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What is a MesotheliomaMesothelioma is a form of cancer that is almost always caused by previous
exposure to asbestos. In this disease, malignant cells develop in the mesothelium, a protective lining that covers most of the
body's internal organs. Its most common site is the pleura (outer lining of the lungs and chest cavity), but it may also occur in
the peritoneum (the lining of the abdominal cavity) or the pericardium (a sac that surrounds the heart).
Most people who
develop mesothelioma have worked on jobs where they inhaled asbestos particles, or have been exposed to asbestos dust and fibre
in other ways, such as by washing the clothes of a family member who worked with asbestos, or by home renovation using asbestos
cement products. Unlike lung cancer, there is no association between mesothelioma and smoking.
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Mesothelioma IncidenceAlthough reported incidence rates have increased in the past 20 years, mesothelioma is
still a relatively rare cancer. The incidence is approximately one per 1,000,000. For comparison, populations with high levels of smoking can have a lung cancer
incidence of over 1,000 per 1,000,000. Incidence of malignant mesothelioma currently ranges from about 7 to 40 per 1,000,000 in industrialized Western nations,
depending on the amount of asbestos exposure of the populations during the past several decades. It has been estimated that incidence may have peaked at 15
per 1,000,000 in the United States in 2004. Incidence is expected to continue increasing in other parts of the world. Mesothelioma occurs more often in men than
in women and risk increases with age, but this disease can appear in either men or women at any age. Approximately one fifth to one third of all mesotheliomas are peritoneal.
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| Between 1940 and 1979, approximately 27.5 million people were occupationally exposed to asbestos in the United States and may be entitled to a mesothelioma settlement. Between 1973 and 1984, there has been a
threefold increase in the diagnosis of pleural mesothelioma in Caucasian males. From 1980 to the late 1990s, the death rate from mesothelioma in the USA increased
from 2,000 per year to 3,000, with men four times more likely to acquire it than women. These rates may not be accurate, since it is possible that many cases of
mesothelioma are misdiagnosed as adenocarcinoma of the lung, which is difficult to differentiate from mesothelioma.
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