Mesothelioma Information
Mesothelioma is an asbestos-caused cancer of the mesothelium, which is the protective membrane that surrounds many of the body’s vital organs. The name given to the mesothelium changes based on the organ that it protects. Surrounding the lung, the mesothelium is called the pleura; in the abdomen, it is the peritoneum; the lining around the heart is the pericardium. There is also mesothelial tissue in the reproductive organs: in males, this tissue is called the tunica vaginalis testis and in women the tunica serosa uteri.
The most common form of mesothelioma is pleural mesothelioma, which accounts for seventy to eighty percent of all mesothelioma diagnoses. The pleura’s proximity to the lung is the reason many people mistakenly think of mesothelioma as a lung cancer, which it is not. Pleural mesothelioma can spread (“metastasize”) to the lung, but the origin site is the actual mesothelial tissue surrounding the lung — not the lung itself. After pleural mesothelioma, the next most common type is peritoneal mesothelioma, which develops in ten to fifteen percent of all cases. Pericardial mesothelioma and the mesotheliomas of the reproductive tissues account for the remainder of mesothelioma diagnoses. While a rare disorder in the general population, mesothelioma is not rare among individuals exposed to asbestos. There are two to three thousand new diagnoses of mesothelioma every year.
Exposure to asbestos is the only confirmed cause of mesothelioma. Most mesothelioma victims were exposed to asbestos in the workplace and were never told of its dangers or given proper protective gear. Unlike many other pulmonary-related cancers, cigarette smoking has no known causative affect on mesothelioma incidence, although asbestos workers who smoke do have a much greater likelihood to develop lung cancer — even more so than regular smokers who don’t work with asbestos.
One of the most difficult aspects of mesothelioma to come to terms with is its long latency period, which is the period of time between first exposure to asbestos and the diagnosis of the disease. Mesothelioma can develop anywhere from 10–70 years after the initial exposure.
The great tragedy of mesothelioma is that it was preventable. Many of the corporations that manufactured and profited from the sale of asbestos-containing products were aware of the hazards of asbestos. These companies did not warn of the risks or protect workers or Veterans. It was their legal duty to know about about their products, to test them for any potential hazards. If a potential hazard does exist, the company has a responsibility to warn workers of the hazards. In many cases, they hid the knowledge they had in order to protect themselves from liability or from having to find a new business model. The result is that many Veterans and other workers have unnecessarily developed mesothelioma.