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

World Bank Urges Use of Alternative Building Materials to Avoid Asbestos

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

Guidelines published by the World Bank Group outline the health hazards of asbestos and specify that the use of asbestos-containing products should be avoided in new construction and remodeling, including in buildings constructed as part of disaster relief.

Inhaling asbestos fibers is linked to development of mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lung and abdomen, as well as other serious respiratory ailments including lung cancer and asbestosis, a chronic scarring of the lung. The World Health Organization estimates that worldwide 90,000 people die each year of asbestos-related diseases from exposure to asbestos in the workplace.

The World Bank Group, which offers low interest loans and technical assistance to developing countries, expects loan recipients to avoid the use of asbestos-containing materials and use alternative materials wherever feasible.

The vast majority of asbestos fiber produced today is chrysotile asbestos, which is used in asbestos-cement construction materials, asbestos-cement corrugated sheets, asbestos-cement pipe and water storage tanks. Other products still being manufactured using asbestos include vehicle brake and clutch pads, roofting and gaskets.

Construction materials are of particular concern, because of the large number of workers in construction trades, difficulty of instituting control measures and continuing threat posed by existing asbestos building materials that will eventually have to be removed, the World Bank’s guidelines say. For example, cutting an asbestos-cement sheet with a power saw or grinding a brake shoe can release very high levels of asbestos fibers into the air.

The International Labor Organization established an asbestos convention in 1986 to promote national regulations to protect workers from exposure to asbestos. As of 2008, 31 countries had ratified the convention, and 17 had banned asbestos.

Labels: Asbestos, International News, News
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Researchers Identify Suppressor of Mesothelioma Cell Growth

Monday, May 24th, 2010

By Wade Rawlins

In the last few years, microRNAs have received lots of attention as one of the most significant scientific and medical discoveries. They appear to play a major role in reprogramming a cell to undergo uncontrolled cell division, causing growth of cancerous tumors.

An important new study published this month in The Journal of Biological Chemistry suggests the potential for using microRNAs in innovative treatment therapies to suppress tumor growth in patients with malignant mesothelioma.

Mesothelioma is a cancer associated with asbestos exposure that affects the lining of the lungs or abdomen. It is an aggressive cancer that is often resistant to chemotherapy and radiation treatments. In the United States, 2,000 to 3,000 new cases of mesothelioma are diagnosed each year.

All people —all living organisms in fact—have DNA and RNA, which are the basic building blocks of life. Each microscopic DNA molecule contains hundreds of millions of atoms in a unique sequence with the genetic information to construct cells. RNA translate the genetic information into specific instructions. MicroRNA’s are single stranded molecules that regulate gene expression. “They have been described as the body’s ‘master switches,’” according to Kenneth A. Berlin, president and CEO of Rosetta Genomics, Ltd., a developer of microRNA products used for cancer diagnostic tests.

Abnormal expression of microRNA’s has been linked to the growth of cancer, but researchers haven’t understood well the mechanics of what was occurring at a cellular level.

In the new study, medical researchers from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, New York University Langone Medical Center and Rosetta Genomics, Ltd., analyzed cancer tissue from eight patients with advanced mesothelioma to pinpoint microRNAs linked to the progression of pleural mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lung.

The researchers observed that mesothelioma cancer cells failed to express miR-31, a particular microRNA that has been linked to suppression of breast cancer tumors in mice. An assessment of miR-31 revealed its ability to inhibit the proliferation and invasion of mesothelioma cells. When researchers re-introduced miR-31 into malignant mesothelioma cells, they observed that it significantly inhibited the multiplication and formation of colonies of cancer cells.

The researchers said their analysis demonstrated that miR-31 profoundly affected cell cycle progression in malignant mesothelioma cells.

Researchers have previously connected the loss of the 9p21.3 chromosome in malignant mesothelioma cells with a rapid recurrence of tumors. In the latest research, they say the association of the loss of miR-31 with the deletion of the 9p21.3 chromosomal region and enhanced capacity of cancer cells to proliferate opens new opportunities for treatment of malignant mesothelioma and other tumors.

