A man who spent 36 years working as an asbestos insulator for the U.S. Navy says he was working for five years before he even knew that he was being exposed to dangerous asbestos.

A posting on the website Lawyers and Settlements outlines the life of Fred, an insulator who was diagnosed with cancer two years ago. At just 59 years of age, Fred knows death could be imminent and resents the fact that his life was placed in danger without his knowledge.

“I worked insulating pipes and boilers, and removing asbestos from boilers, and pipes on tanks used in world wars I and II,” Fred said. “I first came in contact with asbestos on the base in 1979. The first asbestos controlled removal was in 1986 at the base. That’s when they issued us with the Tyvek suits and respirators. Before that I was just removing asbestos with my street clothes. I didn’t know I was exposed or that it was dangerous. What opened my eyes in the first place was a company down the street from us that dealt with asbestos piping, and it occurred to me at the time that maybe I was working with this stuff.”

Fred also believes Navy officials weren’t honest about what he and others like him were dealing with on the job. “The Navy said that the Great Lakes base didn’t have any asbestos. But I took samples from eight or nine buildings, of materials that I was working with, and sent it off for testing,” he explains. “Every sample came back with asbestos. As a result, the Navy had to recant what they said about there being no asbestos on the base. They had to put the information in the newspapers.”

Though Fred’s cancer is not lung-related at this point, he does suffer from pleural plaques, a thickening of the chest wall that causes pain and makes it difficult to breathe. The disorder makes him a prime candidate for mesothelioma in the future and also makes it difficult for him to work.

“Things are terrible for me now; I’m tired all the time. When I get tired I just have to stop,” Fred explains, barely concealing his anger at the Navy and their disregard for his life.

 

An Australian woman who was exposed to asbestos during her childhood is in remission from mesothelioma and is now pregnant with her first child, despite the cancer and the affects of the chemotherapy she received as treatment for the disease.

An article in the Australian newspaper The Age reports that Anita Steiner, age 46, is believe to have been exposed to asbestos at age 6 when her father built a workshop in their backyard and proceeded to tackle a number of do-it-yourself projects that involved the dangerous mineral. She is one of what medical experts are calling the “third wave” of asbestos disease cases in Australia – children who were exposed due to home projects performed by their parents.

Steiner was diagnosed with mesothelioma last year and after doctors removed part of her right lung, she was told she had about a year to live – a normal prognosis for a mesothelioma victim. However, at the beginning of this year, she was declared cancer-free by her doctors after a course of what was meant to be palliative chemotherapy.

After doctors informed her of her remission, she celebrated but then started to feel ill again. She feared that the disease had returned but then discovered she was pregnant.

“My partner and I had been trying to get pregnant with IVF before I got sick and I was told I had a less than 1% chance of it working back then, so we had all but given up,” Steiner told the newspaper.

While she realizes that the disease could return in an instant, Steiner says she doesn’t dwell on it but does continue to have regular medical check-ups.

Paul Mitchell, director of cancer services at Austin Hospital, says although Steiner’s case is unusual, he expects to see more young patients diagnosed with asbestos-related diseases as time goes by.

“Because there’s a latency period of 30 to 40 years from exposure to asbestos to the onset of cancer, we’re expecting the instances to keep increasing,” he says. “We’re seeing people whose only exposure was in the home.”

Medical experts in Australia predict that 25,000 Australians will die of mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases in the next 40 years.