Most people have heard of mesothelioma from asbestos, but did you know that exposure to asbestos can lead to other various life-threatening conditions?

Being diagnosed with an asbestos-related disease such as mesothelioma, lung cancer or asbestosis is overwhelming news. Unfortunately, every year thousands of people suffer from diseases related to direct, household, or bystander asbestos exposure.

What is Asbestos?

Asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral fiber that was once valued for its resistance to heat, electrical and chemical damage, and was used by dozens of trades.

With millions of microscopic fibers, asbestos can easily break apart and become airborne and possibly inhaled. Should asbestos fibers be inhaled, they may become lodged in your lungs, potentially leading to lung cancer, mesothelioma, or other asbestos-related diseases.

Additionally, because asbestos fibers travel so easily through the air, person working with asbestos-containing products and even bystanders run the risk of inhaling these fibers and developing an asbestos-related disease decades after exposure.

Asbestos Mesothelioma

Asbestos mesothelioma is a rare cancer of the lining of the lung (pleural mesothelioma) or the lining of the abdomen (peritoneal mesothelioma). The only known cause of mesothelioma in North America is exposure to asbestos.

Like the other asbestos-related diseases, mesothelioma has a long latency period (period of time between first exposure to asbestos and the diagnosis of the disease). In rare cases, the latency period has been as short as 10 to 15 years after the first exposure to asbestos. Typically, however, mesothelioma occurs 20, 30, 40 or more years after the first exposure.

Unlike the other asbestos-related diseases, even low exposures to asbestos can lead to the development of malignant mesothelioma. The prognosis for someone diagnosed with malignant mesothelioma, unfortunately, is not good. It is almost always fatal. Survival is usually limited to 12 to 18 months from the diagnosis, sometimes substantially less.

Asbestos Lung Cancer

Asbestos has also been linked to lung cancer. Asbestos may cause lung cancer in nonsmokers; however, the incidence of lung cancer is much greater in smokers than in nonsmokers. Medical evidence tends to suggest that smoking in the absence of asbestos exposure may not be nearly as dangerous as smoking combined with asbestos exposure. The total effect of the asbestos is to greatly increase the risk of cancer in a smoker over that normally expected in smokers.

Asbestosis

Inhaled asbestos particles can cause a scarring of the lung tissue called pulmonary asbestosis. Over a long period of time (the latency period is 10 to 30 or more years), microscopic asbestos fibers that are retained in the lung tissue can cause scarring to occur in the alveoli; the tiny balloon-like structures in the lungs where oxygen is distributed to the blood vessels. It takes many years for this scarring to become visible on an x-ray or CT-scan.

Pulmonary asbestosis is not treatable or curable. It is a progressive disease that gets worse over time and never goes away. Symptoms include shortness of breath or an inability to take a deep breath, fatigue, dry cough, rales or crackles at the base of the lungs which can be heard with a stethoscope and are not cleared by coughing and clubbing or bloating of the fingertips. In severe, end-stage asbestosis, a victim of this disease cannot live without supplemental oxygen, eventually leading to death by slow suffocation.

If you have an asbestos exposure claim and were diagnosed with mesothelioma, lung cancer or asbestosis, an asbestos cancer lawsuit can help you recover the cost of medical bills, lost wages and other costs.