Hands up if you know what Mesothelioma is. Okay, give up? Well, perhaps you can help with telling me what the mesothelium is. No? This just isn’t your day.
Well, one of the advantages of writing about things you’ve never heard about is that you learn something. And learning something, as Tony Buzan tells me more than once in a book I’m reading, is what the brain - that incredible instrument - enjoys. So here we go, brain! Try Mesothelioma on for size.
Mesothelioma is a nasty cancer (as if there were any nice ones) that affects the mesothelium. Okay, I know you’re going to tell me you’re none the wiser, but just wait, and I’ll enlighten you. The mesothelium is the protective membrane that surrounds the chest cavity, the abdominal cavity, the cavity around the heart, and the internal reproductive organs. Sounds like a fairly important piece of equipment. I didn’t even know I had a membrane protecting all those bits. One of these days I’m going to do a degree in anatomy and see if I can actually learn what this is that I’m walking around in.
So, what’s Mesothelioma? It’s a form of cancer that’s linked to asbestos exposure. It occurs in the sac lining of the chest (pleural mesothelioma) or abdomen (peritoneal mesothelioma), or the lining of the heart (pericardial mesothelioma). I presume the sac linings are similar to the membranes. If not, that’s another piece of stuff I carry around.
You wouldn’t think we’d be much affected by asbestos anymore, since it’s been banned as a building material for nearly forty years. But my brother-in-law worked with a man at one time who is now making a mint clearing out asbestos from old buildings. It’s a job that requires more than membranes and sac linings; these guys not only wear full-on protective clothing, but work in specially-made tunnels and other such equipment in order to avoid contact with the asbestos.
So unfortunately there is still a need for Mesothelioma treatments. And the worst thing is that this particular cancer has no effective cure. All that can be done is treat it as other basic cancers are treated - which may not be the best option.
And where there are asbestos victims, there are people to work behind the scenes in dealing with claims for the loss of work and health and so on. Belluck and Fox in New York, for example, is one company that specialises in this issue. They investigate where and when the asbestos caused problems and aim to apportion blame. Not that this much helps the victim, usually, as few people who get Mesothelioma pull through. Still, it will give some degree of compensation to the victim’s family.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Mesothelioma. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Mesothelioma. Sort by date Show all posts
Monday, August 06, 2007
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Asbestos
I've more than once been asked to write something about Mesothelioma on this blog (no need to ask why, just accept the fact that's the case) and invariably fail to remember how to spell it. Never mind - accept the fact that the spelling above is correct. Just accept it!
Mesothelioma, as you'll know, is a cancer related to asbestos; that is, people who've worked with asbestos and inhaled the asbestos dust over a period of time are very susceptible to getting the illness. Just so you're really clear about this, mesothelioma is named from the mesothelium, which is a membrane that covers and protects most of the internal organs of the body. It's composed of two layers of cells: one layer immediately surrounds the organ; the other forms a sac around it. The mesothelium produces a lubricating fluid that is released between these layers, allowing moving organs (such as the beating heart and the expanding and contracting lungs) to glide easily against adjacent structures.
Now there's something you didn't know you'd find out when you came to read this blog today. Anyway, if you've contracted mesothelioma you may need a mesothelioma lawyer so that you don't find your employer or ex-employer trying to wriggle out of paying you money in compensation. That's another story. What I'm more interested in today is asbestos itself.
Asbestos is a Greek word meaning 'unquenchable' or 'inextinguishable' - a pretty scary sort of thought in itself, particulary if you've picked up the cancer connected to it. There are other other illnesses you can contract via asbestos: asbestostosis, which affects the lungs, for instance, and lung cancer itself.
Asbestos ain't fun to be around, even though it's very effective as a building material, with various qualities that make it useful. In fact, it's not so much its use in building that's the big problem (although there are hazards), it's what happens when you 'unbuild' it.
Now you might think we've only just discovered in the last couple of centuries that its use brought problems; nope, the ancient Greeks noticed that when their slaves mined asbestos they tended to get sick. Of course, there were always plenty more slaves around, so it didn't matter in those days. (Slaves were only there for use, like other tools and materials.)
There's a story that Charlemagne had a tablecloth made out of asbestos. Certainly it might have saved on the laundering, but you have to kind of wonder what it did to the food....
Mining of asbestos in modern times turned out to be not much better for the slaves - sorry, workers - than it had been in ancient days. Miners got sick just like their forebears and were probably treated only marginally better.
Strangely, asbestos is found naturally in the air outdoors, and in some drinkable water, including water from natural sources. Most people's systems cope with the infinitesimal amounts that they come in contact with, but there have been studies done in which it was found that people living near to asbestos deposits got sick; increasingly, the closer they lived to the deposits. Mesothelioma was one of the main illnesses they contracted.
