A former car dealership worker fighting mesothelioma cancer he developed after years of working with asbestos has been awarded $8.4 million in a lawsuit.

Plaintiff Al Bennett was born and raised in St. Louis. He worked for Ford, Mercury and Lincoln car dealerships throughout the 1960s to the 1980s. Al worked with a lot of brakes, clutches, gaskets and various other vehicle parts, many of which were made of asbestos.

Al blamed his asbestos exposure on the job for the development of pleural mesothelioma in his right lung. Mesothelioma is a cancer specific to the lining of an organ. Pleural mesothelioma is a cancer of the pleura, which is the membrane that surrounds the lungs and chest cavity. Difficult to diagnose and tough to treat, a diagnosis of mesothelioma does not provide a good prognosis for the patient.

Because he was undergoing cancer treatments, he was unable to attend court when the verdict was delivered on Aug. 22. His wife Pam appeared in his stead.

Cause of Mesothelioma Cancer

Mesothelioma
can take up to 40 years after exposure before the disease becomes evident because the tiny asbestos fibers dig deep into the tissue, where inflammation and irritation can eventually give rise to cancer.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most people diagnosed with mesothelioma, due to this latency, have a median survival rate of one year.

Pleural mesothelioma is not the same thing as lung cancer, although symptoms are similar. With lung cancer, a tumor is found in the lung tissue itself.

Family members of people who work with asbestos can also be at risk, due to secondhand asbestos exposure. The worker is apt to bring home a lunch box, clothing, gloves or jackets worn at the worksite that are covered in asbestos dust. If a family member shakes out the clothing or dusts off the lunch box, asbestos particles may enter the air, allowing others in the household to be exposed to microscopic asbestos fibers. If breathed in or swallowed, these asbestos fibers may cause mesothelioma in family members eventually, too.

The Mayo Clinic doesn’t mince words about the disease, saying “Mesothelioma is an aggressive and deadly form of cancer.”  Symptoms of pleural mesothelioma cancer include chest pain, a painful cough, shortness of breath, unusual lumps of tissue under the skin on the chest, and unexplained weight loss.

Dangers of Asbestos Known

Some of today’s young people might hear about Al’s case and think, “Well, back in the 1960s and 1970s, we didn’t know asbestos was dangerous.” But that is incorrect. The first documented death linked to asbestos exposure occurred in 1906, when Dr. Hubert Montague Murray of England provided evidence to the Departmental Committee on Compensation for Industrial Diseases. He was the first doctor to deem asbestos as the cause of death.

The patient was only 33 years old, and had worked for 14 years in an asbestos textile factory. Ten of those years were reportedly in a ‘carding room,’ which means he was brushing and breaking down clumps of asbestos fibers, creating a lot of asbestos dust in the process.

The patient said he worked in the room with ten other men. He had outlived all of them, even though all of them had died in their thirties, too.