A study published earlier this year suggested the presence of even a single specific microRNA has significant value for predicting the course that a mesothelioma patient’s disease will take. Using microRNA as a guide, the researchers were able to accurately divide the patients who had undergone surgery to remove tumors into two groups: those that would survive more than a year after surgery, and those that would die within 12 months. Elevated amounts of microRNA were associated with decreased spread of cancer and longer survival.

Labels: Featured News, Research
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Clean-up Plan Advances for Montana Town Where Public Health Emergency Declared

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

Federal environmental regulators and the state of Montana have agreed on a clean-up plan for two of the most prominent asbestos-contaminated properties in the Libby, Montana superfund site.

The plan developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency addresses contamination at the former W.R. Grace export and screening plants. It involves a combination of removing contaminated soil and capping other areas with clean soil to prevent asbestos fibers from becoming airborne. Breathing asbestos fibers is linked to serious respiratory diseases including lung cancer and mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs.

“EPA believes that public health and the environment in Libby are best served by moving forward with these remedies in order to effectively break soil exposure pathways and prepare these important properties for reuse,” Carol Campbell, an EPA assistant regional administrator said in a press release.

In June 2009, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced that a public health emergency existed in the town of Libby in northwest, Montana, where asbestos-contaminated vermiculite was mined for decades by the W.R. Grace Corp. Asbestos contamination in the Libby area has been blamed for the deaths of more than 200 people and the illnesses of more than 1,000 to date.

For decades, miners in Libby were exposed to asbestos in their work and brought the toxic dust home on their clothes, unintentionally exposing their families. The mine has been closed since 1990, and access to the Grace property restricted.

Cleanup has been completed at more than 1,100 commerical and residential properties. Meanwhile, investigations of asbestos contamination are continuing in the neighboring town of Troy, which also had a mine site and vermiculite processing areas.

Labels: Asbestos
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Asbestos on World Health Organization’s 10 Most Unwanted List

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

The use of chemicals continues to grow worldwide, so the World Health Organization has called for urgent action on 10 chemicals and substances such as asbestos that pose a threat to public health.

In a new leaflet, the World Health Organization said the most efficient way to eliminate asbestos-related disease such as mesothelioma is to stop the use of all types of asbestos.

Exposure to asbestos causes serious respiratory diseases including lung cancer, mesothelioma, cancer of the larynx and ovary, and asbestosis, a scarring of the lungs. Approximately 107,000 people died of asbestos-related lung cancer, mesothelioma and asbestosis from workplace exposure in 2004, world health officials said.

People are exposed to asbestos through breathing microscopic fibres in workplaces that use asbestos materials and from airborne fibers in the vicinity of factories that manufacture asbestos products.

Through much of the 20th century, asbestos was used in thousands of products such as roofing shingles, water supply pipes, plastic fillers as well as clutches, brake linings and gaskets for motor vehicles. In recent decades, the use of asbestos has declined in many countries, and more than 40 countries have banned the use of all forms of asbestos. But chrysotile asbestos is still widely used primarily in asbestos-cement building materials.

Some countries have increased their production or use of chrysotile asbestos in recent years. Canada is a leading exported of chrysotile asbestos. The largest users are developing countries. The use of asbestos is restricted in the United States, but not banned.

Currently about 125 million people worldwide are exposed to asbestos in the workplace, the World Health Organization estimates.

To eliminate asbestos, the WHO offered four recommendations:

• Use less toxic substitute materials for asbestos;

• Develop economic incentives to encourage replacement of asbestos;

• Prevent exposure to asbestos during asbestos removal projects;

• Improve early diagnosis and treatment for asbestos-related diseases.

Other chemicals on the WHO’s 10 Most Unwanted list include air pollution, arsenic, benzene, cadmium, dioxins and dioxin-like substances, lead, mercury, highly hazardous pesticides.

