Mesothelioma Lawyers - Cohen, Placitella & Roth

Asbestos comes from a rock. When left in the ground, asbestos is safe. When asbestos is removed from the ground and incorporated into products it becomes extremely dangerous. Asbestos is used primarily in construction products but is found in household products as well. Asbestos can cause asbestosis (a scarring of the lungs), lung cancer and mesothelioma. The only real known cause for mesothelioma in the Western world is asbestos. Accordingly, when someone exhibits mesothelioma symptoms, a doctor almost always asks how and when the patient was exposed to asbestos.

Malignant mesothelioma is a rare cancer of the lining of the lung (pleural mesothelioma) or the lining of the abdomen (peritoneal mesothelioma). The only known cause of mesothelioma in North America is exposure to asbestos. Like the other asbestos-related diseases, mesothelioma has a long latency period (period of time between first exposure to asbestos and the mesothelioma diagnosis). In rare cases the latency period has been as short as 10 to 15 years after the first exposure to asbestos. Typically, however, mesothelioma occurs 20, 30, 40 or more years after the first exposure.

Unlike the other asbestos-related diseases, even low exposures to asbestos can lead to the development of malignant mesothelioma. It is not uncommon for someone to develop this cancer after only a few weeks of exposure at a summer job decades earlier or from washing clothing worn by a worker exposed to asbestos on the job. There are even cases, reported in medical literature, of mesothelioma developing in people who simply lived near a site where asbestos products were used or manufactured.

Malignant mesothelioma is almost always fatal and treatment options are limited. Survival is usually limited to 12 to 18 months from the diagnosis, sometimes substantially less. There are some people, however, usually relatively young and in good health before being stricken with this disease, who have achieved long-term survival.