The 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 of his children have died in recent months of mesothelioma. The remaining siblings all have asbestos related diseases now and are at risk of developing mesothelioma.
The National Cancer Institute reports that there is evidence that family members of workers heavily exposed to asbestos face an increased risk of developing mesothelioma.
Cappolino Dodd Krebs, LLP – mesothelioma lawyers