No end in sight for cancer deaths related to asbestos exposure
WorkSafeBC has been paying out claims to victims of asbestos exposure for decades, and there’s no end in sight.
Deaths from mesothelioma, a cancer caused only by exposure to asbestos, haven’t yet reached their peak in Canada, said Paul Demers, a senior scientist in prevention at the Occupational Cancer Research Centre in Toronto. Even when the peak number of confirmed cases is reached, he cautions, it may not decline for another five to 10 years.
“Our best way to monitor the impact of asbestos has been to look at the number of cases of mesothelioma,” Demers said. “Mesothelioma is a cancer that we capture through our tumour registries, and capture it accurately, and can tell how many new cases there are each year.”
Canada had 580 new cases in 2013, with 75 in B.C., according to StatsCan. From 2006-15, 584 deaths in B.C. were related to asbestos exposure, according to WorkSafeBC.
WorkSafeBC is among the country’s leaders in compensating people for mesothelioma, Demers said, but he also believes improvements could be made — including bringing more awareness to the issue of lung cancer from asbestos exposure.
It’s estimated that, for every one case of mesothelioma, there are up to four cases of lung cancer, but doctors often wrongfully attribute lung cancer to cigarette smoking.
“Exposure to asbestos increases the chance of lung cancer in both smokers and non-smokers,” he said. “But the baseline risk in smokers is much higher.
“Most of those cases are going to be among smokers and it’s easy to kind of put all the blame on the smoking and really not recognize many of those cases wouldn’t have happened if there was no (asbestos) exposure.”
Many work-related cases of mesothelioma never result in WorkSafeBC compensation for the victims, for a number of reasons: the victims don’t file for it, or they aren’t aware they were exposed at work, or they can’t provide proof that they were. A University of B.C. study found that fewer than half of mesothelioma cases on the B.C. Cancer Agency’s tumour registry between 1970 and 2005 received compensation.
The use of asbestos in almost all facets of construction in Canada until recent times means that many buildings and ships likely still have some form of asbestos.
“We will be living with the impact of asbestos for quite a while,” Demers said.