Mesothelioma Diagnosis

May 10, 2015

Boston Fire Stations Contain Asbestos

Firefighters in Boston put their lives on the line every day and night to help keep others safe. They face a lot of risks on the job, including burns from raging fires, smoke inhalation, falling debris, roadside dangers when rescuing car accident victims and a various other job-related hazards. When they signed up for the job and entered the academy, they knew the risk they would be facing.

But one risk they should not have to fear is asbestos exposure in their own firehouses.

According to a recent news article from The Boston Globe, Boston Fire Commissioner, Joseph E. Finn, has discussed the awful state of disrepair into which Boston’s fire stations have fallen. He is now happy to be able allocate $26 million of the department’s budget to replace two of the worst fire stations and modernize others.

This is one piece of a larger plan to get one of the country’s oldest departments a much needed update.

While these two stations slated for demolition and replacement are in the worst state of disrepair, the city’s 31 other fire stations are not exactly in great shape either. This is a result of years of neglect and various piecemeal attempts to patch up problems in the past. It is important to keep in mind that firefighters do not only have to work in these stations, but also have to live in them for at least part of every week.
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April 12, 2015

Report: Gracie Mansion Filled with Asbestos

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

There are certain perks to being the mayor of a large city. For example, in New York City, the mayor gets to live in an official residence known as Gracie Mansion. The site of Gracie Mansion originally housed a different mansion known as Belview Mansion. This first mansion overlooked the Hell Gate channel of the East River, as does the current mayoral residence. This was of such strategic importance, then-general George Washington took control of the grounds during the American Revolutionary War. The mansion was ultimately destroyed during the war, and, in 1799, Gracie Mansion was constructed as a second home for Archibald Gracie. Eventually, he sold it to the City of New York, and it later became the mayor’s residence.

Gracie Mansion has been renovated over the years several times, most recently during mayor Bloomberg’s tenure, and it was funded by an anonymous donation many suspect to be Bloomberg. It was also the site of much media attention during a scandal involving former mayor Rudy Giuliani and his mistress. Gracie Manson is once again in the news – this time because of the discovery of asbestos.
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March 30, 2015

New Type of Asbestos Class Action Lawsuit

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

When someone is exposed to asbestos and inhales fibers, it normally takes between 20 and 50 years for the fibers to lead to malignant mesothelioma. Patients typically do not realize they are sick until they develop symptoms. Symptoms can include abdominal pain, shortness of breath, and chest pain. Once a patient develops these or other symptoms of mesothelioma and sees his or her doctor, they often learn the disease is in an advanced stage. Life expectancy is significantly reduced upon diagnoses of mesothelioma.

However, a recent news article from the Kansas City Star discusses a new kind of asbestos class action lawsuit pending in a court in Missouri. In 1983, the county started renovating the historic courthouse. Witnesses describe an extreme amount of dust covering the courthouse during the renovations while workers were still there full-time during the process. There were reports of dust being tracked across the floor by workers’ boots. Some reports told of dust shooting in through air vents as renovation workers cut asbestos insulation away from pipes without turning off the ventilation system.

One courthouse worker who was present during the renovation developed malignant mesothelioma and died in 2010 at age 56. After her death, her family received a $10.4 million settlement from the county.
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March 28, 2015

Asbestos Continues Delay in Opening New Boston Homeless Shelter

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

With the unscheduled closing of Boston’s Long Island Homeless Shelter, city officials have been scrambling find a new location to house hundreds of displaced homeless residents and many drug rehabilitation patients.

The shelter was closed when the bridge connecting Long Island to Quincy became so deteriorated city engineers urged it immediately be closed to prevent a deadly accident. The worst damage requiring the bridge to close was found on the underwater support structures during an extended inspection. With the island effectively cut off from the mainland, there was no way to keep the shelter open, and city officials were forced to close it with little advanced warning or preparation.

The city hopes a new shelter under renovation and remodeling will serve as permanent housing for the over 700 former residents at Long Island. This new shelter is being constructed at what was once a plant where transportation department workers conducted equipment repair and made street and road signs. This plant is filled with asbestos used during its construction. Much of this asbestos was already crumbling down as a result of years of deterioration and insufficient upkeep.
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March 26, 2015

City Cautions Urban Explorers About Exposure

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

If you search the internet for “urban explorers” you will see websites dedicated to those who spend their spare time sneaking into abandoned buildings in cities across the United States taking photographs of what sometimes appears to be a window into the past.

One of the locations these urban explorers like to frequent is located in Westborough, Massachusetts. Specifically, this location is the long-closed Westborough State Hospital.

The abandoned 90-acre campus holds the crumbling remains of what was once part of the state psychiatric hospital. The old hospital buildings were used for over a hundred years and officially closed in 2010.

According to a recent news article from Wicked Local Westborough, urban explorers have taken photographs of rooms that have not been touched in years. Some of these rooms hold psychiatric equipment not used in decades. There are old rusty hospital gurneys, antique wheelchairs, large rooms filled with bathtubs, and other signs of how mental illness was treating during the early 1900s.
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March 19, 2015

Asbestos at Martha’s Vineyard Library Site Causes Delays, Costs

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

Residents of Martha’s Vineyard, a town on the Cape south of Boston, have been eagerly awaiting the opening of the library budgeted to cost a quarter of a million dollars at the time bids were awarded. The problem now facing contractors is it is now estimated to cost nearly half a million dollars to complete the project, due to unforeseen delays including discovery of asbestos on the job site, according to a recent news article from MV Times.

