March | 2010 | About Mesothelioma: Asbestos Exposure and Lung Cancer, Mesothelioma Lawyers & Attorneys Info

Minnesota Pollution Officials say Air Testing Could Predict Asbestos-Related Illness

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

Minnesota air pollution regulators are appealing a court decision that relaxed airborne asbestos testing requirements along the North Shore around the town of Silver Bay.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency contends that relaxing the air quality standards and testing requirements would be harmful to the health of residents of Minnesota.

From 1975 to 2007, Northshore Mining Company monitored asbestos particles in air emissions in the vicinity of its plant, comparing the numbers to asbsestos fiber counts in the vicinity of St. Paul, under federal court order.

Northshore Mining officials argued the testing requirement was outdated and unnecessary and tried for years to get the requirement lifted. Pollution control officials said the mining company should do an environmental study before dropping the air testing—a proposal the company disputed.

In 2007, State District Judge Kenneth Sandvik agreed with Northside that the air pollution agency had more than 30 years to justify the testing and the harm caused by the fibers.

In appealing the district court decision to the Minnesota Court of Appeals this month, air pollution control officials contend the air monitoring will help predict how many residents will succumb to asbestos-related diseases including lung cancer, mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lung, and asbestosis, a chronic scarring.

State investigators are not sure whether asbestos fibers detected in hundreds of tests are released from taconite mining near Babbit, or processing at the plant in Silver Bay.

Still, University of Minnesota health investigators have detected an unusually high incidence of respiratory disease in the northern tier of Minnesota counties. The University of Minnesota now has underway a comprehensive three- to five-year, $4.8 million study of the respiratory health of taconite workers in northern Minnesota. An earlier study linked taconite miners who had developed mesothelioma to commercial asbestos exposure in the mines.

Labels: National News
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Study Explores Surgery and Combo of New Chemotherapy Drugs

Sunday, March 21st, 2010

Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston have been recruiting patients with malignant mesothelioma for a study of the effectiveness of using a combination of chemotherapy drugs after removal of cancerous tumors.

Pleural Mesothelioma is a cancer of the lining of the lung and is closely linked to inhaling asbestos fibers. The symptoms of mesothelioma which is incurable, typically appear 30 to 50 years after exposure to asbestos.

Surgery remains the optimal procedure for reducing the presence of malignant mesothelioma tumors to the microscopic level. After removing visible tumors from a patient’s chest, doctors then use chemotherapy drugs to stop cancer cells from growing and spreading. Cisplatin currently is used as a drug in chemotherapy treatments.

The study, led by Dr. David Sugarbaker, a mesothelioma specialist, is exploring whether Cisplatin can be used safely in combination with another anti-cancer drug, gemcitabine to treat mesothelioma patients.

Gemcitbine, which is marketed as Gemzar, belongs to a family of drugs call antimetabolites that attack cells in the metabolic process. It prevents cells from making RNA and DNA, which stops cell growth. If cells stop dividing, they die, causing tumors to shrink. Gemcitabine has been used to treat pancreatic cancer, bladder cancer, ovarian soft-tissue sarcoma, breast cancer and non-small cell lung cancer.

As part of the study, the chest cavities of patients are bathed in the drugs for one hour after tumors are removed, and the drugs also will be warmed to a temperature of 107 degrees

Another recent study involving researchers at eight medical research universities in the U.S., Italy, France, Germany and Australia reported some success in extending the lives of patients suffering from malignant mesothelioma in the lining of the abdomen or peritoneal mesothelioma, by employing a combination of surgery and heated chemotherapy drugs.

The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, found that of 405 patients treated in the study, the overall median survival rate of the patients was 53 months, and 47 percent remained alive after five years. The high temperature of the chemotherapy solution has been found to increase its therapeutic effect. Both heat and direct contact with chemotherapy drugs kill cancer cells.

Labels: Mesothelioma, Research
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Lawmaker Pushes Research to Detect Asbestos Cancer Sooner

Friday, March 19th, 2010

Omaha State Sen. Bob Krist’s father died of lung cancer related to asbestos exposure in 2004—less than two years after it was diagnosed. Like many asbestos-related diseases including mesothelioma and asbestosis, the elder Krist’s symptoms appeared decades after exposure and his cancer was only diagnosed at an advanced stage. It was likely linked to his work as an electrician and service in the Navy.

