It is crucial to understand asbestos exposure with respect to time. While there are many immediate considerations to keep in mind in the here and now, asbestos exposure carries significant health concerns in the long run. In other words, there are both short-term and especially long-term health implications of asbestos exposure that you should know bout. Understanding how these relate can sound difficult, but there are some simple things to keep in mind that can either keep you safe or help you know what kind of treatment and compensation action you need to take.

Understanding the Importance of Asbestos Exposure and Latency

The long-term effects of asbestos exposure can happen with as little as a single instance of exposure, even in small amounts. But what actually happens in the case of asbestos exposure? One study summarizes the event as follows:

“The toxicity of a mineral fiber is related not only to the chemical composition of the mineral but also to its surface reactivity, crystallinity, and the presence of transition metals [13]. The size and shape of the fibers are also important since they affect whether the inhaled fibers penetrate the alveolar space through the airways [13]. The stability of the fibers in the lungs can greatly affect their toxicity since ones that reach the alveolar space may be degraded or removed by macrophages for detoxification.”

Asbestos is an umbrella term used to describe a group of silicate minerals found naturally throughout the world. However, when asbestos is processed and manufactured, the tiny mineral fibers are used for strength-building purposes in hundreds of different applications in construction and especially fire-proofing. In many cases, undisturbed and undamaged asbestos products can be harmless, but the danger occurs when the fibers are exposed and released into the air. Once airborne, asbestos fibers make their way into our bodies- either by breathing them in or by swallowing them. Once inside our bodies, asbestos can cause damage and result in life-threatening diseases including various types of cancer.

However, this outcome is hardly instantaneous. While we can easily swallow or breathe in asbestos without notice, due to its lack of taste or smell, we don’t often experience the long-term component of exposure. This is the late component of asbestos exposure, otherwise known as latency.

When Latency Shows Itself in the Form of Disease

To put it another way, the effects of asbestos exposure are quite often delayed for a number of years. Earlier research concluded that asbestos exposure may result in a variety of diseases around 20 years after the time of exposure, but more recent studies have shown that asbestos latency (from exposure to disease) can take as much as 50 years for symptoms to show, and even longer in some cases.

The reason for this is not limited to ongoing instances of exposure. The American Lung Association notes that there is a risk that once inhaled, some asbestos fibers will never leave the body. This means that only one instance of asbestos exposure if fibers have made their way into the body, can be enough to cause life-threatening damage over time.

So what is happening in our bodies during these years and even decades of latency? According to studies, when free radicals oxidize important components of the cell, those components lose their ability to function normally, and the accumulation of such damage may cause the cell to die. Numerous studies indicate that increased production of free radicals causes or accelerates nerve cell injury and leads to disease.

Exposure, in whatever form it comes in, can include common household products and construction materials found in most homes built during or before the 1980s. Some of these include:

Roofing tar
Cement Boards
Loose Insulation
Flooring Underlayment
Paint applications

It’s important to note that asbestos can come in the form of solids, liquids, and gases, just as it does in the examples given. This means that there isn’t just one form of asbestos to look out for or be aware of. All forms of asbestos are carcinogenic to humans.” Any of these examples contain the same microscopic fibers that can have the same impact on our bodies, so long as they make their way into our bodies.

More to Consider With Latency

One thing to know about latency is that symptoms are often non-existent during the years that asbestos lays dormant as a silent threat. It is uncommon for people to experience symptoms right away, just as it is uncommon for people to experience small symptoms that slowly progress over time. Instead, our bodies continue to function, seemingly as normal, until the latency clock runs out, so to speak. Symptoms come on with a vengeance, and this is especially true for more aggressive forms of cancer due to asbestos exposure, such as mesothelioma. While mesothelioma is one of the most commonly known forms of asbestos-related disease, it is estimated that asbestos exposure causes six times more lung cancer than malignant mesothelioma,7 and mesothelioma deaths are estimated to be 38,400 per year worldwide.

Short-Term Acute Exposure

That is not to say, however, that all examples of asbestos exposure are limited to significant latency. For example, the first asbestos lawsuit involved Nellie Kershaw in England, who was exposed to high levels of asbestos fibers and, unfortunately, died from asbestosis at the age of 33 before her court case was concluded. Kershaw’s own experience of significant exposure is not something people should expect to encounter anymore, particularly in light of the regulations that exist today, but anyone involved in industrial or manufacturing work before the regulations came into effect in the 1980s may be at risk.

Secondhand Exposure and Latency

It’s not always easy to pinpoint exposure risks, especially when they happen in unsuspecting ways. Unfortunately, many examples of asbestos cases relate to people who had no idea that they were exposed. This not only includes people unaware of asbestos work environments but also spouses and children of workers. Secondhand asbestos exposure is notoriously connected to family members, primarily because workers unknowingly carried asbestos fibers into their homes in their clothing or tools.

