Support for those who worked with asbestos
LUNG cancer sufferers are missing out on substantial help, support and care because too often the link between asbestos and lung cancer is not made. Research has found a clear connection between high levels of asbestos dust exposure and the risk of lung cancer, but it can sometimes be difficult to attribute it to asbestos. Diagnosing asbestos-related lung cancer is further complicated where the patient is, or has been, a smoker, as this is often assumed to be the cause. Smoking is, of course, the biggest cause of lung cancers. However, smokers who have also been exposed to high amounts of asbestos dust have a far greater risk of developing lung cancer. The two toxins, tobacco and asbestos, work together to multiply the risk. The higher the concentration of asbestos dust, the higher the risk of lung cancer. For example, in the UK more than 43,000 people a year are diagnosed with lung cancer. But the Health and Safety Executive estimates that deadly asbestos dust causes only 2,000 of the total lung cancers. Legal experts believe the number of asbestos-related lung cancers is far higher than this and are calling on sufferers and health professionals to consider carefully whether asbestos is a potential cause. For many tradesmen, manual workers and engineers, asbestos exposure in the workplace will have been inevitable during the past 60 years. Those who have worked as laggers, electricians, dockers, engineers, joiners, plumbers, welders, builders, fitters and heating engineers, or in any premises where asbestos was widely used (e.g. power stations, shipyards and railways) are likely to have come into contact with it. It is not just the responsibility of health professionals to consider asbestos as a cause in cases of lung cancer. A lung cancer patient should make their doctor aware if they believe that they have been exposed to asbestos in the past. The World Health Organisation estimates that 107,000 people die every year as a result of their occupational exposure to asbestos. The material is now implicated in many crippling, often fatal, lung diseases including mesothelioma, pleural thickening, asbestosis, pulmonary fibrosis, and, of course, lung cancer.