To help Nebraska veterans have a better chance of surviving cancer, Sen. Krist is proposing that Nebraska spend about $650,000 for research on a non-invasive screening test using mucus from the respiratory tract that might provide an early warning of cancer.

About 500 older military veterans, age 50 or older who smoked at least a pack of cigarettes a day for 20 years, would participate in the study that would be conducted by the University of Nebraska Eppley Cancer Center, under Krist’s bill. The state’s $310 million health care fund, which received monies from the federal tobacco litigation settlement, would pay for the five-year study. Sen. Krist, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and veterans of Desert Shield and Dessert Storm, said he could think of no better reason to spend tobacco money than fighting cancer.

Lung cancer is curable when detected at an early stage, said Dr. Rudy Lackner of the Eppley Cancer Center. But only about 15 percent of lung cancers are detected at this stage because there isn’t an inexpensive detection tool.

Veterans are about 25 percent more likely to develop lung cancer, Lackner said. They are more likely to have been exposed to asbestos and other occupational risks and are more likely to have smoked.

People who have a history of asbestos exposure are at a higher risk of developing cancer if they also smoked. The Nebraska Department of Veterans Affairs supports the legislation and would help find volunteers for the study. The research is part of a number of studies being done on a lung cancer screening tool being developed by Biomoda, Inc., a cancer diagnostics company based in New Mexico.

Read Krist’s legislation

Labels: National News, Research
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Rally in Italy for Worldwide Ban on Asbestos

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

Anti-asbestos activists called for a worldwide ban on the hazardous building material at rally this week in Turin, Italy where an international trial on asbestos-related disease is underway.

Members of the International Ban Asbestos Network urged a ban on the mineral fiber that is still widely used in developing countries such as India, Mexico and much of Asia. They demanded “an end to impunity” for companies responsible for the worldwide catastrophe of asbestos.

Sanjiv Pandita, head of Ban Asbestos branch in Asia, said it made no sense that asbestos was still used because it killed people and it was only greed that motivated it.

The objective of the rally was to highlight the global epidemic of asbestos-related diseases such mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs, that have that has coincided with the use of asbestos. According to the World Health Organization, about 90,000 people died each year of asbestos-related lung cancer, mesothelioma and asbestosis after inhaling asbestos fibers in factories, mines and other workplaces. The WHO says the epidemic of asbestos-related disease is still on the rise because the diesease symptoms typically take decades to appear after exposure. The WHO has recommended banning asbestos.

In the ongoing trial, two former top officers of a Swiss building materials company Eternit face criminal charges and a class-action civil lawsuit for alleged negligence in the deaths of more than 2,000 people of asbestos-related disease in Italy.

The victims—who include former employees as well as residents of four Italian cities where the company had factories—allege that many illnesses and deaths were caused by exposure to asbestos in Eternit’s building products such as insulation. Proscecutors say the former Eternit workers and residents of nearby towns had unusually high rates of cancer caused by asbestos dust in the air and Eternit products used in paving. The victims are expected to seek several hundred million euros in compensataion.

According to a press release, International Ban Asbestos said that Enternit had opened the first large scale asbestos mine in Brazil in the 1960s, helping Brazil become the third largest producer of asbestos. The Belgian Eternit group also dominated asbestos markets in Peru and through Asia. Asbestos is banned in Europe and strictly regulated in the United States.

Labels: International News
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Virginia Senate Rejects Special Shield for Asbestos Lawsuits

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

A Virginia Senate committee has rejected a piece of legislation that would have helped shield a Fortune 500 company from asbestos lawsuits, handing a defeat to a group that has been pushing similar legislation across the country.

This week, Virginia senators voted 13-2 to defeat the bill that would limit asbestos-related liability for Philadelphia-based Crown Cork & Seal, which employs 300 workers at two plants in Virginia. Company leaders had lobbied aggressively for the legislation and threatened to close down the plants if it didn’t pass.

Crown Cork & Seal, a beverage packaging company that invented the bottle cap, has faced hundreds of lawsuits for asbestos-related illness related to Mundet, a family-owned business Crown Cork purchased in 1963 for $7 million. Mundet had been involved in asbestos insulation for years, and Crown Cork assumed the liability as a successor company.

