Aka Household Exposure Claim

As reported by the British Press Association

February 2007

Mrs. Debra Brewer, 47, has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, an asbestos-related disease, is to file suit against the Ministry of Defense claiming that when she was a child, hugging her asbestos dust covered father as he arrived home from work, caused her mesothelioma.

Mrs. Brewer said she remembered that her dad would always arrive home from work covered in dust, but as a young child she never imagined that as she hugged and played with her father, the dust he was coated in could be life-threatening. 

Mrs. Brewer’s only known asbestos exposure is through her fathers’ dusty work clothes.  (This is also known as household exposure).  Her father, Phillip Northmore, worked as a lagger at Devonport Dockyard in Plymouth for five years in the 1960s when she was a child.  It is reported that Mr. Phillip Northmore died from small cell lung cancer, which was linked to asbestos. 

Over the past five years, Senator Patty Murray has been working on a very important piece of legislation called the Ban Asbestos In America Act.  The Act includes language which provides for mesothelioma research funding. 

During testimony before a Senate panel, Dr. Harvey Pass, testified before a Senate panel and explained why asbestos exposure remains a serious threat to the health of Americans.  Dr. Pass went on to explain to the panel that, “the mesothelioma victims of today built our country as pipe fitters, insulators, boilermakers, electricians, and shipbuilders, among others, and a third of today’s mesothelioma victims served the U.S. on Navy ships or shipyards.  Families have been destroyed by second hand fiber exposure when these heroes brought asbestos from their livelihood into their home.”

Sue Vento, the widow of the late Congressman Bruce Vento, also testified before this Senate panel, giving her personal account of her late husband’s battle with mesothelioma that took his life on October 10, 2000, just ten months after being diagnosed.