| By :
Wendy Moyer
Mesothelioma is a debilitating disease. Malignant mesothelioma has no regard for a person's gender or race. The main reason that anyone becomes a victim of this deadly disease is that he or she, at some point in their lives, was exposed to asbestos. Even though the risk of mesothelioma, asbestosis, and other asbestos related diseases was known for many decades, some companies in the United States chose to hide this information from their workers. In many instances they even knowingly denied that there was any correlation between asbestos exposure and coming down with a dreaded disease. And, every day, they exposed their employees to asbestos and the distinct possibility that they and their family members could become very sick because of it. Through the years approximately 8 million people in the United States were exposed to asbestos where they worked. In addition, because many of the companies they worked for did not provide showers or changes of clothes, the employees inevitably carried asbestos dust and asbestos fibers back home with them on their work clothes. Consequently they unknowingly put the people they loved at risk as well. They and their families had a five times greater risk of developing lung cancer than people who were not exposed to asbestos. And, if either they or members of their families smoked cigarettes, the smokers had a fifty-five times greater risk of developing lung cancer than people who weren't exposed to asbestos. Although studies have indicated that three times as many men have had mesothelioma than women, it is believed that this discrepancy was due to the fact that many more men were exposed to asbestos. Many of the men who became victims of asbestos related diseases either were construction workers, railroad workers, automobile mechanics, or naval mechanics. Apparently the reason that so many auto mechanics developed mesothelioma and asbestosis is that brake linings contain asbestos. If someone is diagnosed with malignant mesothelioma their average prognosis is eleven months. And, sadly, the disease is virtually always fatal. The survival rate itself is dependent on the type of mesothelioma that the person has. The most aggressive is sacromatoid cancer, which has a median survival rate of about 9.4 months. Biphasic cancer, or mixed cancer, has an 11 month survival rate. And epithelioid cancer victims have approximately a 12.5 month survival rate. The peak incidence of mesothelioma occurs approximately 40 years after a person has been exposed to asbestos. For this reason most people develop mesothelioma when they are between fifty and seventy years old.
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