It has been known for decades that the only identified cause for malignant mesothelioma is asbestos exposure, which occurred on the job for the vast majority of asbestos victims. However the federal government did not begin officially tracking mesothelioma deaths until 1999, which means that the official data on U.S. asbestos deaths is relatively sparse. The National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH) did issue one report in 2005 providing some fragmentary data on the 18,068 mesothelioma deaths recorded in the U.S. from 1999 – 2005. The industries where workers proved to be most at risk were:
- Shipbuilding and Repairing
- Industrial and Miscellaneous Chemicals
- Petroleum Refining
- Electric Light & Power
- Construction
There are no surprises in those general categories, nor are they terribly enlightening. They certainly gibe with other data at hand, including the estimate that perhaps 100,000 asbestos related deaths may have been generated by the shipbuilding industry, which employed 4.3 million people during World War II. Texas had the fifth most asbestos related deaths among all states over the period 1979 – 2000; it is also the state with the highest number of employees in the petrochemical industry.
The National Center for Health Statistics evaluated the mesothelioma deaths by industry in 1999, coming up with the table below. Although the sample was so small (541 deaths) that statistically it has no value, the trends that we saw in the NIOSH report are reflected here as well. Also included is the percentage of the total number of mesothelioma deaths accounted for by each industry – although sixty percent of this sample falls into "unreported industries" and "all other industries combined."
- Construction – 14.2%
- Non-paid workers, workers at home – 7.0%
- Elementary and secondary school teachers – 3.7%
- Industrial and miscellaneous chemicals – 3.5%
- General government work – 2.4%
- Agriculture – 1.9%
- Nonspecific manufacturing 1.9%
- Electric light and power – 1.9%
- Railroads – 1.7%
- Hospitals – 1.7%
- Unreported industries – 4.3%
- All other industries combined – 56%
Mesothelioma Statistics: What You Should Know
These statistics denote the percentage of all mesothelioma deaths and do not address the death rates within each industry. The gap in mesothelioma death percentages between industries – between the incidence in the construction and railroad industries for example – may not be as large as the numbers seem to suggest because the number of people working in construction is much larger than the number of people working on railroads, an industry that has lost most of its employees over the last fifty years. There is no sign of the petroleum industry, which suggests a gap in the data collection.
The high incidence of mesothelioma deaths in people who do not work with asbestos directly, such as schoolteachers and hospital workers, can be attributed to their working in close proximity to decaying asbestos in old buildings or can be attributed to asbestos exposure in an earlier career. The number of mesothelioma deaths in home workers and homemakers is most likely due to non-occupational exposure to asbestos.
Sources:
- Work Related Lung Disease Surveillance System Table, NIOSH, http://www2.cdc.gov/drds/worldreportdata/FigureTableDetails.asp?FigureTableID=898&GroupRefNumber=T07-08
- Shipbuilding's Deadly Legacy, The Virginia Pilot, May 6, 2001, Bill Burke, http://web.archive.org/web/20071012143526/http:/hamptonroads.com/pilotonline/special/asbestos/intro.html
- America's Asbestos Epidemic, Environmental Working Group, 2001, http://www.ewg.org/sites/asbestos/tables/deathdetails_state.php
- Occupational Respiratory Disease Surveillance Table, NIOSH, http://webapp.cdc.gov/ords/norms.html#queryio
