Asbestos Effects on Health
Asbestos is dangerous when dispersed in air in the form of tiny fibers invisible to the naked eye.
Breathing these asbestos fibers can cause one of these three diseases:
* Asbestosis, a scarring of lung tissue
* Lung cancer
* Mesothelioma, a cancer of the pleura (double sacs oiled and smooth membrane containing the lungs) or peritoneum (the smooth double membrane lining the abdominal cavity).
Asbestosis causes severe breathing difficulties and can even cause death.
Lung cancer is fatal in 95% of cases. Asbestosis can also degenerate in lung cancer. Mesothelioma is incurable and usually results in death within twelve to eighteen months after diagnosis.
It has been suggested that exposure to asbestos can cause cancer of the larynx or the gastrointestinal tract. It is suspected that ingestion of asbestos (this, for example, contaminated drinking water) can cause gastrointestinal cancer and a study, at least, has demonstrated the increased risk of unusually high concentrations of ingested asbestos in drinking water. However, these suggestions have not been sufficiently supported by evidence from relevant studies.
Exposure to asbestos can also cause pleural plaques. Pleural plaques are isolated thickening, fibrous or partially calcified, which occur on the surface of the pleura and can be detected through a chest x-ray or computed tomography (CT). Pleural plaques are not malignant, and usually do not alter lung function.
In Europe there are many thousands of deaths annually as a result of asbestos-related diseases. At the conference on Asbestos 2003 (organized by the Committee of Senior Labour Inspectors of the European Commission), it was estimated that the total number of annual deaths caused by asbestos in seven European countries (UK, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Poland and Estonia) could amount to 15 000.
The delayed effect will mean that new cases of asbestos-related diseases due to exposure that occurred in the peak period of asbestos consumption.
Now that the production of products or materials containing asbestos has ceased in the EU, there remains the risk of exposure to asbestos in the materials and products remain in buildings, plant and equipment.
In the UK, killing approximately 1900 people each year from mesothelioma in 2001, 2002 and 2003 and is expected to mesothelioma reach its peak between 2011 and 2015 to 2 000-2 400 deaths per year.
According to estimates, deaths from lung cancer due to exposure to asbestos are roughly double those produced by mesothelioma. It is estimated that only in the UK each year die from asbestos-related cancer a total of 5 500-6 000 people today.
The diagnosis and statistics on different types of cancer (especially mesothelioma, which is difficult to diagnose) may be less reliable in states where awareness about the risks of asbestos has been lower.
In general, these diseases take a long time to develop, and usually do not appear until at least ten to sixty years later (or even later) after the start of exposure. The average latency time of mesothelioma after the first exposure is approximately thirty-five to forty years. It has been estimated that the average latency period for lung cancer is between twenty and forty years.
Inhalation of asbestos fibers produces no harmful effect immediately and cannot be made aware of its danger.
The risk of asbestosis arises from a high exposure to asbestos for several years, and the disease usually manifests more than a decade after the start of exposure. There is no doubt that cases of asbestosis are still reported in Western Europe are the result of high exposures that occurred decades ago.
The risk of lung cancer and mesothelioma related to asbestos increase with exposure. Keeping asbestos exposure as low as possible reduces the risk of disease, but there is no known threshold below which disappears completely the risk of these cancers. It is therefore important to follow the best practice to eliminate or minimize the risk of exposure.
It is considered that the risk of mesothelioma throughout life is higher for someone who has been exposed at an early age for someone who has been exposed at a later stage of life.
It is well known that lung cancer is much more common in smokers than in nonsmokers. The risk of lung cancer linked to asbestos is also much greater for smokers than non smokers.


