Mesothelioma Cancer

by Patricia Woloch

On September 11, 2001, 2,602 people died in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Thousands more may die a slow and painful death caused by exposure to asbestos released in the collapse of the towers. Immediately after the attacks over 100,000 people were exposed to dangerous levels of asbestos and over 670,000 New Yorkers may still be at risk for developing environmental illness.

;Mesothelioma is cancer caused by asbestos exposure. The symptoms of mesothelioma can take 10 to 50 years to appear, but once the disease is diagnosed it progresses rapidly and most patients have less than a year to live. Asbestos levels after the 9/11 attacks were so extreme that symptoms have appeared as soon as two years after exposure.

The danger could have been minimized
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) repeatedly tried to issue warnings about the threat of airborne contaminants. These warnings would have given emergency workers and others the chance to protect themselves from airborne contaminants. The warnings were removed from the EPA press releases by the White House Council on Environmental Quality. In April, 2007, the U.S. Court of Appeals issued a decision supporting the Council’s actions.

First responder first to die
Emergency responder Deborah Reeve developed symptoms of asbestos related illness in 2003 and was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2004. While she was save the lives of others during the aftermath of 9/11 she was unknowingly being exposed to massive amounts of asbestos which, leading to her own death in 2006. In the words of her husband David, “(Deborah) got killed on September 11, and she didn’t die until March 15, 2006. She got killed and didn’t know.”

The evidence was hiding in a shirt
Yehuda Kaploun worked at ground zero for about 48 hours immediately after the collapse. He saved the shirt he was wearing to honor the fallen of 9/11. In April, 2006, the New York Post reported that when a portion of that shirt was analyzed, it was found to contain 93,000 times the amount of chrysotile asbestos normally found in American cities.

The World Trade Center Cough
You may not have heard about mesothelioma in connection with 9/11, but you probably have heard of “the World Trade Center cough.” In April, 2007, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that 62% of those caught in the dust cloud, and 46% of those not caught in the cloud but living or working in the area now suffer from respiratory problems. The Mount Sinai Medical Center’s World Trade Center health study found that 85% of its 70,000 participants suffer from respiratory problems. First responders have been suffering respiratory problems since immediately after the attacks.

Who may be affected?
First responders are among those known to be adversely affected, but they are not the only ones. Anyone who was in the area during and after the collapse of the towers may have been exposed to dangerous levels of asbestos. The contamination lasted for weeks or months after the collapse. Even as tests were showing enormous amounts of asbestos in the air, officials were urging the public to return to the downtown area. People who lived and worked in the area, children going to school in the area, and anyone who happened to pass through, may have been affected. Because the disease can take up to 50 years after exposure to develop, it will be decades before we really know how many people were really killed by the events of 9/11 and the government’s cover-up of the contamination.

About the Author
If you live in Mobile, Alabama, or anywhere on the Mississippi or Alabama Gulf Coast, and believe that you or a loved one has become ill because of asbestos exposure, please contact the Alabama Mesothelioma lawyers at The Injury Lawyers, PC.

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One man’s misery can be another man’s fortune. This seems to be the case with the mesothelioma victims on the one hand and mesothelioma lawyers on the other. An online feeding frenzy is currently taking place. The average mesothelioma case today is settled at around 1 million dollars, and that figure jumps to 6 million dollars when the lawsuit goes to the courts. With such enormous money to be made, legal firms are hungry for a slice of the action, and are shelling out big money for online visitors. The result is that search engines and other sites that can supply them with those visitors are racking up huge revenue.

It works like this. In the sponsored listings of search engines, clicks (visitors) are auctioned off to the highest bidder. When someone searches “mesothelioma”, the highest-bidding law firms appear. With the keen competition, these firms are paying as much as $100 per mesothelioma-related visitor to their web site. That’s $100 every time someone just clicks on their ad - and a lot of the clicks are from competitors. Less than one in ten visitors may actually submit an inquiry about the services of the legal firm. And only a fraction of the inquiries convert into clients. Therefore, it is costing lawyers tens of thousands of dollars in advertising to secure a single client.

There is something truly obscene about this situation. But, it is inevitable that while there is huge money to be made from litigation, lawyers and publishers will continue to hustle for their slice of the action. You can even find these vultures on YouTube making an undignified pitch for business. If only a portion of the money could be directed to cancer research. Perhaps these legal firms and others who profit from this horrendous disease should consider donating a portion of their gains to research organizations. By doing so, they may appear a little more genuine and less like vultures.

Mesothelioma is a form of cancer linked to asbestos exposure. In fact, 70% to 80% of mesothelioma cases are caused by a history of exposure to asbestos. It can take decades for the symptoms to appear. Each year, approximately 2,000 to 3,000 new cases of mesothelioma are reported. In the past 20 years, the number of reported cases has increased significantly. Although it can take up to 50 years for symptoms to manifest, mesothelioma patients experience a host of symptoms. These include shortness of breath, or a wheezing and hacking cough, which often lead to chest or abdominal pain. In the more serious cases, individuals may have bowel blockages, anaemia, a bloody cough, and jaundice. It is extremely difficult to secure accurate statistics about how many individuals suffer from mesothelioma because in the early stages, the symptoms are quite similar to various other conditions. This often leads to a misdiagnosis of the disease. In addition, when an accurate diagnosis is finally made, the disease has typically already progressed to a more advanced stage.

With the renovation craze that has occurred in the past 2 or 3 decades in countries such as Australia and the US, it is expected that the high rates of diagnosis will continue for decades to come. And as long as there is money to be made from this disease, the vultures will also be around.

About The Author

Sam Gurgis is a scientific writer and the webmaster at http://www.mesotheliomawise.org. Full article is available at http://www.mesotheliomawise.org/category/mesothelioma-lawyers/

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