestos, 1Federal radiation limits for But oddly, those stricken underground uranium mines with the deadly disease in following disclosure that an clude a nurse whose father estimated 115 men had died worked in an asbestos plant from lung cancer in a mining and a man who handled as population never higher than bestos for no more than a 5600. month while he insulated the Mesothelioma was first spot plumbing in his own house. lighted in 1960, when a South Any attention the disease African doctor found 32 cases gets might come none too among the people living and soon. More than 1 million tons working in the Cape of Good of asbestos is consumed annu Hope asbestos fields. The ally these days in the United same doctor turned up 57 States, with more than 3000 more cases in the next two separate uses being reported years. for the fiber. There are at Nobody knows how many least 100,000 asbestos workers Americans have had mesothe- lioma. Even today, doctors have trouble spotting it -- whether they're trying to diagnose it in a person still See ASBESTOS, A5, Col. 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ASBESTOS-- F ront P a g e A l Fatal Cancer Is Showing Up Among Asbestos Workers alive o autopsy. pin it down atj with two sons who worked as in the lungs, where they form asbestos insulators in a ship- gummy deposits. This explains B u t.!n {'lrcc separate stud- yard. how asbestosis gets started, tors have tnrnna y -> ' d C' o f 10 t ilt h s that seemed Ortrilv i? ,, r p 11 cascs' to have only a "questionable" appeared , 0 ;connection with asbestos ex- asheciec 13 oxPsnre to posures, two turned out to be j,, " ' ?'" '"C other 60 almost bizarre. One was a r ri '' r^cd wlih asbestos, Swiss cheesemaker, who work- lived with people who did or, cd almost his entire life ivecl in neighborhoods whore around a large boiler eovuie air was heavily laden with ered with asbestos insulation ashestos dust. that flaked off at the touch, ih e first American study Another was a worker in a was one run in 3964 by Dr. brewery, where beer is fil- and perhaps even lung cancer. One theory is that the gummy substance that builds up around the asbestos fiber lodged in the lung can cause cancer elsewhere in the body, But how does it do it? Nobody knows. Because it is such a new and little u n d e r s t o o d disease, mesothelioma Is also creating some serious social and v "r , , S,ellJiofc of Xcw tered through pulp filters economic problems, t oik s .Mount Sinai Hospital, made essentially of cotton No state lists the disease in t racing the lives of 632 New fiber and asbestos. i its workmen compensation tork area members of the, The most convincing study!laws s0 nobody afflicted with Asbestos Workers Union who is the most, recent one--con-, it can be paid damages for his were on the union rolls before Iducted by a team of doctors -ii.H nn Vvnn now the first Jan. 1. 1943, Dr. Selikoff found working out of Middlesex ^ ^ ' "s are in T h e court? that 255 of them had died by General H o s p i t a l in New ^ L e Uiey may conceTvably Jan. 1963- Brunswick, N.J., a few .miles Some of what he found did from the Nation's largest as- ? , , ih 1 hndv knows not surprise him. For example, bestos plant, one that employs , J he | fh th t g ta 12 of the 255 died of ashes- 5000 workers. : '10w mucKh exposure to asDcs tosis. a long-known but de-( In the past three years, no *os can + * tn rt creasinglv fatal (due to anti- fewer than 19 cases of meso-- created controye y, . hiotics) disease brought on by thelioma passed through Mid- Most laws stipulate that as- years of breathing in asbestos dlesex General. Only two of bestos workers be in an en- dust. Lhe 19 were not workers at mrnnmcnt where there is no But Dr. Solikofr also found that 45 of the men had died of lung cancer, a rate 6.6 times higher than that in the normal adult male population, Even more surprising, he found live deaths due to mesothelioma. Dr. Selikoff then launched a follow-on study of 307 consecutivo deaths among ashes- tos i n s u l a t i o n workers throughout the whole Northcast. Again, to his surprise, he turned up 10 deaths due to mesothelioma. About the same time, the dle nearby asbestos plant, one a woman who apparently inhaled ashestos dust in laundering her husband's work clothes, the second a spinsler who lived one block from the plant. A relatively "new" disease, mesothelioma is also one of the most difficult diseases to confront modern medicine. 11 is almost impossible to treat. Middlesex General's Dr. Maxwell Borow says that even the most potent anticancer dTMgs have no effect on it. About all that radiation treat- mo,rc than Iive pillion par' tid es of asbestos dust per one cubic foot of air--a regulation that many in the abestos :ndustry fought years to get approved. But with mesothelioma, the disease might be brought on by exposure to as little as onetenth or onc-hundredth that limit. Despite obstacles like these, research has begun in a hand- Pennsylvania State Depart- mcnts ^0Nhe,,sa.yi '4?s ment of Health began a blind some /u th,e iluid that builds study to find how mesothe- u p l n the lungs irom the dls` A worker operates a braider in a Canadian asbestos insulation plant. ful of places to find out more about the ailment. Mount Sinai's Dr. Selikoff is now con stantly monitoring the 1500 members of the Asbestos Workers Union in metropoli tan New York. The Philadel phia local of the same union has started a similiar program with Hahneman Hospital to uncover more information. Middlesex General's Dr. Borow says that he is in the process of sotting up a travel ing exhibit to bring attention to the disease. He's doing i t ! with a $3500 grant from the Papermakcrs Union, which represents the asbestos work ers in the New Jersey plant Dr. Borow studied. It wasn't easy getting the money. Dr. Borow went to 40 organisations before he got it --including the American Can cer Society and the Public Health Service. Some doctors think the mesothelioma problem is just beginning. "Since the malig nancies now being recognized relate to an earlier time period," states Dr. \V. D. Nor wood, of Richland, Wash.,: "the health problem in the future may be very extensive and serious." Indeed, it may be irue. as. many doctors think, that it takes 20 years of exposure to asbestos to bring on most eases of the disease. If this! is so, says Dr. Norwood, "large, numbers of malignancies are! beginning to occur and will substantially increase in the near future." Ji TM ^ "^Un% aheMni?vork " `'The disease is 100 per cent mo"L 0i f a t a l , " Dr. Borow states, "and cis seaLleied about the state usuau y takes less than a year The Depaitment sent ques- aftor (j|agn0SiS to run its tionnaircs to 162 hospitals in course the southeastern part of the Nobody knows why it attacks state, asking the hospitals to some asbestos workers and not report all mesotheliomas diag- others, or why some victims of nosed between 1958 and 1963. the disease get it after an ap- Back came 42 documented parcntiv mild exposure to as- eascs of the disease, only 11 of bestos. The University of Mich- which could not be traced to gan School of Medicine cites asbestos exposure. one case of a man who was ex- Ton victims of the disease posed to asbestos for about a turned out to be men who month while he insulated his worked in asbestos plants, house. Six years later, he was Eight were people who lived dead of mesothelioma, near asbestos plants most of Even the nature of the their lives. Three were mem- disease is little understood, bers of families who had one While it is generally known or more asbestos worker mem- that the disease attacks the bers--a 3-.vear-old girl whose lining of the chest and abdo- father was an asbestos on- men, nobody knows how it gincer, a nurse whose father gets there, had worked for 35 years in an When asbestos dust is in asbestos plant and a woman haled, the fibers get trapped Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.