Labels: Asbestos, International News
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Incidence of Some Cancers Increasing Including Mesothelioma

Friday, May 14th, 2010

Four out of 10 Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, and about a fifth will die of cancer, according to a sobering new report by the President’s Cancer Panel. Last year, about 1.5 million new cases of cancer were diagnosed and an estimated 562,000 Americans died of cancer.

The incidence of some cancers, including mesothelioma, a cancer associated with asbestos exposure, is increasing. Meanwhile, the public is becoming increasingly aware of the unacceptable risk of cancer resulting from environmental and workplace exposures that could have been prevented, the report says.

Asbestos joins a list of all-too-common carcinogens including formaldehyde and benzene, both combustion byproducts, and radon, a naturally occurring gas, that cause grievous harm and that the National Cancer Program has has not been adequately addressed, the report says.

The President’s Cancer Panel notes that the prevailing regulatory approach to potentially harmful chemicals and substances in the United States is reactionary than than precautionary. Instead of requiring an industry to prove the safety of a product before it’s put on the marketplace, the public bears the risk of harmful exposure until insurmountable evidence of a product’s hazard is shown. Only a few hundred of the more than 80,000 chemicals in use in the U.S. have been tested for safety, the report says.

More than 70 percent of people diagnosed with mesothelioma have a history of asbestos exposure at work, the report says. Inhaling microscopic asbestos fibers is the primary cause of mesothelioma, though symptoms of asbestos-related disease may not appear for 30 to 50 years after exposure.

Workers who work with cement pipe, brake linings and acoustical and thermal insulation may be exposed to asbestos dust in the workplace. Other workers in the construction industry, shipyards and asbestos mines and mills also are at risk. Meanwhile, there is some evidence that the families of those workers may be at increased risk of developing asbestos-related diseases, if the workers bring home the toxic dust on their clothes, shoes or hair.

Annual deaths from mesothelioma in the U.S. increased 7 percent between 1999 and 2004, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

The World Health Organization, labor groups and many public health researchers have urged a global ban on asbestos. More than 20 nations have banned it, but a number of countries including the United States continue to use asbestos. With more stringent regulatiosn on airborne asbestos in manufacturing, the exposure today occurs during industrial maintenance activities that stir up dust and during de-contamination of buildings that contain asbestos materials. An estimated 1.3 million U.S. construction and general industry workers still face significant exposure, according to federal estimates.

Labels: Asbestos, National News, News
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Scientist Who Predicted Scale of Asbestos-Disease Epidemic Honored

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

Prof. Julian Peto, who has done influential research defining the environmental factors that affect development of asbestos-related cancer in the workplace, received the Medal of Honor this week from the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization.

Peto was the first researcher to predict the scale of the continuing mesothelioma epidemic. He holds a joint appointment at the Institute of Cancer Research in Great Britain and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

The dose response models that Peto developed for asbestos-related lung cancer and mesothelioma have been adopted internationally for assessment of occupational and environmental asbestos risk. Mesothelioma is a cancer of the lining of the lung related to asbestos exposure.

Peto began his research on asbestos in 1974 at Oxford University, under Richard Doll who was the first researcher to publish definitive evidence of the carcinogenicity of asbestos 55 years ago.

In the 1990s, Peto and colleagues predicted that asbestos-related cancer would claim a quarter of a million lives in Western Europe in the next 35 years. He predicted that one of every 150 men born from 1945 to 1950 in Western Europe would eventually die of mesothelioma, because of the prevalence of asbestos as insulation and building materials in the workplace in earlier decades.

According to the World Health Organization, about 125 million people are exposed to asbestos at work, and at least 90,000 die of asbsetos-related disease each year.

Labels: Asbestos, News, Research
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British Salesman Beat the Odds, Enjoyed Life After Mesothelioma Diagnosis

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

When Jon Matthews received word in April 2006 that he had mesothelioma and only months to live, the retired salesman decided to bet that he could outlive his doctor’s prediction.

Refusing to accept a quick death sentence, Matthews, who lived in Buckinghamshire, England, placed a £100 wager with odds of 50-to-1 that he would live until 2007. He won £5000—the equivalent of about $7,500 U.S. dollars.

Defying the odds, Matthews placed another bet of the same amount and odds that he would survive until June 1, 2009. He pocketed another £5000.

Bookmaker Graham Sharp, who took what he called the unique bet, told The Daily Mail newspaper that the bets had given Mr. Matthews an incentive to fight the disease, which is closely linked to asbestos exposure. Sharp said he was delighted to pay out the winning bet twice.

Sharp described Mr. Matthews as a positive man who had given much of his winnings to charity, but also spent some of it enjoying himself and betting on horses and dogs.

Matthews placed a third bet of £100 with 100-to-1 odds that he live until June 1, 2010. He would have collected £10,000 if he’d lived another few weeks. But he passed away on May 4 at the age of 60.

Still, he focused on enjoying life after receiving the diagnosis and lived far longer than expected.

Sharp said he was very sad when he heard that Mr. Matthews had died and was delighted that the wagers had given him so much enjoyment.

“He proved that what is often dispiriting news from a doctor doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t make the most of the time you have left,” Sharp said.

Labels: News
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From Spinach to Butterflies, Scientist Finds Common Structure to Develop Mesothelioma Drug

Monday, May 10th, 2010

Edward C. Taylor’s name appears nowhere on the packaging of the anti-cancer medication Alimta as its inventor. But the Princeton University professor still receives thank you letters and emails from grateful mesothelioma patients who have survived well beyond their projected lifespans after starting a course of chemotherapy treatment.

Today, Alimta (known as permetrexed in injectable form) is an anti-cancer medication approved to treat malignant mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs or abdomen associated with asbestos, and non-small cell cancers. About 85 percent to 90 percent of lung cancers are non-small cell cancer, according to the American Cancer Society.

“Even though the drug was developed and marketed by Eli Lilly, people find out that I am the inventor and send me personal notes of thanks,” Taylor told the Times of Trenton (N.J.) in a profile article. “One man from Australia, which has a lot of asbestos because it was a center of asbestos mining, was given two months to live. That was five years ago, and all traces of cancer have disappeared. He’s fit and full and vim and vigor and he wants me to know it. I have a stack of emails from him.”

The development of the drug followed decades of research and a scientific odyssey of discovery by Prof. Taylor that included fascinations with the human liver, spinach and even butterflies.

Early in his career, Taylor grew intrigued with a compound that had been identified in the human liver and that also was found in spinach leaves and was considered an essential growth factor of micro-organisms. He set out to discover the chemical connection. His scientific inquiry expanded to include butterflies after he read an article about the ring system found in the pigments in the wings of white English cabbage butterflies. As it turned out, the material from liver and spinach possessed a structure that contained as a key element, the butterfly wing pigment structure.

Scientists eventually identified the compound as folic acid, which our bodies use to make new cells and which is essential to healthy growth and development. Taylor was further intrigued that modifying the structure of folic acid slightly could change it into an anti-bacterial compound that not only stopped the growth of micro-organisms, but also caused the remission of a type of lethal leukemia. But the compound was toxic to healthy cells as well.

Taylor’s lab in the late 1970s developed a compound that functioned as an antitumor agent that was less toxic toward normal cells. Any compound that works to kill tumors and is less toxic to normal cells is of special interest to drug manufacturers. In 1985, Taylor collaborated with Eli Lilly to try to develop the compound into an anti-cancer drug. Taylor and his collaborators synthesized more than 800 potential anti-cancer compounds that didn’t work before hitting upon Alimta.

