Maine Asbestos Areas

Maine is one state where you will truly see Yankee thrift at work. Many of the old buildings in the state are recycled rather than knocked down and replaced.  Homes and barns are routinely moved when development encroaches on an old homestead. The hazard in moving and remodeling buildings is not only structural integrity but the likely presence of asbestos that will be disturbed. Asbestos is a known carcinogen and old asbestos in the form of flooring, insulation and roofing is most dangerous when it is disturbed. It will give off asbestos fibers in the dust; inhaling asbestos fibers, as too many Americans have learned, can cause a variety of health problems including asbestosis and mesothelioma cancer.

Risk of Asbestos Exposure in Maine

The state has its share of industrial structures that meet the standard for asbestos exposure. If a building was constructed before 1975 it probably has asbestos in it somewhere and in the cold climate of Maine it is likely to include insulation. The other factor that just about guarantees asbestos in an older industrial structure is a business that uses heat as part of its production line. Refineries, paper mills, foundries, steel mills, and steam driven power plants are prime examples. Older steam driven electric generators used asbestos to coat pipes that were dangerously hot. The same applies to ships built before 1975 or so, and Maine has two major shipyards in Bath and in Kittery.

Shipbuilding and wood products have been economic mainstays in the state at one time or another. The state is also home to the Brunswick Naval Air Station, a location that was thrown up during World War II when asbestos insulation was perfectly acceptable. Maine has one of the highest per capita rates of asbestos-related disease in the country; the low population of the state is one reason, but older buildings and industrial structures are partially to blame as well.

Asbestos Jobsites in Maine

Deaths from Asbestos Exposure in Maine

In 2004 the Environmental Working Group released a study that analyzed the reported deaths from asbestosis and mesothelioma over the period from 1979 to 2000. The study breaks out statistics for those two categories by state; for mesothelioma the deaths are given within a range, based on the assumption that some cancer deaths for people who worked around asbestos may have been misreported as, for example, lung cancer instead of pleural mesothelioma.

In Maine over that period, there were 219 deaths from asbestosis. Mesothelioma deaths were between 168 and 263 in number.  In 1999 the federal government began tracking mesothelioma deaths specifically, by state and on an annual basis. Between 1999 and the end of 2004 there were 278 mesothelioma deaths in Maine. That figure is extraordinarily high for a population of about 1.5 million. 

Cancer Treatment in Maine

Maine has one of the most advanced cancer research facilities in the country: the Jackson Laboratory Cancer Center in Bar Harbor, Maine. It has been designated as one of 64 cancer centers in the country to participate in a research network assembled by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The Jackson Center, however, is dedicated solely to research unlike most of the other NCI designees. 

There are comprehensive cancer treatment and research centers in both New Hampshire and Massachusetts:

Norris Cotton Cancer Center
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center
One Medical Center Drive
Lebanon, New Hampshire 03756-0001
Tel: (603) 653-9000
Fax: (603) 653-9003

Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center
44 Binney Street, Rm. 1628
Boston, Massachusetts 02115
Tel: (617) 632-2100
Toll Free: (877) 420-3951
Fax: (617) 632-4452

Maine has some excellent treatment facilities within it borders.The Maine Medical Center has several locations:

Maine Medical Center
Main Campus
22 Bramhall Street,
Portland, Maine
(207) 662-0111

Cancer Care Center of York County
27 Industrial Avenue
Sanford, Maine
(207) 459-1600