When contractors had their bid approved and began work, the project was quickly halted when water begin filling the excavation site for the library foundation. The water was coming up from the water table below, and, for some reason, this was not anticipated at the time plans were approved. It cost builders and engineers over $100,000 to fix water table issues before construction could be resumed.

Once the water table issue had been resolved, contractors unearthed an underground storage tank, which had to be painstakingly removed and the resulting vacant hole filled in with suitable material. At this point, there were problems with the fence erected around the project. After tackling these new issues, and at very great expense, contractors then found pipes believed to be insulated with now friable asbestos material.
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March 1, 2015

Symptoms of Mesothelioma and Other Asbestos-Related Illness

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

There is little question asbestos causes most if not all cases of malignant mesothelioma. Medical researchers, including epidemiologists, have concluded mesothelioma is extremely rare in patients who have not been exposed to asbestos at some point in their lives.

However, unlike many other illnesses caused by toxic substances, malignant mesothelioma normally takes between 20 and 50 years for patients to develop noticeable symptoms of the deadly disease. By the time most patients develop symptoms, the cancer is often at a very advanced stage, and there is little time left to live. There are some radical treatments, but no effective cure. Though, early intervention can improve one’s prognosis.

It is important to understand and be able to recognize the symptoms of mesothelioma. As noted by the Mayo Clinic , pleural mesothelioma often presents with shortness of breath, chest pain below the rib cage, abnormal lumps under the skin of a patient’s chest, unexplained weight loss, and a painful cough.
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February 24, 2015

Asbestos-Related Illness Inspiration for Recent Novel

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

According to a recent news feature from Western News, H.M. Bowker has written a novel loosely based on her life in Libby, Montana. She has lost her father, two brothers, a sister and sister’s husband all to asbestos-related illness. Much of this was incorporated into her novel.

Libby, Montana is the site of the largest and oldest vermiculite mine in the United States, and was heavily used during much of last century. W.R. Grace owned this mine and employed many workers during its operation from 1920 to the 1980s. Town residents were constantly being exposed to vermiculite, as it was literally covering much of the town. Bowker recalls there was a pile of vermiculite near a baseball field and local kids would pretend it was snow and play with, or even lie in it, making vermiculite angels with their arms.

Vermiculite, like asbestos, is a naturally occurring silica compound that is resistant to heat and fire and was often used as an insulation material and to give commercial and consumer products heat and fire resistant properties. However, due its chemical similarity to asbestos, asbestos is often found in vermiculite as the elements formed in the same environment.
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February 21, 2015

Serious Asbestos Exposure Risk Leads to Federal Prison

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

Asbestos is a naturally-occurring substance, which was heavily used during the industrial revolution in the United States and Europe. Its use was so prevalent due to its abundance, low cost and effectiveness at resisting heat, fire, caustic chemicals and electricity.

The nearly total ban on asbestos products in the developed world is because asbestos fibers are extremely toxic. Once inhaled, these fibers become lodged in the lungs and tissues known as the mesothelium where they can metastasize into a deadly form of cancer known as mesothelioma, asbestosis, lung cancer, and other respiratory illness. Doctors have no effective means to remove the fibers, or even detect their presence. After a period of 20 to 50 years, any illness caused by these fibers will typically present painful and debilitating symptoms. By the time a patient knows he or she is suffering, and goes to a doctor, it is usually too late for any effective treatment and patients may only have a short time to live – often times less than a year.

What makes matters more horrific is those in the asbestos industry were well aware of these risks long before the general public. Companies actually took steps to hide this information and even marketed their products as being safe when concerns did arise. Today, asbestos is hardly used in the United States, but there is still much of the toxic substance present in Massachusetts and across the world.
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February 9, 2015

Boston Surgeon to Start New Lung Institute to Fight Mesothelioma

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

According to a recent news article from Houston Chronicle, a world-renowned surgeon from Harvard University is leaving Massachusetts to help start a new lung institute in Texas.

This surgeon will be heading a team of over 80 doctors put together to treat serious lung conditions including asthma and cancer. He will be using gene-based techniques to treat patients. He is known as a world-leading expert in treatment of mesothelioma. He credits this recognition to his vast experience in seeing patients suffering from the deadly asbestos-related cancer due to Boston’s once burgeoning ship building industry. Asbestos was used heavily in many aspects of the maritime industry and caused many workers to develop mesothelioma.

One reason asbestos was so common at shipyards is because a fire at sea is one of the biggest fears among sailors, because there is not where to go if a fire starts on a boat. It’s not like you can evacuate a boat at sea in rough weather. Asbestos is cheap and naturally resistant to heat, fire, electricity, and caustic chemicals. It has been used in fabricated components, joint compounds, and insulation. Asbestos was very commonly used as pipe insulation whereby sheets of the material were woven into fibers and wrapped around hot pipes to keep the heat in and prevent burns.
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