Medical Experts Deem Asbestos as industrial Manslaughter

1:27 am

At the 2008 President’s Cancer Panel in September, medical experts demanded that the industrial manslaughter of millions of American workers be addressed including the use of asbestos that causes an incurable form of lung cancer known as mesothelioma. Most comments derived from a professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at SUNY Downstate Medical Center.
Jeanne Mager Stellman, PhD, told the panel that “decades had been wasted on examining the problem of carcinogens” at work and caused health issues among US employees. Dr. Stellman also explained to the panel that the government was responsible for the “lack of the will to prevent occupational disease, death and disability” among workers across the United States.
The President’s Cancer Panel is made up of individuals who with to “improve the investment in preventing cancers” that harm US citizens; the panel is an extension of the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
However, Dr. Stellman, who gave a deposition of industrial carcinogens claimed that the toxic effects felt by many workers had manifested through the years and eventually caused the development of cancer among thousands, and basically stated that the panel was not doing enough to protect workers from carcinogens such as asbestos in the workplace.
Where Is Asbestos Used?
Considered a carcinogen, asbestos has been classified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Asbestos was processed from vermiculite mines that were constructed across the country and employed thousands of Americans until they were deemed unsafe and closed in the 1970s and 1980s. The use of asbestos, however, had already been implemented throughout the construction industry in a vast number of products including the following, according to NCI: