Incidence of Some Cancers Increasing Including Mesothelioma
Friday, May 14th, 2010Four 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.
