Mesothelioma Lawyers Blog

As some 70,000 Boston college students were preparing to move in to their new dorms or apartments in advance of the school year, Boston city code workers were busy conducting thousands of inspections.

What they found, according to The Boston Globe, was quite troubling.

Boston mesothelioma lawyers understand that in addition to fines and abatement orders for everything from rodents to bed bugs to plumbing problems, landlords were also cited for asbestos issues.

Asbestos exposure, of course, is toxic when the fibers are disturbed and inhaled. A deadly cancer called mesothelioma is the result of this exposure, though it is not diagnosed until years, or decades, after the fact.

While it’s well-known that asbestos was widely used in countless products and building materials through the 1970s, it’s used less today. However, it’s not uncommon for older buildings to contain the material, in insulation or flooring or plumbing. It’s typically not going to pose any great health risk if it’s not disturbed. The key is to properly remove it, and Massachusetts law requires a licensed third party to do so.

However, it can be quite risky if the fibers are exposed.

In one case, an apartment in the Allston neighborhood, on Ashford Street, reportedly had exposed asbestos in and around the boiler room and also the laundry room. It was so deteriorated that hazmat crews and firefighters had to be called to the scene.

Of course, it’s encouraging that city officials are taking such a firm stance in pressing landlords to address these issues, which would likely otherwise be overlooked. On the other hand, it’s upsetting that such issues went on presumably undetected or unaddressed for several years prior.

Students who were set to move into the asbestos-laden building have been put up in a hotel room until the problem is mitigated.

In all, code inspectors issued 2,800 fines for sanitary code violations and 20 fines for housing code infractions between Aug. 31 and Sept. 3. Roughly two-thirds of the trash and sanitary code violations and about 50 percent of the housing citations were issued in student-saturated neighborhoods, namely Allston and Brighton.

Boston Mayor Tom Menino, who launched the 2012 Student Turnover Campaign, along with City Inspector Bryan Glascock, announced that this was just the beginning of increased enforcement efforts on the part of the city’s code enforcement office to halt violators and protect rental tenants, particularly students. The city’s Environmental Services Unit is also expected to be involved.

Some of those actions will be based on complaints, but others will involve more regular, routine inspections.

Other proactive measures announced by the mayor include:

• Requiring rental properties to be inspected at least once every three years;
• Organizing a registry of “chronic offender” landlords, or slumlords;
• Requiring landlords who live out-of-state to have a local contact to represent them.

We applaud the city for taking these actions, and we hope it will prevent more people from being exposed to asbestos, thereby reducing the ongoing risk of mesothelioma.
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Mesothelioma patients can claim a victory for dignity, after a ruling in Missouri that is likely to have nationwide implications.

As our Boston mesothelioma lawyers understand it, lawyers for one of the defendants, accused of fatal asbestos exposure, requested that they be allowed to conduct an autopsy on the plaintiff, who was nearing the end of his battle with the terminal illness.

Reichhold, a manufacturing firm, asked the judge to allow them to collect a 5 gram sample of the plaintiff’s lung tissue in order to aid in their defense.

Now, it’s not that this request surprises us from the perspective of the lengths defendants will go in order to wriggle their way out of responsibility. In fact, we’ve become quite familiar with a number of such tactics, including excessive delays and motion filing and even repeated requests for venue changes. Delaying is often popular because the defendants know their accusers are living on borrowed time.

Mesothelioma is caused by exposure to airborne asbestos fibers. Although it’s not a product that’s widely used in the U.S. today, it was used in a large variety of products and manufacturing materials through the 1970s. That means those who are now retired from the manufacturing or construction industries face the biggest risks today, as the disease takes many years to manifest itself.

In this case, Reichhold made its request in the 22nd Judicial Circuit Court, where the case was being heard. The company argued it was quite possible the plaintiff could die before trial. Still, it didn’t specify why exactly it wanted the sample, or what the company hoped it would prove. The mesothelioma diagnosis had already been confirmed at that point. To our knowledge, there are no biological indicators that would link the type of mesothelioma (pleural or peritoneal) to a specific company. In other words, medical examiners performing an autopsy wouldn’t find a “Reichhold” stamp on the plaintiff’s lung tissue.

