Asbestos is a mineral that occurs in nature. It is known to be very resistant to chemicals and to temperature. Further to that and in comparison to other materials, it is easy to mine and to process. But what is nowadays common knowledge since the 1980s, was kept under the hat for way too long by some corporations: asbestos exposure can be very dangerous and was found to be the cause for a number of severe and fatal illnesses, including mesothelioma and lung cancer.
Unfortunately, the dangers of getting in contact with asbestos were not always communicated adequately from employers to their workers. Furthermore, some companies did not make sure that the appropriate safety standards were put in place to protect their employees from the exposure to asbestos. For that reason, individuals in the thousands continue to get sick and contract asbestos induced diseases, due to their prolonged occupational contact to the hazardous material.

After nearly one hundred years of using asbestos in just about any commercial application possible, we also had to learn that even indirect contact to this toxic material can kill individuals as well. Even down to spouses that handled their husbands work clothes that were saturated with the deadly particles, could cause asbestos death inadvertently, and would be attributed to another cause of them contracting the cancer decades later. Long time tobacco smokers that contract mesothelioma, have even a tougher time due to the fact that their cigarettes were just as, or more dangerous than being exposed to asbestos.

The widows and widowers filing claims against asbestos death cases seem to be on the rise, rather than on the decline as medical advancements in recent years have been able to pinpoint the victims’ exact cause of death. Victories in court cases run into the tens of millions of dollars, and according to several news sources, the caseload for the judicial system will only become larger as more mesothelioma patients are diagnosed correctly in the future. There is no end in site as this deadly material was used for approximately one hundred and twenty years, still kills one out of twenty people over the age of fifty.

The United States government halted the use of almost all use of asbestos in 1996, but the millions of tons that were used in almost every facet of life, will take up to two centuries to rid the planet of all it’s occurrences. The residue that this industry left is sometimes compared to a tidal wave of death, destruction, and agony for the victims and their families that are left. We may never rid ourselves of an asbestos death toll, as there are smaller countries on earth that will never know they have it, or have the medical facilities to deal the cancer it causes.