Most Sinister Development : Wireless Technology

Asbestos - a deadly lesson to learn

from Wikipedia:

Asbestos has been mined for over 4,000 years, but large-scale mining began at the end of the 19th century, when manufacturers and builders began using asbestos for its desirable physical properties...

Discovery of toxicity

In 1899, Montague Murray noted the negative health effects of asbestos. The first documented death related to asbestos was in 1906.

In the early 1900s researchers began to notice a large number of early deaths and lung problems in asbestos-mining towns. The first such study was conducted by H. Montague Murray at the Charing Cross Hospital, London, in 1900, in which a post-mortem investigation of a young man who had died from pulmonary fibrosis after having worked for 14 years in an asbestos textile factory, discovered asbestos traces in the victim's lungs. Adelaide Anderson, the Inspector of Factories in Britain, included asbestos in a list of harmful industrial substances in 1902. Similar investigations were conducted in France and Italy, in 1906 and 1908, respectively.

The first diagnosis was made in the UK in 1924. Nellie Kershaw was employed at Turner Brothers Asbestos in Manchester, England from 1917, spinning raw asbestos fibre into yarn. Her death in 1924 led to a formal inquest. Pathologist William Edmund Cooke testified that his examination of the lungs indicated old scarring indicative of a previous, healed tuberculosis infection, and extensive fibrosis, in which were visible "particles of mineral matter... of various shapes, but the large majority have sharp angles." Having compared these particles with samples of asbestos dust.. Cooke concluded that they "originated from asbestos and were, beyond a reasonable doubt, the primary cause of the fibrosis of the lungs and therefore of death."

As a result of Cooke's paper, parliament commissioned an inquiry into the effects of asbestos dust by E.R.A. Merewether.. and C.W. Price.. Their subsequent report.. presented to parliament on 24 March 1930.. concluded that the development of asbestosis was irrefutably linked to the prolonged inhalation of asbestos dust, and included the first health study of asbestos workers, which found that 66% of those employed for 20 years or more suffered from asbestosis. The report led to the publication of the first Asbestos Industry Regulations in 1931, which came into effect on 1 March 1932. These regulated ventilation and made asbestosis an excusable work-related disease. The term mesothelioma was first used in medical literature in 1931; its association with asbestos was first noted sometime in the 1940s. Similar legislation followed in the U.S. about ten years later.

Approximately 100,000 people in the United States have died, or are terminally ill, from asbestos exposure related to ship building...

The United States government and asbestos industry have been criticized for not acting quickly enough to inform the public of dangers, and to reduce public exposure. In the late 1970s, court documents proved that asbestos industry officials knew of asbestos dangers since the 1930s and had concealed them from the public...

Reference and Recommended:

Wikipedia

The History of Asbestos In The UK - The Story So Far.. Asbestos uses and regulations timeline (found on-line: Silverdell plc, 2012 / 15 pages) 


Paul Brodeur's 1988 book 'Outrageous Misconduct: The Asbestos Industry on Trial' examined '..the attempts of the asbestos industry to cover-up the dangers of asbestos and describes the development of the financial and legal problems of the Manville Corporation.'

In his on-line review of this book, Guy Denutte wrote:

In 1960 we had 63 scientific reports on asbestosis. The 11 studies funded by the asbestos industry found no link whatsoever between asbestos and lung cancer. The other 52 independently financed studies came to the conclusion there was a clear link. David Ozonoff from the Boston University resumes this history of corporate denial as follows: "Asbestos doesn't hurt our health. OK, it does hurt your health but it doesn't cause cancer. OK, asbestos can cause cancer but not our kind of asbestos. OK, our kind of cancer can cause cancer, but not the kind this person got. OK, our kind of asbestos can cause cancer, but not at the doses to which this person was exposed. OK, asbestos does cause cancer, and at this dosage, but this person got his disease from something else, like smoking. OK, he was exposed to our asbestos and it did cause his cancer, but we did not know about the danger when we exposed him. OK, we knew about the danger when we exposed him, but the statute of limitation has run out. OK, the statute of limitation hasn't run out, but if we're guilty we'll go out of business and everyone will be worse off. OK, we'll agree to go out of business, but only if you let us keep part of our company intact, and only if you limit our liability for the harms we have caused." This book tells this history in full detail...