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Advocates of better protection for workers frommesothelioma and other occupational diseases have won a major court victory. A Swiss billionaire and a Belgian executive – both former managers in the Italian affiliate of the Eternit cement company – have been sentenced to 16 years in jail and ordered to pay millions of Euros for negligence that [...]
A new report has some discouraging health news for the residents of Louisiana: Their risk ofmesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases remains higher than residents of other states, despite an increase in asbestos regulation. In a recent study of the chronic, debilitating lung disease, asbestosis, researchers in the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals note that the [...]
As school buses drive down the gravel roads in Dunn County, North Dakota, they stir up more than dirt. The clouds of dust left in their wake contain such high levels of the mineral erionite that those who breathe in the air every day are at an increased risk of developing mesothelioma, a type of [...]
“Unlike patients who receive traditional lung sacrificing surgery for mesothelioma, the patients in our study who underwent lung sparing surgery and photodynamic therapy, a light-based cancer treatment, have experienced unusually long overall survival rates. The median survival for those patients had not been reached at over two years when the results were analyzed. That’s unusual [...]
A gene most often associated with breast cancer may also play a vital role in the effectiveness ofmesothelioma treatment. BRCA1 has been shown to be closely linked to the risk of breast cancer and a number of other malignancies. But a new study out of Ireland suggests that there may also be a connection between BRCA1 [...]
There has been a setback for doctors hoping the drug vatalanib would be a viable alternative to chemotherapy for mesothelioma patients. Scientists with the Cancer and Leukemia Group B (CALGB), a research team based at the University of California, have ruled out further study on the medication as a single agent (administered by itself) after a phase [...]
Do not take the dangers of asbestos for granted. That warning comes directly from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which admits to having done exactly that when it experimented with relaxing some of its own regulations for safe asbestos handling. EPA began regulating asbestos use after the material was linked to mesothelioma and a range of other [...]
Calling it one of the “most knowledgeable organizations in the world regarding the health hazards of asbestos,” a San Francisco-based chemical risk assessment company says that the U.S. Navy was ahead of the curve in attempting to protect veterans and civilians from mesothelioma in the 1960’s. Ships of that era were heavily laden with asbestos, making Navy [...]
The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) has granted orphan drug status to a medication that may help boost the effectiveness of the standard cisplatin/pemetrexed chemotherapy combination formesothelioma. CBP501, produced by the Japanese Drug company CanBas, is a novel synthetic peptide that seems to enhance the effectiveness of cisplatin by acting on multiple pathways that govern the [...]
Although it is known to cause mesothelioma and a host of other diseases, asbestos is still in use in workplaces around the world. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), as many as 1.3 million Americans are exposed to significant amounts of asbestos in the workplace. Historically, those who mine the raw material are at [...]