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A resolution by the leader of the New Jersey Senate would designate Sept. 26 of each year as Mesothelioma Awareness Day in the Garden State. The resolution was introduced by Senate Leader Tom Kean to raise awareness of this deadly form of cancer.

Mesothelioma is a rare, incurable cancer that attacks the lining of the lungs, abdomen or heart. It kills about 3,000 Americans each year and is closely linked to breathing asbestos, a material widely used as insulation and in construction through the mid 1970s.

“We don’t have a cure or standard treatment yet for mesothelioma, so we need to learn more about this disease and spur the development of effective treatments,” Kean, a Republican, said in a statement issued Thursday by his office. “Our designation of each September 26th as “Mesothelioma Awareness Day” will help ensure that the public researchers and policy makers don’t forget about those suffering from this disease.”

Approved by the Senate in June, Kean’s resolution awaits consideration by the N.J. General Assembly. A number of communities have started to recognize the date.

While most people with mesothelioma were exposed repeatedly to asbestos, exposure to asbestos for as little as a month can result in a person developing the disease decades later, the resolution says. Kean noted that many firefighters, police officers and rescue workers were exposed to asbestos-contaminated dust at the World Trade Center site after the 9-11 attacks.

“Thousands of rescue and construction workers labored for months at Ground Zero in hazardous conditions,” Kean said. “We don’t know if those who worked at the World Trade Center site will develop mesothelioma, but we do know that we want to have effective treatments ready to help anyone who falls ill.”

Read Senate Joint Resolution 122

The largest and most significant gathering of plaintiff and defense attorneys in the asbestos community gets underway Wednesday in San Francisco. The National Asbestos Litigation Conference runs through Friday, Sept. 23-25, at the Four Seasons Hotel in San Francisco.

Topics on the conference agenda include causation analysis in mesothellioma cases, hot jurisdictions for asbestos lawsuits, advances in medicine and science framing asbestos litigation and asbestos in the political arena. There will also be a panel discussion among judges from across the country who hear asbestos cases.

The national conference offers educational programs taught by experts, judges and in-house counsel and is nationally accredited for continuing legal education credits in more than 40 states.

The conference co-chairs are Joseph W. Belluck, a partner in Belluck & Fox LLP, a New York law firm, Joseph J. O’Hara, Jr., Esq., vice president & associate general counsel, Owens-Illinois, Inc, Perrysburg, Ohio, and Michael J. Pietrykowski, Esq., Gordon & Rees, LLP, San Francisco.

In a joint mission statement, the chairs said, “We know many of the faces in this long-standing litigation very well. For better or worse, we are a family of sorts! Regardless of the side of the table, we all face similar issues and need to work together to resolve some of the recurring problems in ‘our’ asbestos world. Therefore, as the chairs of HB’s National Asbestos Conference, we propose that part of our program be dedicated to a discussion of possible solutions to key issues. Throughout the day we will dedicate time to this goal, in an effort to move toward improving the litigation landscape.”

New York contractors have been charged with illegal removal and disposal of asbestos stripped from dormitories at the State University of New York at New Paltz.

According to the Poughkeepsie Journal, Salvatore R. DePaola, 55, and Steevens Espitia Oliverso, 211 illegally removed and disposed of asbestos from Bouton, College and Shango halls in SUNY New Paltz without following proper disposal regulations.

Oliveros was an asbestos project supervisor for Milestone Environmental Corp. in Morganville, New Jersey, and DePaola was a senior asbestos supervisor for Milestone.

The $179,000 asbestos removal project was part of a routine dormitory remodeling on the campus. The work began after classes ended in the spring of 2009 and ended in May.

Court papers filed by an Environmental Protection Agency investigator said Jason Pensabene, a senior industrial hygienist with the New York Department of Labor, during site inspections in June observed numerous violations of the Clean Air Act including the failure to put stripped asbestos in leak-proof, labled containers and failure to properly dampen asbestos until it could be contained. He observed dry, friable asbestos all over the floor.

Another company eventually completed the project after work was halted.

Article

In Libby Montana, even the country club golf course is contaminated. Clean up crews are excavating larges amounts of dirt contaminated with vermiculite from nine holes of the Cabinet View Country Club golf course, according to The Associated Press.

The $1.8 million clean up project is being overseen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which in June declared a public health emergency in Libby. The town is contaminated with asbestos-laden dust that has been blamed for 200 deaths and 1,000 illnesses. The asbestos was contained in vermiculite ore which was mined in Libby for decades.

Asbestos exposure is linked with a variety of serious respiratory illnesses including lung cancer, asbestosis, and mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs or abdomen.

The excavation and restoration of the golf course is expected to be completed by the spring of 2010.

Two Arizona charter school operators have been fined for alleged violations of the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Act, federal environmental officials announced.

In April 2007, inspectors with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency discovered that seven charter schools operated by Pointe Educational Services and the Charter Foundation had not been inspected to determine if the buildings contained asbestos-containing materials and no asbestos management plan had been created. A subsequent inspection revealed that one of the schools contained asbestos building materials.

“Asbestos can potentially endanger the health of students, teachers and employees at schools,” Katherine Taylor, associate director for the communities and ecosystems division in EPA’s Pacific Southwest region said in a press release.

Federal law requires that local education agencies must conduct an inspection using accredited inspectors to determine if asbestos-containing building material is present and develop a management plan addressing the asbestos found in the school.

The EPA fined Pointe Educational Services $13,700 and The Charter Foundation $8,330, the agency said

Press Release

On a holiday that honors workers, the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, an advocacy group, renewed its call for a national ban on asbestos to protect workers from exposure to asbestos in workplaces.

“This Labor Day, we cannot help but be reminded that countless workers continue to be unknowingly exposed to the deadly asbestos mineral in their daily jobs,” said Linda Reinstein, ADAO Executive Director said in a statement reported by Reuters. “It is time to end the tragedy of asbestos for workers and others who are unknowingly exposed.”

Once widely used in many household products such as insulation, pipe and roof tile, asbestos is now recognized as a highly toxic human carcinogen. Asbestos fibers inhaled into the lungs over time may cause lung diseases including asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer that can occur in the lining of the lungs, abdomen or heart. The symptoms of the disease often do not appear until 20 to 40 years after exposure

Although asbestos is no longer mined in the United State, it is still imported and a significant amount of asbestos in buildings eventually must be removed. Today, approximately 1.3 million American construction workers and general industry workers are exposed to asbestos, researchers with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health estimated in a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, underscoring the need for effort to minimize exposure.

Reinstein said the group remained optimistic that Congress would pass a ban on asbestos that incorporated the strongest elements of Senate legislation (S. 742), passed in 2007, that banned the importation and use of asbestos in the United States and House Resolution 6903, introduced in 2008, that sought to limit the asbestos content in consumer products.

Joining the group is pressing for a ban on asbestos was Jordan Zevon, son of the late rock musician Warren Zevon, who died of mesothelioma in 2003. “Six years later and it feels like my father’s killer, asbestos, which happens to be a mass murderer, is still walking the streets,” said Jordan Zevon, who serves as a spokesman for the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization. “We pride ourselves on justice for all, but there’s no justice until the asbestos ban becomes a reality.”

Read Reuters Story