From many years now, mesthelioma cancer is known as a type of cancer related to asbestos exposure. The work research developed in this area shows that in deed, mesothelioma or asbestosis is caused by exposure to asbestos.
Recent studies find that, not only exposing yourself directly to asbestos can determine your organism to develop mesothelioma, but even living near asbestos plants can be very harmful four your health and the risk to develop mesothelioma is high.
Asbestos exposure studies
The Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology, shows that every year new cases of mesothelioma cancer are detected in the community area next the old and abandoned asbestos plants.
Many studies were developed in the United States when discovered that asbestos exposure is the main cause of mesothelioma, this rare type of cancer.
They presented the fact: people who have worked in shipyards and other facilities have higher risk to develop malignant mesothelioma cancer.
Alex Burdof, a professor of Public Health at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, said that “for people living near asbestos plants, risk of developing mesothelioma is significant. It is a substantial increase over the expected incidence, we assume roughly two to three times higher than expected”. He also said that “few previous studies have investigated environmental asbestos exposure by gauging resident’s distant to the plant.
Professor Burdof and his colleagues tried to make a connection between the number and size of polluted sites and the number of houses around the contaminated areas.
First they focused on residential houses around a cement plant in the village of Goor.
To have better results Burdof and his team have ranked the level of asbestos exposure by using intervals. Three categories were developed: low (0-1 polluted site), intermediate (2-5 polluted sites) and high (6 or more polluted sites).
They also used specific methods to determine the asbestos fibers concentration in the air.
Results
The results of the study shows that nearly 300 sites are polluted and people living in these polluted residential areas can develop any time mesothelioma cancer. If safety measures will be developed in this areas life expectancy can raise in the near future.