So many people who work with asbestos carry fibers home with them. The fibers embed in upholstery, carpet, and other surfaces, in homes and cars, where others were exposed. This is called secondary asbestos exposure. It is also known as:

ambient exposure
household asbestos exposure
take-home exposure
domestic asbestos exposure.

Since asbestos exposure makes no distinction on how someone is exposed, only that they are exposed, even women and children are at risk of the same variety of illnesses and diseases, including mesothelioma.

Moving Forward With Testing and Compensation

Because of these crucial components related to work history, family history, and more, testing at the first sign of symptoms is a crucial first step to take. But for anyone who has been tested for exposure and has been diagnosed with a disease, how to respond in a timely manner is vitally important. While latency may result in a delay in symptoms, the onset and downgrade of a person’s health after symptoms begin to take place will happen very quickly, especially in the case of mesothelioma

Getting Compensation Quickly

There are numerous compensation options available for those exposed to asbestos, and getting in touch with an asbestos claims attorney is a risk-free way to seek compensation as fast and easily as possible. Even for those who suffer from terminal asbestos cancer, compensation is still an important way to leave a legacy for loved ones. Asbestos trusts are a great place to start, and if you have any questions about these, our professionals can help you each step of the way.

Mesothelioma is an aggressive cancer with a very sad outcome for those who contract this disease. However, mesothelioma is not a hopeless case. In fact, there are some very important things to understand about this form of cancer that can make a huge difference in how someone receives treatment, as well as the financial means to do so. Here’s what you should know about the life expectancy and overall prognosis of mesothelioma, both for yourself and those you love.

Exposure Timeline

Based on recent data, worldwide mesothelioma deaths average almost 40,000 per year. Concerns over the seriousness of mesothelioma continue to rise, especially based on how asbestos relates to mesothelioma. The reason for this is fairly straightforward; over 80% of all mesothelioma cases are caused by asbestos exposure, making this form of cancer unique in that it is almost exclusively caused by asbestos. Because of this fact, any working knowledge of mesothelioma necessarily includes a working knowledge of what asbestos is and how it may cause mesothelioma.

Varieties of Exposure

The timeline of asbestos exposure can be tricky, particularly due to the numerous ways exposure may or may not take place. Due to asbestos’ durability, withstanding heat, fire, corrosion, and more, this natural mineral has been utilized for millennia throughout the world. However, asbestos played a key productivity role both during and after the Industrial Revolution. It was during this time that asbestos was realized as the perfect fireproofing solution for factory equipment and various building materials.

Up until the eventual bans and regulations concerning asbestos usage throughout America in the 1980s, asbestos was widely used in factories, foundries, shipyards, and refineries. Just accounting for these environments alone, the occupational dangers of asbestos exposure are easy enough to understand. However, there is yet another layer of exposure that adds to the complexity of the issue. This has to do with the hidden danger of asbestos exposure, specifically in instances of secondhand exposure.

First-hand and Second-hand Timelines

For many people, the exposure timeline of their life is fairly simple; they used to work in one of the previously mentioned environments (factory or shipyard) where asbestos was used regularly. After putting in several decades in their career and going on enjoy their retirement years, these people begin having symptoms associated with asbestos exposure. They go to a doctor, get a special X-ray test, and find out the sober news that they have mesothelioma.

That exposure timeline is typical for many victims of mesothelioma, but it certainly does not include everyone. In the case of secondhand exposure, asbestos is more of a silent threat. People who are exposed to asbestos secondarily can be entirely unaware of this fact. How this happens is simple, but when it happens is harder to determine. Asbestos fibers, when disturbed, are easily transmitted from one location to another, either from clothing or simply from wind or water. Many examples of this include adjacent buildings to factories or refineries, placing office and/or administrative workers at risk of asbestos exposure even if they don’t work directly with asbestos themselves.

With asbestos fibers easily transmitted on clothing, this also brings up a sobering example of exposure risk: Homes.

Sadly, asbestos exposure and subsequent diagnosis of mesothelioma include spouses or children of workers who themselves never stepped foot in a work environment that contained asbestos. Instead, they were exposed by their spouse or parent who unknowingly transmitted asbestos fibers into the home.

Not only is secondhand asbestos exposure related to mesothelioma cases, but it makes up a sizeable percentage of all annual deaths attributed to mesothelioma. Specifically, 20 percent of all mesothelioma cases come from those who were exposed secondhand. This problem highlights the danger of determining a tight exposure timeline for family members, specifically because exposure can occur only once:

“Exposure to a single ﬁber can be sufﬁcient to cause Asbestos-related diseases such as mesothelioma (Frank and Joshi 2014:260). As a result, when dealing with Asbestos abatement or processing Asbestos-contaminated disaster debris, no level of airborne Asbestos ﬁbers is considered acceptable.”

