Texas Mesothelioma Blog
Heard Robins Cloud Black & Lubel, LLP
Friday, May 8, 2009
Asbestos kills thousands of Americans each year.
Some people believe that asbestos is a problem of our past. It's not.
Each year thousands of Americans are killed by asbestos exposure. Levin and Rountree report that, "[a]n estimated 2000 - 3000 new [mesothelioma] cases are diagnosed each year in the United States."1 Lemen cites a study by Pinherio indicating that there may be over 6,000 cases of mesothelioma per year.2
While estimates vary for exactly how many Americans mesothelioma kills each year, the consensus is that the number is in the thousands.
And mesothelioma is not the only fatal disease asbestos causes. There are three main Asbestos Related Diseases (ARDs): asbestosis, lung cancer, and mesothelioma. McCulloch & Tweedale cite a 2004 study reporting that "10,000 Americans die each year of ARDs."3 "ARDs over the next decade could claim the lives of over 100,000 Americans."4
To put this in perspective, 36,516 U.S. soldiers died in the Korean War. 58,159 U.S. soldiers died in the Vietnam War. By Pinherio's estimates, mesothelioma will kill nearly twice as many Americans in the next 10 years as died in the Korean War. By McCulloch & Tweedale's estimate, more Americans will die over the next 10 years from asbestos diseases than died in the Korean and Vietnam wars combined.
Unfortunately, asbestos is not just a tragedy of our past. Asbestos remains a very present tragedy.
2 Richard A. Lemen, Epidemiology of Asbestos-Related Diseases and the Knowledge that Led to What is Known Today in Asbestos: Risk Assessment, Epidemiology, and Health Effects ch. 6, 217 (Ronald F. Dodson & Samuel P. Hammar eds., CRC Press 2006).
4 Id. at 11.
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Jory Lange
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7:35 AM
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