The winemaking industry has joined others that have been tied to asbestos lung cancer.

New evidence has come to light by Italian researchers that some practices in wine production could increase chances of developing malignant pleural mesothelioma or asbestos lung cancer. Published in The Annals of Occupational Hygiene, the focus of the study is the first case of mesothelioma in a person “whose only known exposure to asbestos was in the winemaking business.”

The authors of the study, Alessandro Nemo and Stefano Silvestri of the Institute for Study and Prevention of Cancer in Florence, studied a man who worked for an Italian winemaker treating wine for impurities using an asbestos-made filter from 1960 to 1988.

According to their findings, the asbestos exposure might have occurred “during the mixing of dry chrysotile asbestos fibers into the wine as well as during the filter replacement.” Exposure had to be estimated since airborne asbestos is not traditionally tracked in the wine industry.

While rare, this is not the first mention of asbestos exposure in the wine industry. According to the Italian National Mesothelioma Register, over the past 20 years eight cases of mesothelioma have been reported where the patient worked in the wine industry.

Four of these cases were connected to individuals who used the aforementioned asbestos filters, but those patients were also exposed to asbestos at other worksites. With these four, due to multiple asbestos exposure sites, no firm wine industry correlation could be made.

Asbestos Dangers Still Linger

To date, the asbestos mesothelioma litigation is the longest-running mass tort in U.S. history. Since 1991, over 3 million claims were transferred to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, where the MDL is consolidated. Traditionally, these cases come from industrial workers or those who worked in the maritime industry, but not always.

Asbestos is a set of six naturally occurring minerals, with some strands being 700 times smaller than a human hair. Several industries found asbestos to be incredibly desirable for its resistance to heat, fire and electrical damage, sound absorption capabilities, and low price.

It has over 2,500 different uses, from heating system insulation, vinyl flooring and ceiling treatments to fake snow for holiday decoration and movie sets. Some asbestos-containing materials were still being used into the late 1980s.

The Benton Clean Air Agency notes that “because asbestos fibers are so small, once released into the air, they may stay suspended there for hours or even days. Asbestos fibers are also virtually indestructible. They are resistant to chemicals and heat, and they are very stable in the environment.”

It is this stability that puts individuals who have been exposed at risk. They breathe in the fibers, which then sit in the lungs and cause damage over time, leading to asbestos lung cancer. The duration of time between exposure and illness is one of the hallmarks of mesothelioma, with a latency period of anywhere from 20 to 50 years.

Hundreds of companies have been hit with asbestos lawsuits by individual mesothelioma or asbestos lung cancer sufferers or their families, or in asbestos class action lawsuits, saying that proper safety precautions were never used.

To date, asbestos still poses a risk as older buildings get revamped or companies use it unknowingly. Today, thousands of asbestos lawsuits still remain in litigation.