Weitz & Luxenberg recounts asbestos history on eve of National Mesothelioma Awareness Day 2011

When Congress proclaimed Sept. 26 as National Mesothelioma Awareness Day, lawmakers intended that Americans pause to remember that approximately 3,000 people each year develop mesothelioma, caused most often by asbestos exposure.

We at Weitz & Luxenberg -- honored to have championed the causes of thousands mesothelioma victims and pleased to have won billions of dollars in compensation on behalf of all people exposed to asbestos – believe it useful on National Mesothelioma Awareness Day 2011 to provide a very short overview of what asbestos is and how it has affected our nation.

Read on for a brief history of asbestos and mesothelioma, and be sure to spread the word about this disease in the coming days. If you or a loved one has been affected by this disease, please contact us for more information.

A brief history of asbestos for National Mesothelioma Awareness Day 2011

Asbestos is a naturally occurring silicate mineral. It is naturally resistant to heat and fire and is relatively cheap to mine and refine into usable products.

Its history dates back to at least ancient Greece, where asbestos got its name (it means “unquenchable”). The Greeks and other early civilizations used the mineral for various functions, but noted the “sickness of the lungs” contracted by slaves who wove it into fabrics.

Asbestos use soared in Europe and America during the industrial revolution when it became recognized as a cheap and effective heat insulator useful for steam pipes and machinery.

As demand for asbestos burgeoned, mining of the mineral began in earnest. In the U.S. during the late 1800s, large-scale mining operations cropped up in diverse locations.

It wasn’t long afterward that clinicians noted extraordinarily high instances of pulmonary fibrosis and bronchitis in asbestos miners and people who worked with or handled asbestos products.

The first case of asbestosis, a disease that affects the lungs, was diagnosed in 1924 when a woman who had worked with asbestos as a teenager died at the age of 33.

Medical studies conducted during the 1930s revealed that exposure to asbestos fibers could trigger cancer in some people.

By this point, the extreme dangers of asbestos were known to many medical professionals -- and to the corporate entities in a position to protect workers from their products. Sadly, efforts to limit asbestos were few and far between, in part because industrialists stood to lose profits by embracing any meaningful reduction of the mineral’s use.

Throughout the 20th century, millions of workers were daily unwittingly exposed to asbestos.

Not until the 1970s did industrial use of asbestos decline – and only then because the federal government stepped in to put curbs in place.

Mesothelioma Day reminds us that mesothelioma develops decades after asbestos exposure, so the cases being seen today by doctors had in many instances their origins in the time between World War II and the end of the Vietnam War.

Sept. 26 -- National Mesothelioma Awareness Day 2011 -- represents the next step in the reversal of asbestos’ tragic history. Please join with us, the dedicated mesothelioma courtroom fighters of Weitz & Luxenberg, and take the opportunity this day affords to become better informed about this horrific medical condition so that, together, we can bring to its victims the help they urgently need.