Asbestos is a mineral that has been found to cause multiple diseases and cancers. Before this was known, however, asbestos was used in many different building projects, such as in schools, homes, and hospitals. Along with asbestos being used in building projects, asbestos was used in many different manufacturing products as well. Asbestos is used in manufacturing products is what eventually lead to so many workplace related asbestos diseases cropping up across the United States. Many workers would work with products that contained asbestos, and when the workers handled these products, the small, fine fibers of asbestos would become airborne and travel into the lungs of whoever was handling the product. From there, the asbestos fibers would lodge themselves into the tissue of the lungs and cause inflammation or cancer. The technical term for asbestos fibers that travel into the lungs and cause inflammation is asbestosis, one of the most common diseases associated with asbestos exposure.
Asbestos does not only affect the lungs, however, but the asbestos fibers will also cause disease on any surface they come into contact with. This is what leads to many women contracting ovarian cancer after using talcum powder as a feminine product. Talcum powder is mined extremely close to naturally occurring asbestos, so close that it’s impossible to be able to fully separate the to after they have been mined. The talcum powder would contain trace amounts of asbestos, even after it had gone through a supposed clarification process. The asbestos polluted talcum powder would then travel up the women’s reproductive system and the asbestos fibers would lodge into the tissue of the ovaries, causing cancer.
As you can see, asbestos is an extremely dangerous project. As of today, any asbestos abatement teams that work on removing asbestos will go through multiple steps to ensure that they are not exposed to the asbestos that they are removing. It took many decades for people to finally realize that asbestos was what was making them sick, however. After someone is exposed to asbestos it takes decades upon decades to actually contract an asbestos-related illness. This means that many of the people who were exposed to the asbestos in their workplace didn’t actually contract a disease until they were already retired. By then, they have also been working with the asbestos for many decades, leading to the disease that they contracted to be very severe. Many of the people who contract asbestos-related diseases later in life end up dying from the disease. Because of the large number of people who have been affected health-wise by working with asbestos, it’s possible for them to seek financial compensation for the health troubles they have gone through.
Since asbestos is such a dangerous material, be sure to remove any possible asbestos in your home through asbestos abatement.