Taylor’s dogged persistence paid off. After decades of research, an estimated $2 billion in costs and 11 years of clinical trial, Alimta was approved from the Food and Drug Administration. Alimta is given in combination with cisplatin for treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma, when surgery is not an option.

Prof. Taylor is still doing research and the royalties paid to Princeton Univesrity by Eli Lilly for Alimta are paying for construction of a new 263,000-square-foot building to house the Department of Chemistry.

Source: Times of Trenton:

http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2010/05/his_find_became_tumors_nemesis.html

Labels: Cancer, Featured News, Research
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New York Contractors Face Charges for Alleged Illegal Dumping of Asbestos

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

Two Buffalo, New York area contractors face charges for the alleged illegal dumping of more than five tons of asbestos-contaminated debris inside an abandoned warehouse in the city of Buffalo, New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo announced Wednesday.

Robert L. Bishop, owner of Peerless Environmental Control, Inc., an asbestos abatement company, and Salvatore P. Capizzi, a self-employed demolition contractor, are charged with endangering public health, safety or the environment, a felony, and criminal mischief in the second degree, according to a press release issued by the attorney general’s office. They face a maximum penalty of seven years in prison.

“People who try to cut corners by illegally dumping harmful materials like asbestos endanger the public and hurt the environment,” Attorney General Cuomo said in a statement. “My office has no tolerance for polluters who fail to comply with the state’s stringent hazardous waste disposal laws.”

Asbestos poses a serious human health hazard. Inhaling asbestos fibers is linked to development of mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lung and abdomen, asbestosis, a scarring of the lung, and other serious respiratory ailments.

According to the press release, Bishop, while operating as an asbestos abatement contractor for various New York construction projects, allegedly collected thousands of pounds of asbestos-contaminated waste in containers at a warehouse in Buffalo. When asbestos regulators with the New York State Department of Labor wanted to inspect Bishop’s warehouse, he allegedly paid workers to haul the waste to a different building, where it remained hidden for more than a year until its discovery by state asbestos regulators.

The asbestos waste was cleaned up by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at a cost of more than $137,000.

“In this case, the alleged reckless and dangerous acts of two individuals put public health and the environment at risk,” State Environmental Conservation Commissioner Pete Grannis said in a statement.

Labels: Asbestos, National News
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Australia Launches New Registry to Track Mesothelioma and Asbestos Exposure

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

Government officials in Australia this week announced a new national database to track the country’s asbestos-related cancer epidemic.

The Australian Mesothelioma Registry will collect detailed information about new cases of mesothelioma and mesothelioma patients’ past exposure to asbestos. Mesothelioma is a cancer of the lining of the lung or abdomen associated with inhaling asbestos fibers. A consortium led by the Cancer Institute of New South Wales will oversee the registry.

In previous decades, Australia had the highest per capita consumption of asbestos of any country in the world. Today, it has one of the world’s highest rates of mesothelioma.

The number of new cases of mesothelioma diagnosed annually in Australia has been increasing dramatically since at least 1982. The country’s population adjusted death rate from mesothelioma is more than 50 percent higher than the United States.

“It is important that we track progress of this disease cause by Australia’s high use of asbestos in the past,” said Tom Phillips, chair of Safe Work Australia, a government agency that works to improve occupational health and safety for workers. “Through the collection of more detailed information, the new registry will provide important information on the types and levels of exposure to asbestos that typically result in mesothelioma.”

Overall, the age-adjusted death rate in Australia due to mesothelioma was 23 deaths per million population. By comparison, the annual U.S. rate is 14 deaths per million.

The incidence of mesothelioma in Australia is expected to get worse. The epidemic isn’t estimated to peak in Australia before 2017. Australia’s experience is an important example for those countries still using asbestos, government officials said.

The registry will contribute evidence to the international policy debate about banning all forms of asbestos worldwide. The World Health Organization has urged a ban on asbestos.

Labels: Asbestos, International News
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Wade Rawlins is a former environmental reporter with the Raleigh News & Observer.

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