When the Twin Towers were destroyed on 9/11, millions of particles of asbestos were released into the air. That's pretty scary.
You look around the world some days and think: this is a pretty okay sort of a place. And then you discover that the Creator seems to have left some very strange things just kind of lying around. Equally, when you think that the ancient Greeks had a fairly good idea that asbestos, for all its useful properties, wasn't that healthy for humans, you have to wonder why we moderns have considered using it in such huge quantities.
Seemingly the only way we learn is when we find we have to fork out large sums of money in compensation.
Mesothelioma, as you'll know, is a cancer related to asbestos; that is, people who've worked with asbestos and inhaled the asbestos dust over a period of time are very susceptible to getting the illness. Just so you're really clear about this, mesothelioma is named from the mesothelium, which is a membrane that covers and protects most of the internal organs of the body. It's composed of two layers of cells: one layer immediately surrounds the organ; the other forms a sac around it. The mesothelium produces a lubricating fluid that is released between these layers, allowing moving organs (such as the beating heart and the expanding and contracting lungs) to glide easily against adjacent structures.
Now there's something you didn't know you'd find out when you came to read this blog today. Anyway, if you've contracted mesothelioma you may need a mesothelioma lawyer so that you don't find your employer or ex-employer trying to wriggle out of paying you money in compensation. That's another story. What I'm more interested in today is asbestos itself.
Asbestos is a Greek word meaning 'unquenchable' or 'inextinguishable' - a pretty scary sort of thought in itself, particulary if you've picked up the cancer connected to it. There are other other illnesses you can contract via asbestos: asbestostosis, which affects the lungs, for instance, and lung cancer itself.
Asbestos ain't fun to be around, even though it's very effective as a building material, with various qualities that make it useful. In fact, it's not so much its use in building that's the big problem (although there are hazards), it's what happens when you 'unbuild' it.
Now you might think we've only just discovered in the last couple of centuries that its use brought problems; nope, the ancient Greeks noticed that when their slaves mined asbestos they tended to get sick. Of course, there were always plenty more slaves around, so it didn't matter in those days. (Slaves were only there for use, like other tools and materials.)
There's a story that Charlemagne had a tablecloth made out of asbestos. Certainly it might have saved on the laundering, but you have to kind of wonder what it did to the food....
Mining of asbestos in modern times turned out to be not much better for the slaves - sorry, workers - than it had been in ancient days. Miners got sick just like their forebears and were probably treated only marginally better.
Strangely, asbestos is found naturally in the air outdoors, and in some drinkable water, including water from natural sources. Most people's systems cope with the infinitesimal amounts that they come in contact with, but there have been studies done in which it was found that people living near to asbestos deposits got sick; increasingly, the closer they lived to the deposits. Mesothelioma was one of the main illnesses they contracted.
When the Twin Towers were destroyed on 9/11, millions of particles of asbestos were released into the air. That's pretty scary.
You look around the world some days and think: this is a pretty okay sort of a place. And then you discover that the Creator seems to have left some very strange things just kind of lying around. Equally, when you think that the ancient Greeks had a fairly good idea that asbestos, for all its useful properties, wasn't that healthy for humans, you have to wonder why we moderns have considered using it in such huge quantities.
Seemingly the only way we learn is when we find we have to fork out large sums of money in compensation.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
More on Asbestos
I wrote the other day about mesothelioma, that extremely nasty form of cancer which can be caused by asbestos inhalation, and that particularly affects the membranes of the lung, though it can damage other membranes as well. I’ve been reading up a bit more on the subject now and it’s appalling to discover that the dangers of working with asbestos were established in the 1930s, and the knowledge that asbestos workers were at risk had been known since the turn of the century.
Why did it take so long then, for companies to stop using asbestos? Asbestos was used as insulation on pipes and boilers, as fire retardants, as thermal insulation in blankets, mattresses and gloves, in roofing, weatherboarding, shuttering and cladding, in plumbing and heating systems, in floor tiles and PVC vinyl flooring, as insulating board and in the brake pads of cars, lorries, buses and trams. We were surrounded by the stuff. The moral viewpoint of the companies using it in all these forms must have been tainted by the profit they were making. Why otherwise would they have continued to use it when they knew so many people would suffer?
Perhaps at first they thought their lack of concern would never be followed up on, and that the workers in particular wouldn’t have the gumption to face up to them and demand restitution for what was being done to their bodies. And they were right as far as that went. Workers were in no position to complain, even if they were aware of the damage they were suffering. The system relied on the companies being able get away with it, on one hand, and the workers being largely unaware of their danger, on the other.
