Mesothelioma is a type of cancer that is 99% attributable to a person’s having been exposed to asbestos. It could be that you had a job years ago in which you were exposed but won’t begin to show symptoms until 20 to 50 years later. Occasionally a case will be diagnosed in less than 20 years, but that isn’t the norm. You may not even realize you were exposed to asbestos, and the initial symptoms can be as general as chest or back pain. Anyone who was working prior to the mid 1970s needs to explore the possibility that he or she could have been exposed to asbestos. If this is the case for you, then you’ll need to watch out for the development of lung cancer for the rest of your life.

Mesothelioma patients have been diagnosed as having cancer cells surrounding their lungs or abdominal organs or inside their ribcages. While even a little exposure to asbestos could cause the disease, it’s far more likely to occur in people who were exposed over longer periods of time. It’s real possible that you aren’t even aware that you were ever working around asbestos, because it was common for employers back then to withhold from their employees the information that was coming out regarding asbestos exposure. Some examples of people who may have been innocently exposed prior to the 1970s include construction workers or those who were in the Navy.

There are a number of materials you could have been exposed to that contained asbestos, because asbestos was widely-used prior to the middle of the 1970s when the first reports of the damages it could cause were released. Before that time almost every kind of insulation contained asbestos, including insulation used in homes, around pipes, for fire-proofing, and in boilers. Powdered forms of plaster, cement, and joint compounds that were used to insulate contained asbestos, too, and since using them caused employees to breathe in a lot of their dust, they have proved to be a major source of asbestos exposure.

If you worked in the following fields prior to the mid 1970s, you may have been exposed to asbestos: * Insulation * Steel refineries and other industries that used steel * Shipyard workers * Building trades such as electrical, carpentry, or bricklaying jobs * Maintenance workers * Boilermakers * People who fabricated brakes and clutches * Paper mills

If you did work in one of these industries, there’s still no cause for undue alarm. You do need to let your doctor know, however, that you have a history that could include exposure to asbestos. It’s possible he may want you to undergo some testing in order to know for sure. He’ll most likely want to conduct a complete physical, have chest and abdominal x-rays taken, require additional pulmonary function tests, or schedule you for a CT scan or an MRI. If all of this testing shows no evidence of Mesothelioma, you’ll be able to breathe easy for awhile, but you’ll always need to keep on top of the fact that you could develop the disease sometime in the future.

If the time comes when you’re diagnosed with Mesothelioma, one of the first things you’ll want to do is to hire a lawyer who specializes in cases involving the disease. He will be able to evaluate your claim and file a suit against your employer seeking damages if it can be proven that there was any negligence on the part of your employer in withholding information or not providing the safety equipment you needed.

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