Asbestos is a public-health crisis not a bankruptcy crisis.  Many firms that have declared bankruptcy have not laid off workers, cut executive pay, or stopped making money.  Further, it should be noted that most of these companies are in Chapter 11 bankruptcy — which is a reorganization plan.  To get a clear view of the picture just read the companies’ stockholder meeting minutes, and then, compare with what the same company is telling Congress. 

   The legislative and executive branch would do well to focus on the issue at hand which is the number of Americans who are dying and have died from asbestos related diseases, and not proposing a congressional bail-out bill to aid the very companies who bear the responsibility for exposing them.  Many of these companies knowingly exposed their workers and families to asbestos because of their bottom line wherein corporate profit outweighed human life.   

  As one official put it,“It’s like a ticking time bomb inside your chest.”  -Per the ATSDR (Agency For Toxic Substance & Disease Registry) official in The Washington Post, Oct. 3, 2003.

Word for the day: RESPONSIBILITY

The federal government did not begin tracking mesothelioma as a cause of death until 1999.  This resulted in dramatic underestimates of true mesothelioma mortality rates.  When the federal government began tracking mesothelioma as a cause of death, the mortality rate more than doubled, from 935 deaths in 1998, to 2343 in 1999.

Mesothelioma is associated with asbestos exposure, and it has a latency period ranging from 10 to 40 years.