Workers would have to suffer not just mesothelioma, but asbestosis, in which fibrosis progressively scars the lungs; calcification of their lungs, and the thickening of the lung’s lining - along with lung cancer - in ever-increasing numbers before society began to take notice.
Workers in a wide range of jobs would be affected, from men (and it was invariably men) working in power stations, men doing painting and decorating, men in ship yards, roofing and construction, men working in railways, as motor mechanics, joiners and laggers, as heating engineers, and of course, men producing the asbestos itself. Families would be affected in vast numbers, as husbands, fathers and sons died painful deaths.
Now, of course, since the 1980s, the problem has come to a head. It’s far too late for the men involved - many of them have long since died and the rest are virtually incurable - but legal companies around the world these days are battling for the men’s families in an attempt to redress the failures of companies to take precautions on behalf of their workers for more than a century. Even with the best of lawyers it’s a long, hard battle.
Why did it take so long then, for companies to stop using asbestos? Asbestos was used as insulation on pipes and boilers, as fire retardants, as thermal insulation in blankets, mattresses and gloves, in roofing, weatherboarding, shuttering and cladding, in plumbing and heating systems, in floor tiles and PVC vinyl flooring, as insulating board and in the brake pads of cars, lorries, buses and trams. We were surrounded by the stuff. The moral viewpoint of the companies using it in all these forms must have been tainted by the profit they were making. Why otherwise would they have continued to use it when they knew so many people would suffer?
Perhaps at first they thought their lack of concern would never be followed up on, and that the workers in particular wouldn’t have the gumption to face up to them and demand restitution for what was being done to their bodies. And they were right as far as that went. Workers were in no position to complain, even if they were aware of the damage they were suffering. The system relied on the companies being able get away with it, on one hand, and the workers being largely unaware of their danger, on the other.
Workers would have to suffer not just mesothelioma, but asbestosis, in which fibrosis progressively scars the lungs; calcification of their lungs, and the thickening of the lung’s lining - along with lung cancer - in ever-increasing numbers before society began to take notice.
Workers in a wide range of jobs would be affected, from men (and it was invariably men) working in power stations, men doing painting and decorating, men in ship yards, roofing and construction, men working in railways, as motor mechanics, joiners and laggers, as heating engineers, and of course, men producing the asbestos itself. Families would be affected in vast numbers, as husbands, fathers and sons died painful deaths.
Now, of course, since the 1980s, the problem has come to a head. It’s far too late for the men involved - many of them have long since died and the rest are virtually incurable - but legal companies around the world these days are battling for the men’s families in an attempt to redress the failures of companies to take precautions on behalf of their workers for more than a century. Even with the best of lawyers it’s a long, hard battle.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Swingle Singers
Several years ago the Swingle Singers appeared at one of Dunedin's Festivals of the Arts. My wife and I paid what seemed a very large amount of money to go and hear them, as the SS sound had been something I'd loved as a youth, when I first started collecting records.
I was a bit disappointed with the concert, even though the group (not the original group of course, which had long since gone its way) was utterly professional and polished and superb in their singing. I was disappointed because they didn't sing any of the famous Bach pieces that had made the group famous.
I was reminded of this because my wife bought me for my birthday last week a turntable that
connects to the computer. Old records that haven't been heard in years can be put on it, with all their hisses and scratches, and turned into digital files. The turntable on its own is fine, but the advantage of being able to 'preserve' the sounds is a great addition.
A friend of ours has one that she got a few months back, and try as we might we couldn't get it to record onto her computer. To her frustration and ours. However, this time round, with some adjustments for 'this' and sortings out of 'that' we managed to record two tracks without disaster. (So we'll go down to our friend's place when I've finished with the play and see if we can finally get things humming at her end too.)
The Audacity program that we're using is a bit temperamental, but otherwise things are humming along fine.
The J B Priestly play is in its final week of rehearsal, and while most of the lines are in place, we all got a bit knocked by being on stage on Sunday afternoon, and having to contend not only with different furniture to that which we'd been rehearsing with, but also a different - and seemingly smaller - space. We'll get used to it (and the real door which we now have to open and close) but Saturday wasn't one of our great achievements.
Which reminds me of a couple of times back in 2007 when I wrote on this blog about mesothelioma. At the time I had no idea what it was, and had to go investigating. But when the word turned up in front of me again just now in a different context, I had no idea that I'd ever met it before (!) So much for all the learning that the brain enjoys that I talked about in one of those posts. Learning is fine; remembering is a task.
Incidentally, I don't think I've mentioned that one of the actors in this play (he plays Rev
Mercer, the character I started out playing) was in a J B Priestly play that I had connections with back when I was probably only about 16. That play was An Inspector Calls and I think this actor played the father. I didn't have much to do with the production of the play; think I was mostly there because my best friend was involved in some way. But it was one of my first tastes of real drama, and I saw every performance. The actor and I were discussing the other day how few of the cast from that play were still alive: at least two of the women died quite young, and the Inspector himself may also be dead. The guy who played the young man has now had a stroke, and isn't well. The changes that 45 or so years bring!