About 3,000 Americans a year die of asbestos-related respiratory diseases such as mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs. Millions more are still exposed to asbestos in building materials. Inhaling microscopic asbestos fibers can lead to cancer decades later.

Since the purchase of Mundet, Crown Cork has since been named in more than 300,000 asbestos claims and paid $600 million in expenses, according to the Washington Post. Since 2007, Crown Cork has spent more than $100,000 on lobbyists to get the bill passed and donated more than $100,000 to 46 Virginia lawyers or their political action committees.

The special bill would have limited the cumulative asbestos-related liabilities of successor companies such as Crown Cork to the fair market value of the gross assets of the company being purchased at the time of the merger or consolidation. It applied to company purchases made before 1972.

The legislation, championed by House Speaker William J. Howell, had narrowly passed the House in February. The American Legislative Exchange Council, which promotes limited government and free markets, has been pushing the bill in state legislatures across the nation since 2006.

Owens Illinois, a glass container manufacturer, opposed the bill, arguing that it would pay more in asbestos claims if Crown Cork was no longer held liable. Trial lawyers, manufacturers and some unions also opposed the bill.

Labels: National News
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Resolution Proposes Asbestos Awareness Week for April 2010

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Sen. Max Baucus of Montana has introduced a resolution proposing the first week of April 2010 as Asbestos Awareness Week to improve public understanding of the dangers of asbestos exposure and prevalence of asbestos-related disease.

Nearly 300 people in the small community of Libby, Montana have died of asbestos-related disease linked to a former W.R. Grace mine and mill that operated from 1963 to 1980. Earlier this year, federal environmental regulators declared a public health emergency in Libby because of the widespread asbestos exposure.

For decades, asbestos was widely used in building materials and insulation. But inhaling the microscopic fibers can cause mesothelioma, an incurable cancer of the lining of the lung or abdomen, and other serious illnesses. About 3,000 new cases of mesothelioma are diagnosed each year in the United States.

“There are too many good folks still suffering from asbestos-related disease and contamination in Montana and across the United States”, Baucus said in a statement. “Asbestos Awareness Week provides a perfect opportunity to raise awareness about the dangers of asbestos and the need to keep fighting for the victims of asbestos-related disease.

The Senate resolution says that thousands of workers in the U.S. face significant asbestos exposure, thousands of people die from asbestos-related diseases every year and a significant percentage of asbestos disease victims were exposed to asbestos on naval ships and in shipyards while serving the country.

Senate resolution 427 urges the Surgeon General to warn and educate people about the public health hazard of asbestos exposure. The World Health Organization, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Surgeon General all say there is no safe level of exposure to asbestos, the resolution states.

Labels: Asbestos, Mesothelioma
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Immunotherapy Targets Cancer Cells in Mesothelioma Patients

Friday, March 5th, 2010

Researchers in the Netherlands have shown for the first time the feasibility of using dendritic-cell based immunotherapy in the treatment of mesothelioma patients. They hope the research will lead one day to a vaccine to give people who have been exposed to asbestos to help prevent asbestos-related diseases. Mesothelioma is an incurable cancer of the lining of the lung or abdomen closely associated with asbestos.

While most western countries have banned asbestos or restricted its use, the incidence of mesothelioma is still increasing worldwide because of the disease’s long incubation period of 20 to 50 years from initial asbestos exposure. In many developing countries including Mexico and India, asbestos is still in wide use so incidence of mesothelioma is expected to increase further in coming decades.

The expected spread of mesothelioma has spurred new research into ways to treat the fatal disease. Chemotherapy consisting of the drugs permatrexed and cisplatin is considered the standard treatment for selected patients, but only extends patients’ lives about three months. On average, patients survive about a year from the first signs of the disease.

One promising new method of treating cancer is immunotherapy which uses the body’s own immune system to target and destroy cancer cells. The aim of immunotherapy is the harness the potency of the immune system in a specifically focused attack on cancer cells, while avoiding the broader toxic effects of chemotherapy.

One type of immunotherapy uses injections of immune system dendritic cells laced with tumor-associated antigens to provoke the immune system to generate antibodies to fight the mesothelioma cell. Dendritic cells are a form of immune system cell.