Another doctor, David Weissman, reflects on the fact of mesothelioma’s life-threatening impact with short-term exposure: “I couldn’t help but think of a colleague who recently died of mesothelioma. He was a very distinguished physician whose only known exposure to asbestos was as a college student during a summer job. Forty years later, he developed mesothelioma and died at the age of 62.”

When Mesothelioma Symptoms Appear

Mesothelioma is a cancer of the mesothelium– the mesothelium is a protective layer of tissue that surrounds various organs in the human body, including the lungs (pleural), abdomen (peritoneal), heart (pericardial), and testicles (testicular). By far the most common example of mesothelioma is pleural, accounting for over 70% of all mesothelioma cases.

There are many factors that could contribute to mesothelioma symptoms, including the kind of mesothelioma someone is diagnosed with. However, mesothelioma starts as a silent threat. Remember, it can and often is caused by asbestos exposure which took place numerous decades ago in a person’s life. This latency phenomenon is one of the key features of asbestos exposure, and it is no different when it comes to mesothelioma.

Exposure symptoms can take almost sixty years to appear or under two decades. There is still the need for ongoing research to determine why exposure symptoms take longer for some people than others. However the nature of mesothelioma is aggressive, and the general rule of thumb seems to be that once symptoms begin, they rapidly accelerate in a very short period of time.

Life Expectancy for Mesothelioma: Months to Years

Sadly, the current prognosis for someone diagnosed with mesothelioma rests on the face that mesothelioma is a terminal cancer with no available cure. Life expectancy can be as little as one or two months but some patients have gone on to live for more than a decade after diagnosis. The average survival rate is between one and two years.

Despite the fact that no current cure is available for mesothelioma and the survival rate is shorter than certain diseases by comparison, this doesn’t mean that asbestos is untreatable. In fact, there are a variety of ways to treat mesothelioma

Surgery: Surgery is often the best way to eradicate mesothelioma in its entirety, especially at its early stages. In a typical surgical procedure, physicians will remove all visible tumors from an affected area.
Chemotherapy: While chemotherapy cannot always destroy mesothelioma tumors, it typically improves a patient’s odds of longer-term survival. A supplemental treatment for tumor removal called Heated Intrathoracic Chemotherapy (HITHOC) may be used as well.
Radiation: There is limited evidence that radiation treatments improve mesothelioma outcomes. However, radiotherapy could reduce cancer-related pain.
Tumor Treating Fields (TTFs): Tumor Treating Fields use alternating electrical currents to disrupt the growth and spread of cancer cells.

Patients being treated for mesothelioma will likely not be treated with just one of these options, but rather, with some or all of them together in a comprehensive treatment approach. The good news is, that certain medical facilities and research organizations continue to work toward more effective treatment options for mesothelioma victims. Johns Hopkins has led the way in experimental medical treatment for mesothelioma. In clinical trials, patients were administered Durvalumab a cancer medication which resulted in doubling the survival rate of patients in the clinical trial.

The most notable cancer treatment facility in the United States, MD Anderson, has been conducting clinical trials of a new medication used to treat patients with rare and aggressive cancers. Their newest medication, Vudalimab, can be used (if approved) to replace two of the common medications currently in practice. The idea is, that this new medication will be able to provide the same results but with fewer side effects and adverse reactions in patients.

Lawsuit Timeline vs Asbestos Trusts

Knowing that mesothelioma represents a relatively short life expectancy, it is vital to receive treatment as soon as possible. However, many of us are aware of the price tag that comes with many of the treatment options listed above. The good news is, if you have been exposed to asbestos (which accounts for the vast majority of mesothelioma victims) you may be entitled to financial compensation.

We all know that litigation can be a time-consuming process, and it comes with a general level of uncertainty. Time and stress are two things that are not viable options for mesothelioma victims, and the prospect of lawsuits averaging a minimum of six months means that financial compensation may come too late for some with highly aggressive forms of mesothelioma. That’s why it is important to know that there are compensation options available for those who qualify for various asbestos trust claims.

Asbestos trusts were put into place as a way to provide victims with finances to pay for their medical treatments and leave a legacy for their loved ones. While asbestos trust claims are the fastest and easiest way to receive compensation, there is a small window of time to act when it comes to an aggressive cancer like mesothelioma.

The good news is, that the professionals at AsbestosClaims.law are available and ready to help you with your claim risk-free, each step of the way. Contact us today to get started.