Unfortunately, this substance is airborne and therefore all too easily inhaled by employees on the job working in the construction and heating industries, in shipyards, asbestos mines, in factories producing asbestos products, and also effecting workers who are employed in other sectors of the trade industry.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) took notice of the problem and implemented limits dictating how high a level of asbestos exposure is acceptable for workers to inhale on a daily basis.
And, OSHA has made sure that these workers are required to wear protective equipment where working closely with asbestos fibers is the daily agenda.
Although these two OSHA guidelines were designed to decrease the chance of asbestos exposure, the measures don’t solve the problem as there are still many occurrences of these people being plagued by lung cancer as a result of asbestos overexposure.
What are some of the symptoms of asbestos lung cancer to look out for in case a person suspects he or she may have the illness?
The disease usually starts out with asthma-like ailments where a patient may be experiencing issues with breathing. In that case, he or she may be diagnosed and subsequently treated with drugs meant for the common cold or something more serious like pneumonia.
This incorrect diagnosis and treatment allows the real root of the breathing issues, which is asbestos lung cancer, to go undetected sometimes for several years thereby allowing the disease to progress and slowly overcome the person’s body.
There are actually two different types of asbestos lung cancer that a person can contract – lung cancer and mesothelioma.
Lung cancer is simply cancer that has invaded the lung tissue.
On the other hand, mesothelioma is cancer of the mesothelium tissue.
The mesothelium is a protective membrane surrounding all moving organs of the body, permitting each one to easily travel by adjacent organs without damaging either one.
When a person has contracted mesothelioma, he or she is at risk of the cancer cells uncontrollably dividing and thus invading or damaging organs or tissues that are located nearby.
A fateful characteristic of asbestos lung cancer is that it does not fall into the category of highly curable diseases.
One of the reasons for this is because of the fact that the illness is usually detected many years after it has started to make its home inside a person’s body, thus making treatment and a cure much more difficult.
In addition, asbestos lung cancer does not start its deadly course until many years after a person has been exposed to the fibrous material which causes further delay for the patient in being diagnosed and treated for the condition.
As a matter of fact, only 16% of people who contract asbestos lung cancer have it caught on time by their doctors, which gives both doctor and patient a longer period to treat it and the patient more years to live.
A small carcinoma cell begins the asbestos lung cancer danger, with the cell usually found within the breathing tubes of the lungs before it grows bigger and moves to other parts of the body. The carcinoma can cause all kinds of issues such as fatigue, chest pains, coughing up blood, a shortness of breath, weight loss, chest pain when taking deep breaths, and bronchitis or pneumonia diagnoses on a frequent basis.
Asbestos lung cancer is an evil disease – anyone who has worked in any industry exposing them to the material should contact their doctor to schedule a check-up today.
