Fighting for asbestos victims and their families
- Asbestos News
- Philadelphia Asbestos Verdict $25.2 Million The jury in the case of Baccus v. Crane Co. recently awarded James Baccus’ Estate $25.2 million in compensatory and punitive damages.
- Navy Firefighter Awarded $2.6 Million for Asbestos Related Cancer David Fortier was diagnosed with mesothelioma in October of 2006, and died in June of 2008. He filed a lawsuit shortly after his diagnosis, but he did not live to see his case decided.
- Asbestos Plaintiff’s Body Subpoenaed, Taken from Graveyard Just Before Burial Harold St. John's body was never laid to rest when a court issued a subpoena for his body to collect tissue samples. Chrysler, one of the defendants in the lawsuit, maintains that the proceedings were necessary to obtain additional information about the way Mr. St. John died.
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Declared Killer: The Asbestos Carcinogen
Asbestos has been declared a proven human carcinogen by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and by the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization.
Despite a century of well-documented, deadly experience, worldwide production of asbestos products is still going on. Although the use of asbestos in many applications in the U.S. and Europe has been strictly curtailed or banned, much of the rest of the world lags far behind in protective regulation for the asbestos carcinogen.
- Read how Third-World shipbreakers contribute to problem
The following report excerpt from the Environmental Health Perspectives spotlights how serious the problem continues to be:
- An estimated 90,000 asbestos carcinogen-related deaths occur worldwide every year, and 125 million people are occupationally exposed to asbestos.
- Transitions to abandon use of asbestos products have been achieved mostly in high-income countries, whereas it is still common to varying degrees, in many developing countries.
- Efforts to transition are hampered in developing countries because of ignorance, misinformation and aggressive marketing by exporters, as well as a false sense of reassurance because of its long latency period before asbestos carcinogen’s manifestation.
- Worldwide use of asbestos products in the 135 countries was 181 million tons during the period of 1920-2003. The former USSR alone recorded a cumulative use of 42.8 million tons.
- Each developing country is at a crossroad, with an opportunity to choose an earlier reduction and elimination in the use of asbestos products and thus reduce future disease burden.
Like other occupational and environmental hazards, those who are irreparably injured or made ill by the asbestos carcinogen are usually the ones forced into acceptance. Those responsible for the problem—such as the manufacturers—most often simply walk away, unscathed.
Don’t allow this injustice to happen to you. Contact Seeger Weiss for free case evaluation.
