The most notorious industrial carcinogen—asbestos—knows no borders. It does not discriminate on basis of race, gender, or occupation. As we learned too late, asbestos fibers are a lot more mobile than was originally assumed, causing widespread cases of the deadly cancer mesothelioma. Take, for instance, the family of Yvonne Power.
Yvonne’s father spent the early 1960s cutting asbestos boards for ceiling tiles. He later died of mesothelioma. So did Yvonne’s mother and sister. How could two women (neither of whom had ever stepped foot in an asbestos factory) contract a disease whose only known cause is exposure to an industrial material they may have never even seen?
Gridlock’d dvd We now know that asbestos fibers are practically made to travel. Asbestos is naturally a fairly friable material, meaning that it can be easily broken into smaller and smaller pieces. The particles of asbestos that are inhaled are usually too small to be seen.
These tiny fibers easily infiltrate soft, porous materials such as the clothing that Yvonne’s father wore to work. Cleaning clothes dirtied with asbestos fibers is a long and trying task that can involve multiple washes and intense scrubbing.
While Yvonne played in the garden, her mother and sister shouldered the laundry duties. It was this aversion to housework that saved Yvonne from a fatal cancer. By not washing her father’s contaminated clothes, she avoided exposure to the lurking asbestos.
Too many others were not this lucky. To add insult to injury, legal technicalities can make it difficult for a person to seek compensation for mesothelioma contracted through common household chores. This makes it all the more important that persons who are diagnosed with mesothelioma contact an experienced mesothelioma attorney as soon as possible–asbestos may not discriminate, but people do.
Tags: Asbestos, asbestos exposure, asbestos fibers, contaminated clothes, Mesothelioma, mesothelioma attorney, mesothelioma lawsuit