The Environmental Protection Agency took an unusual step last week: It opened a new period in which the public can comment on its proposed asbestos ban. The agency had gotten new information, officials said, including a series of ProPublica reports on dangerous working conditions in factories that use asbestos to make chlorine. Asbestos has been … [Read more...]
A Gelatinous Pleural Effusion as a Diagnostic Clue
Pleural effusion is a common presentation of several pathologies, and the determination of its cause is facilitated by macroscopic, biochemical, microbiological, and cellular analysis. A systematic approach to analyzing the fluid allows for a reduction in clinical diagnoses. Only a select number of diagnoses can be established definitively by … [Read more...]
Cancer patient asks court to end Georgia-Pacific asbestos bankruptcy
A cancer patient on Friday asked a U.S. bankruptcy court to dismiss the long-running bankruptcy of a Georgia-Pacific subsidiary, arguing that it serves no purpose other than to prevent asbestos-related lawsuits from proceeding in other courts. The bankruptcy case began in 2017, when Georgia-Pacific, a unit of industrial conglomerate Koch … [Read more...]
Pleural Mesothelioma: A Rapid Evolution of an Indolent Disease
Mesothelioma is a rare and insidious neoplasm and is characterized by its highly malignant and aggressive nature. The most common etiology is asbestos exposure, but there are some reports without known asbestos exposure and other factors leading to malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM). Here, we present the case of a 58-year-old woman with … [Read more...]
Avon Hit With $40 Million Verdict in California Talc Lawsuit
Avon Products Inc. was ordered by a California jury to pay $10.3 million in punitive damages to a woman who blamed her cancer on talc in its cosmetics, in the first such case the company has lost in US litigation. The Los Angeles Superior Court jury that punished Avon Friday for hiding the risks that some of its talc-based powders can cause … [Read more...]
Preoperative immunotherapy for mesothelioma shows favorable outcomes
In a study published recently in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine found that treating patients who have resectable malignant pleural mesothelioma, meaning that their tumor can be removed with surgery, with immunotherapy ahead of surgery resulted in favorable clinical outcomes. The study lays the … [Read more...]
Asbestos — two to three times more deadly than known
"Clouds of dust were falling on us at every blow of the truncheon, but at that time we knew nothing about asbestos," recalled Jesús Ropero Calcerrada, a 73-year-old man who was tasked with scraping asbestos from railway carriages during his working life in Beasáin, in the Basque country in Spain. He and others were not offered any protection from … [Read more...]
They inhaled asbestos for decades on the job. Now, workers break their silence
Henry Saenz remembers when he first learned what even the tiniest bit of asbestos could do to his body. He was working at a chemical plant where employees used the mineral to make chlorine, and his coworkers warned him about what could happen each time he took a breath: Tiny fibers, invisible to the eye, could enter his nose and mouth and settle … [Read more...]
Malignant Mesothelioma Mortality in Women — United States, 1999–2020
Inhalation of asbestos fibers can cause malignant mesothelioma, a rapidly progressing and lethal cancer of the mesothelium, the thin layer of tissues surrounding internal organs in the chest and abdomen. Patients with malignant mesothelioma have a poor prognosis, with a median survival of 1 year from diagnosis. The estimated median interval from … [Read more...]
Pembrolizumab/Lenvatinib Combo Shows Positive Clinical Activity in Recurrent Pleural Mesothelioma
The combination of pembrolizumab (Keytruda), and lenvatinib (Lenvima) demonstrated promising clinical activity with no unexpected toxicities in patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM), according to results from the PEMMELA study (NCT04287829) presented at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer 2022 World … [Read more...]