It’s well-known that mesothelioma largely affects those 70 and older, and that it’s a disease which mainly occurs in men.  This is due largely to the fact that the disease takes a long period of time to progress, and women don’t generally do the types of jobs which formally exposed people to asbestos (shipbuilding, ship-maintenance, etc).  However, to what extent are these statistics?  Deaths in patients 44 and younger from asbestos totaled only 1.7 percent of the mesothelioma cases from 1999 to 2005.

In addition, in the same study, mesothelioma death rates at the state level were greater than the national death rate of 13.8 per one million people per year.  So largely, the majority of mesothelioma cases at this time are occurring with people 70 and older who were previously exposed to the material asbestos, and the death rate is extremely high.