I was a bit disappointed with the concert, even though the group (not the original group of course, which had long since gone its way) was utterly professional and polished and superb in their singing. I was disappointed because they didn't sing any of the famous Bach pieces that had made the group famous.
I was reminded of this because my wife bought me for my birthday last week a turntable that
connects to the computer. Old records that haven't been heard in years can be put on it, with all their hisses and scratches, and turned into digital files. The turntable on its own is fine, but the advantage of being able to 'preserve' the sounds is a great addition.A friend of ours has one that she got a few months back, and try as we might we couldn't get it to record onto her computer. To her frustration and ours. However, this time round, with some adjustments for 'this' and sortings out of 'that' we managed to record two tracks without disaster. (So we'll go down to our friend's place when I've finished with the play and see if we can finally get things humming at her end too.)
The Audacity program that we're using is a bit temperamental, but otherwise things are humming along fine.
The J B Priestly play is in its final week of rehearsal, and while most of the lines are in place, we all got a bit knocked by being on stage on Sunday afternoon, and having to contend not only with different furniture to that which we'd been rehearsing with, but also a different - and seemingly smaller - space. We'll get used to it (and the real door which we now have to open and close) but Saturday wasn't one of our great achievements.
Which reminds me of a couple of times back in 2007 when I wrote on this blog about mesothelioma. At the time I had no idea what it was, and had to go investigating. But when the word turned up in front of me again just now in a different context, I had no idea that I'd ever met it before (!) So much for all the learning that the brain enjoys that I talked about in one of those posts. Learning is fine; remembering is a task.
Incidentally, I don't think I've mentioned that one of the actors in this play (he plays Rev
Mercer, the character I started out playing) was in a J B Priestly play that I had connections with back when I was probably only about 16. That play was An Inspector Calls and I think this actor played the father. I didn't have much to do with the production of the play; think I was mostly there because my best friend was involved in some way. But it was one of my first tastes of real drama, and I saw every performance. The actor and I were discussing the other day how few of the cast from that play were still alive: at least two of the women died quite young, and the Inspector himself may also be dead. The guy who played the young man has now had a stroke, and isn't well. The changes that 45 or so years bring!
Monday, July 19, 2010
Twice the paper
Can someone tell me why, when we're all trying to do something for the environment, National Bank of NZ has decided to switch their credit card statements from one page to two? And not only to two pages, but it's now a kind of semi-glossy paper that doesn't break down as easily as the stuff they used before.
Barmy, I call it. Flying in the face of what people are thinking. Totally ignoring its effects on the environment. I've a good mind to change banks, even though I've been with this crowd for decades. I'll go to Kiwi - the homegrown bank, maybe!
The little rant out of the way, I just want to mention the topic of asbestos mesothelioma again. I've done this on here before, and probably will again. Most of the time I come across it in relation to law suits in the States. The web sites that relate to it tend to have screeds of fairly technical stuff on the disease, and a little bit about how to go about suing the company. I'd never seen it on a NZ site before, but discovered one today. I'm not sure who this company is - they seem to be part of a portal site, rather than working on their own. And the approach to writing about the topic of suing a company seems similar to the American one. Maybe it's really a US outfit working off an NZ site?
The portal is T5.co.nz and it opens with this statement: Welcome To New Zealand's Online Business Services Information Website, here you can find some exclusive to online deals, latest offers and information on Insurance companies, Broadband Prices, Dell computers, Apple Computers, and Credit Cards in New Zealand. Hmmm.
Barmy, I call it. Flying in the face of what people are thinking. Totally ignoring its effects on the environment. I've a good mind to change banks, even though I've been with this crowd for decades. I'll go to Kiwi - the homegrown bank, maybe!
The little rant out of the way, I just want to mention the topic of asbestos mesothelioma again. I've done this on here before, and probably will again. Most of the time I come across it in relation to law suits in the States. The web sites that relate to it tend to have screeds of fairly technical stuff on the disease, and a little bit about how to go about suing the company. I'd never seen it on a NZ site before, but discovered one today. I'm not sure who this company is - they seem to be part of a portal site, rather than working on their own. And the approach to writing about the topic of suing a company seems similar to the American one. Maybe it's really a US outfit working off an NZ site?
The portal is T5.co.nz and it opens with this statement: Welcome To New Zealand's Online Business Services Information Website, here you can find some exclusive to online deals, latest offers and information on Insurance companies, Broadband Prices, Dell computers, Apple Computers, and Credit Cards in New Zealand. Hmmm.
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