“This is the first human study on dendritic cell-based immunotherapy in patients with mesothelioma,” said Dr. Joachim Aerts, a pulmonary physician at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands and lead author of a study published online in the American Thoracic Society’s Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

Having shown in animal studies that immunotherapy allowed cancer-stricken mice to survive longer, Dr. Aerts and his colleagues at the Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands selected 10 human patients recently diagnosed with mesothelioma who had responded well to chemotherapy. They gave the patients —males ages 56 to 78—three injections of dendritic cells laced with tumor-associated antigens at two-week intervals. The patients tolerated the vaccinations well overall and none had severe toxic reactions.

The researchers said they observed distinct immune responses and anti-tumor responses in the 10 mesothelioma patients. They observed shrinkage of tumors in three patients after the third round of immunotherapy. They cautioned however that a delayed reaction to the earlier chemotherapy could also have contributed to the tumor reduction, and further research was needed on this point. The median survival of the 10 patients was 19 months. Nine patients died of the disease and one patient remained alive after 34 months.

While the size of the study was small, the researchers said the results suggest that selected patients may benefit from dendritic cell immunotherapy without major adverse effects.

“We hope that by further development of our method it will be possible to increase survival in patients with mesothelioma and eventually vaccinate persons who have been in contact with asbestos to prevent them from getting asbestos related diseases,” Dr. Aerts said in a press release.

Labels: International News, Research
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Researchers Seek Antibodies that Predict Mesothelioma, Other Cancers

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

By Wade Rawlins
Doctors often have difficulty distinguishing whether a patient has malignant mesothelioma, a cancer that affects the lining of the lung, or adenocarcinoma, a type of cancer that affects the lung itself. Increasingly, they have used sophisticated blood tests that involve various panels of antibodies to help diagnose malignant mesothelioma.

Antibodies are proteins that are produced as part of the body’s immune system reaction. They are produced to fend off or neutralize invading molecules of cold germs and diseases. Clinicians use antibodies to identify or “tag” the specific antigens that indicate tissue changes consistent with mesothelioma or other diseases. For example, elevated amounts of the PSA antibody are a signal of possible prostate cancer in men so after a certain age men routinely have a PSA test when they get a physical. The antibodies are identified in laboratory blood tests.

Yet, there is no overall consensus as to which cocktail of antibodies is best at predicting the presence of mesothelioma. The lab tests are somewhat costly, so there is a need for development of consensus on guidelines for standardized antibody tests for the diagnosis of malignant mesothelioma. It could help reduce diagnostic errors and cost.

Recognizing this knowledge gap, researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles reviewed hospital medical records and identified 153 patients that were diagnosed from 2005 to 2007 with malignant epithelioid cells in pleural effusions, the excess fluid in the sac that encases the lungs and causes shortness of breath and chest pain. They analyzed the profile of antibodies and antigens of each malignant pleural effusion and correlated it with the various disease diagnoses. Their aim was to evaluate which antibodies were most predictive.

Currently, the number of antibodies analyzed by a lab to make a diagnosis varies widely. Some cell pathologists use just one or two antibodies per case to focus on the most probable diagnosis in a case. Others cast a wide net and employ more than 20 antibodies to test for every possible diagnosis to provide a comprehensive (and more costly) work-up. A maximum of 31 different immunohistochemical tests had been used by cell pathologists during the work up of the 153 cases examined by the researchers, with an average of 6 antibodies per case.

In an analysis of data published in Diagnostic Cytopathology, the researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center said the anti-bodies that provided the best odds for specific diagnoses were TTF-1 for pulmonary carcinoma, calretinin for mesothelioma, ER and PR for breast carcinoma, CA125 for Mullerian, CDX2 for gastrointestinal origin of a carcinoma and PSA for prostatic carcinoma.

The antibody panels were able to diagnose correctly 77 percent of the malignant pleural fluid cell specimens from female patients and 50 percent of those from male patients.

The researchers said a systematic approach is needed to select gender specific anti-body panels to evaluate pleural cytology specimens with malignant epithelioid cells. They said their results would need to be confirmed with other tests using larger sample sizes. But they said their preliminary results do suggest that the antibody panels have significantly better predictive value than ad hoc panels selected by individual cell paththologists. They said the use of two anti-body panels tailored to the patient’s gender for the incidence of various tumors provides a cost-effective and sensitive method for the initial work-up of the cases.

Labels: Featured News, Research
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Contributing Author

Wade Rawlins is a former environmental reporter with the Raleigh News & Observer.

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Nancy Meredith, Writer
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