These cases are often decided based on historical data. Of course, the diagnosis itself is important. But from there, mesothelioma attorneys will explore how the defendant used asbestos, what level of exposure it caused to its workers or consumers, and at what point supervisors became aware of the dangers.

In this case, the plaintiff’s attorneys argued that there was no legal precedent as to require a grieving family to allow remains of their loved one to be tested by a legal foe and possibly used against them in court. Plus, the plaintiff wasn’t even deceased yet.

While the defendant had said it would be a biopsy, not an autopsy, the fact that it would be conducted after death, the judge ruled, still made it an autopsy – and he sided with the plaintiff.

Attorneys for Reichhold had also tried to argue that they were using “safe” asbestos, and that there wasn’t really any asbestos at all in the plaintiff’s lungs. Here’s the reality, though: there is no such thing as “safe asbestos.” It all has been known to cause mesothelioma.

With this ruling, the family now has peace of mind that it won’t be subjected to further harm by a company that sought to violate the remains of their loved one.
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A Chinese car manufacturer has issued a broad recall of more than 40,000 vehicles in six countries after Australian customs officials discovered certain components contained asbestos.

Boston mesothelioma lawyers are grateful that none of the vehicles in question were sold in the U.S.

However, here’s the scary truth: The only reason Australian officials caught the problem was because asbestos has been legally banned from that country. It’s not allowed to be manufactured, produced, imported or exported there.

By contrast, the U.S. has no such prohibition, and in fact, as we recently reported in our Aug. 23rd blog entry, asbestos imports in the U.S. have actually increased in recent years, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Asbestos is an organic fiber that when disturbed and airborne can be deadly to humans in the form of mesothelioma cancer.

The company in question here, Chery Automobile Co., is the largest car exporter in China. The recall involves some 23,000 vehicles in Australia and another 19,000 or so vehicles in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Singapore.

The parts in question were engines and exhaust gaskets. Australian authorities’ discovery prompted the initial recall of the Tiggo sport utility vehicle model and the A3 compact cars. Within a few weeks, the recall was expanded to the other countries as well.

The other reason why this is so troubling is that not only does China have particularly lax standards with regard to exports that may contain asbestos, lead or other harmful materials, but we are one of their top customers – and the market is growing.

According to recent business reports, the company sold some 160,000 vehicles in 2011. That represents a nearly 75 percent increase over the 2010 numbers. And, when we analyze the numbers for the first six months of the year, with the company having sold nearly 95,000 vehicles already, they are on track to surpass last year’s total.

While the company voluntarily issued the recall, representatives issued a statement placing the blame squarely on a supplier for swapping materials, unbeknownst to the parent company.

Representatives have gone on to say that any future recalls will center around the laws and regulations of the country in which they are selling. But again: The U.S. hasn’t banned asbestos. So while it’s not widely used anymore, we are by no means immune to exposure.
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We have read and researched a great deal about individuals who were diagnosed with mesothelioma years after they were exposed during their employment in a Navy shipyard or an auto mechanic shop or in roofing.

What our Boston mesothelioma lawyers know is less common is how asbestos may affect those living, working or attending school near those locations.

Now, British researchers studying an “epidemic” of mesothelioma in two Italian cities indicates that the impact is major.

In both communities, Bari and Monferrato, there were asbestos cement factories. This was the one link they had. However, huge numbers of those who were being diagnosed with the terminal cancer had never worked in those facilities. Why were they getting sick?

Researchers took tissue samples from a number of those patients, and also interviewed them in face-to-face interviews. They took note of their residential and occupational history, and then matched up the physical samples with the anecdotal evidence obtained from the interviews.

What they found was this: Being exposed to the fibers in their neighborhoods put them at grave risk for mesothelioma. In fact, the researchers weren’t able to tell much of a difference between the tissue samples taken from workers as opposed to non-workers.

