A new study by Brigham Young University and the Harvard School of Public Health published in the January 22, 2009 New England Journal of Medicine examined fine particulate air pollution in 51 U.S. cities during the 1980s and 1990s and discovered that cleaner air over the last two decades has added five months to the average life expectancy in the United States. On average, predicted lifespan increased most dramatically in cities where air quality also increased, with reduction in air pollution accounting for as much as 15% of the overall increase in life expectancy in areas studied.

Research led by C. Arden Pope, a Brigham Young epidemiologist, studied the period from the late 1970s through the early 1980s and compared it with information from the late 1990s to early 2000s. During this period, substantial efforts were made to reduce particulate pollution and to improve air quality in America. Fine-particulate air pollution results from the combustion of gasoline, diesel, and coal, as well as other sources. These particles have been implicated in cardiovascular and cardiopulmonary diseases. The study accounted for variables such as smoking habits, income, education, and migration.

These findings reinforce earlier international studies that found reductions of life expectancy associated with increased particulate matter in The Netherlands, Finland, and Canada.

This indicates our efforts to control air pollution are paying off, with better health and longer lives for most Americans.

Fine-Particulate Air Pollution and Life Expectancy in the United States

Evaluating the Effects of Ambient Air Pollution on Life Expectancy

A new Federal OSHA rule embodies the spirit of the new Obama administration which we hope will return OSHA to a focus on protecting the health and safety of workers. This rule followed a bad decision and some downright awful and/or inconsistent OSH Review Commission decisions, and an adverse majority ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. It was, however, one particular outrageous case of an employer’s disregard for workers’ health in an asbestos case that moved OSHA forward here.

It involved a case against Erik Ho, a Texas businessman, who was cited for multiple violations of the construction asbestos standard’s respirator and training provisions. Ho’s conduct was particularly flagrant. He hired eleven undocumented Mexican employees to remove asbestos from a vacant building without providing any of them with appropriate protective equipment, including respirators, and without training them on the hazards of asbestos. Ho persisted in exposing the unprotected, untrained employees to asbestos even after a city building inspector shut down the worksite, at which point Ho began operating secretly at night behind locked gates.

The citations charged Ho with separate violations for each of the eleven employees not provided a respirator. Ho was also charged with separate violations for not training each of the eleven employees. A divided OSH Review Commission vacated all but one of the respirator and one of the training violations. According to the majority, the requirement to provide respirators and ensure their use involved the single act of providing respirators to the employees in the group performing the specified asbestos work. 17 O.S.H. Cas. (BNA) at 1372. Thus, the majority concluded, "the plain language of the standard addresses employees in the aggregate, not individually." The majority reached this conclusion despite acknowledging that various subparagraphs immediately following the cited provision required particularly employee-specific actions, such as fit-testing individual employees. The majority adopted an equally narrow interpretation of the training requirement.

Commissioner Thomasina Rodgers dissented, arguing that the plain wording of the respirator and training provisions authorizes OSHA to treat as a discrete violation each employee not provided and required to use an appropriate respirator, and each employee not trained in asbestos hazards. Her worker safety oriented perspective is now the law.

The bottom line of this OSHA final rule is:

"to make it unmistakably clear that each covered employee is required to receive PPE and training, and that each instance when an employee subject to a PPE or training requirement does not receive the required PPE or training may be considered a separate violation subject to a separate penalty." (73 Fed Reg 75569)

The final rule can be found here: Clarification of Employer Duty To Provide Personal Protective Equipment and Train Each Employee

Let’s hope this is the start of a series of pro-worker, pro-safety, stances by Federal OSHA, an agency whose mission was always intended to be the protection of worker health and safety. It’s been too long, but at long last it seems OSHA is back on track.

Our law firm once again helped support the world’s premier gathering of international mesothelioma clinicians, researchers and scientists which was convened by the International Mesothelioma Interest Group. This year’s event took place from September 25-27, 2008 at the De Meervart conference venue in Amsterdam.

