Women at Risk for Mesothelioma
Thursday, December 6th, 2007Even though products containing over a regulated percentage of asbestos can no longer legally be manufactured and used in the United States, mesothelioma and other asbestos related illnesses are still taking lives.
Second Hand Exposure
Kati Maloney, the oldest girl of eight children, was exposed to asbestos when she would wash her father’s clothing.
Her father worked at a factory when she was growing up and the second hand exposure from his clothing eventually led to her development of mesothelioma decades later, when she was 55.
Only months after being diagnosed, Kati died from the illness that also killed her father and her uncle, leaving her family to ask, how many more “Kati’s� are there in America?
Women at Risk
“We know that secondary victims of asbestos are out there,� Dr. Pasi Janne, an oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, explains. “We don’t know how many there are, and we don’t know yet if they’re mostly women.�
Up until recently, researchers were finding that most cases of mesothelioma inflicted white, male laborers who worked around asbestos in places like factories and shipyards.
However, now they are finding that the women who washed the men’s clothing are also at risk due to their second-hand exposure over a prolonged period of time.