Japanese researchers are suggesting that the difficulty in diagnosing pleural mesothelioma may require more invasive measures. For patients who can tolerate the procedure, an operation to remove part of the chest lining may be the best way to diagnose early malignant pleural mesothelioma. The standard and least invasive diagnostic test when pleural mesothelioma is suspected is pleural effusion cytology. A buildup of fluid between the layers of the pleura, known as pleural effusion, is one of the first clinical signs of mesothelioma. Doctors draw of some of this fluid to test for cancer cells. The Japanese researchers point out that this method has a level of sensitivity of only about 60 percent. False negatives result in a delay of critical treatments. In order to get a more reliable diagnoses, they suggest performing a thoracoscopic pleural biopsy. This involves removing a part of the chest lining. Even this, they admit, will…
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Asbestos Exposure and Mesothelioma Attorneys
Japanese Researchers Recommend Invasive Procedure
January 27th, 2012Families of Asbestos Workers at High Risk for Mesothelioma
January 25th, 2012The families of asbestos workers can often be just as susceptible to mesothelioma as the person working with the material. Asbestos dust often travels home on the clothes of workers, making it easy to inhale for the workers’ families. The recent story of eight adult children of an asbestos worker who now have asbestos-related diseases demonstrates how hazardous the material can be. Kora Leah was a foreman at Cape Asbestos in Hebben Bridge, Yorkshire, England. His children remember how they would play with their father when he returned home from work with his clothes still covered with asbestos dust. “I remember my mother shaking his overalls and dust going everywhere,” Maureen McGough, 73, recalled. She said that the children would sometimes accompany their father to work and play in the piles of asbestos dust. Their father died of lung cancer in 1958, 10 years after he left Cape Asbestos. Two…
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Removing Asbestos Properly is Time Consuming
January 23rd, 2012Before old buildings are demolished, all asbestos must be removed. Destroying a building without removing the asbestos would cause the material to go airborne, where it is most dangerous. The process of asbestos removal is time consuming, though, as the demolition of the X-333 Process Building at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Portsmouth Site near Piketon, Ohio, has demonstrated. Removing the asbestos from the DOE building began back in November and is only now completed. The 1,000 acre site, like many buildings built prior to the end of the 1970s, used large amounts of asbestos for insulation, among other things. As these older buildings age, they become health hazards, sometimes requiring demolition. “Protecting the health and safety of the personnel at the plant and in the community, as well as the environment, is the first priority in the clean-up process. Safe asbestos removal like this in the X-333 will be…
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Navy Knew Of Asbestos’ Dangers As Early As 1930’s
January 19th, 2012U.S. Navy service members were some of the people most heavily exposed people to asbestos in our country’s history, and they suffer more from mesothelioma than almost any other group. A risk assessment company in San Francisco says the Navy was one of the “most knowledgeable organizations in the world regarding the health hazards of asbestos.” Despite that knowledge, some of which came as early as the 1930s, the Navy still exposed a large number of soldiers to the deadly material. ChemRisk researchers Kara Franke and Dennis Paustenbach examined dozens of published and unpublished documents on asbestos knowledge from 1900 to 1970. They found the Navy understood the health hazards of asbestos as early as the 1930’s. Though it required the use of asbestos on ships, the Navy did recommend certain precautions for safe handling of the material. When asbestos was clearly linked with mesothelioma in the 1960’s, the Navy…
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