This brings us back to the notion that no exposure to this compound is harmless.

The factory in Casale Monferrato was the first and largest cement factory in Italy. It opened in 1907 and was operational through 1986. More than 1,500 workers at a time toiled at the factory, handling pipes, corrugated sheets and pressure pipes that were made using mixtures of asbestos.

The factory was on the outskirts of the town, which had about 40,000 residents during the 1980s. The warehouse where all of the products were stored before shipping was on the other side of town, which meant the asbestos-laden products were regularly shipped back and forth across town every day, their cancerous fibers spilling throughout the air and into the lungs of the residents.

In 1984, however, the company shut down after a measurement of asbestos fiber concentration indicated extremely high levels.

The other factory, in Bari, was operational from 1934 to 1989. It employed about 500 people at any given time, and similarly produced pipes and sheets made from asbestos mixes.

In Monferrato, of the 454 reported cases of mesothelioma as of 2008, about 370 of those never worked at the factory. In Bari, of 78 new cases of mesothelioma identified between 2000 and 2009, about 25 had never worked at the plant.

What this shows us is that a larger number of people may be at risk for mesothelioma, and may not even realize it. Those who have worked in industries where the disease has been prevalent – albeit decades later – there is more awareness. Those who weren’t employed in those industries and may have had no clue they were even at risk for exposure may be less likely to receive a proper diagnosis at the first sign of illness. Doctors have indicated that the sooner a mesothelioma patient is diagnosed and treated, the longer their expected lifespan will be.
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There is a widespread misconception that we don’t use asbestos in the U.S. anymore because we know how dangerous it is.

We know that exposure can be fatal. We know that hundreds of companies have been made to pay billions due to litigation proving they knowingly exposed employees and consumers to the material because it was cheaper than to protect them from it.

And yet, our Boston mesothelioma lawyers know that not only do we continue to use asbestos in this country, the U.S. Geological Survey now reports that our consumption of asbestos increased by a whopping 13 percent from 2010 to 2011.

Asbestos has never been outlawed in the U.S., despite repeated efforts, although it has not been mined here since 2002. For the most part, any asbestos that is used is imported.

In 2010, about 1,040 metric tons of the organic mineral was imported into the U.S. Compare that to 2011, when there 1,180 metric tons were imported.

It’s a relatively small amount when compared to the rest of the world’s production (2.04 million metric tons in 2010 and 2.03 million metric tons in 2011), but note that world demand has gone largely unchanged, while the U.S. demand has risen sharply.

Researchers indicated that the increase of the product most likely went to “stocks for future use,” as it was unlikely the market had expanded much in a single year.

Of the industries using the materials, the USGS broke down the consumption by industry:

• Roofing – 41 percent;
• Diaphgrams for the chloralkali industry – 28 percent;
• Coating and compounds – 2 percent;
• Plastics – less than 1 percent;
• Other – 29 percent.

In addition to importing asbestos, the U.S. is also responsible for a small amount of exporting the material as well. As it is no longer actively mined, the material likely came from existing stock. Exports are down a few metric tons from 2010 to 2011, but the value of the material actually rose. In fact, the U.S. exported and re-exported nearly $30 million worth of asbestos in 2011. The leading destination for those products? The United Kingdom, followed by Korea, Mexico and Canada, respectively. This, despite the fact that the U.K. actually banned use of the substance back in 1999. The USGS figured that those asbestos shipments may have been re-exported elsewhere, though we don’t have track of where it ultimately went.

The USGS estimates that asbestos imports and exports involving the U.S. are likely to decline over the next several years, as more and more companies replaces asbestos-containing products with those that are safer use.

The astonishing thing is why that hasn’t been done already.

We know that asbestos was named as a carcinogen way back in 1977 by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. We also know that more than 10,000 Americans die every single year as a result of years-ago exposure to asbestos.

Nothing has changed. Asbestos is still lethal. And it’s still legal.
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