Asbestos is responsible for over 4000 deaths every year. Younger
people, if routinely exposed to asbestos fibres over time, are at
greater risk of developing asbestos-related disease than older workers.
This is due to the time it takes for the body to develop symptoms after
exposure to asbestos (latency). Exposure to asbestos can cause four main
diseases:
- Mesothelioma (a cancer of the lining of the lungs; it is always fatal and is almost exclusively caused by exposure to asbestos)
- Asbestos-related lung cancer (which is almost always fatal)
- Asbestosis (a scarring of the lungs which is not always fatal but
can be a very debilitating disease, greatly affecting quality of life)
- Diffuse pleural thickening (a thickening of the membrane
surrounding the lungs which can restrict lung expansion leading to
breathlessness.)
You can get further detailed information on these diseases from the HSE website.
It can take anywhere between 15–60 years for any symptoms to develop
after exposure, so these diseases will not affect you immediately but
may do later in life. You need to start protecting yourself against any
exposure to asbestos now because the effect is cumulative.
Asbestos was a widely used material within commercial buildings,
homes and machinery until 1999, when it was banned. This means that
asbestos is common in the general environment. However, working directly
with asbestos-containing materials (ACMs) can give personal exposures
to airborne asbestos that are much higher than normal environmental
levels. Repeated occupational exposures can give rise to a substantial
cumulative exposure over time. This will increase the risk of developing
an asbestos-related disease in the future.
The majority of the current fatal cases from asbestos exposure
(approximately 4000 deaths per year) are associated with very high
exposures from past industrial processes and installation of asbestos
products
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