In addition to being Silver Sponsors of IMIG, the Partners wanted to recognize the work of up and coming researchers by awarding prizes to young investigators, while also honoring the work of the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat (IBAS) and the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO), leaders in the campaign for a global asbestos ban and justice for asbestos victims. These awards were presented by Laurie Kazan-Allen, the IBAS Coordinator, and Linda Reinstein, Executive Director of the ADAO. During the award ceremony, Mrs. Reinstein told the 300 attendees that when her husband Alan was diagnosed with mesothelioma, the first thing they did was to search the IMIG website looking for medical experts; the help and support of IMIG members during Alan’s illness was of inestimable importance to the family and, although sadly Alan lost his fight for life, the hope that one day a cure may be found for this deadly disease motivates her to continue ADAO’s fight.

The winners of the 2008 IBAS and ADAO Young Investigators awards, selected by the IMIG Scientific Board and worth €2000 (approximately $2500) each, were announced on September 27 at the closing session of the conference. The 2008 IBAS and ADAO award recipients were:

• Dr. Jenette Creaney from the National Centre for Asbestos-related Disease Research, University of Western Australia for her abstract: The use of mesothelin for monitoring patients with mesothelioma

• Dr. Yasumitsu Nishimura from the Department of Hygiene, Kawasaki Medical School, Okayama, Japan for his abstract: Impairment in cytotoxicity and expression of NK-cell activating receptors on human NK cells caused by exposure to asbestos fibers

From left: Dr. Creaney, colleague of Dr. Nishimura, Mrs. Reinstein and Ms. Kazan-Allen.

On September 25, at simultaneous events in Amsterdam at the IMIG meeting and in India, the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat’s latest publication, India’s Asbestos Time Bomb, was presented to the world. We are pleased and proud to announce that copies are available for reading and in downloadable .pdf format on the WorldAsbestosReport.org web site at no cost. Our firm has sponsored the presentation of complimentary copies to all IMIG attendees and has been given exclusive North American rights to publish this volume online. We encourage people to read this volume. As you will see from even a brief review, this is an excellent work that cost a great deal to prepare. I am sure that IBAS would welcome contributions of any amount to help defray those costs and to support similar work in the future. Information on direct contributions can be found on the IBAS web site. For those in the United States who would prefer to make contributions in dollars, they can be sent to The Kazan, McClain, Abrams, Fernandez, Lyons, Greenwood, Oberman, Satterley & Bosl Foundation, Inc,, which will collect such contributions and forward them intact to IBAS.

This work contains articles placing India’s asbestos debate into its appropriate political context, both with respect to Indian government complicity in the asbestos scandal and with respect to the discussion about the true hazards of chrysotile asbestos. There are articles discussing the extent of exposure in India, the problems related to the ship-breaking industry, as previously discussed at length in another IBAS publication, Killing the Future, also available on WorldAsbestosReport.org in English, Japanese, Chinese, and Bangla. There are articles dealing with the hazards of asbestos cement roofing materials used in the construction of homes for India’s poor, the problems inherent in attempting to monitor asbestos exposure in a society like India, the extent of asbestos-related disease in India and the degree to which it has been unreported, the frustrating struggles of Indian workers and unions to obtain fair and efficient compensation for asbestos victims, and the scandalous history of western multinational corporations like Turner & Newall which have done massive asbestos business in India, leaving behind a legacy of death and disease.

This book is a credit to its authors and the organizations with which they work. It is a demonstration of courage and perseverance against appalling odds that this work could be done and done so well. It is also a credit to India’s great democratic traditions; one can only hope that the Indian government will be strong and responsive enough to deal with these problems for the benefit of all its citizens.

The 9th Biennial Conference of the International Mesothelioma Interest Group will take place September 24-26, 2008 in Amsterdam. This is the world’s largest medical conference devoted to medical and scientific research into the biological mechanisms which are the causes of, and treatment options for, mesothelioma and will bring together 300 of the world’s leading experts. We are pleased and proud to support this year’s IMIG Congress, just as we did for the 8th International Conference held in Chicago two years ago. This conference will feature multi-track programs devoted to mesothelioma biology, epidemiology, pathology, and various treatment modalities including radiotherapy, immunotherapy, chemotherapy, and various surgical approaches. As sponsors, we were entitled to an exhibition table in the meeting hall, but since we will be attending to learn and not to sell anything, we have donated our exhibition space to the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat and the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization so that those wonderful groups will have space to make available materials relating to their work and a place to visit with the attendees.

One of the most interesting features of this conference will be the display and presentation of 100 or more abstracts of new research work, presented during poster sessions where blown-up abstracts are displayed on easels and partitions for viewing by the attendees. During specific times, the authors will be standing at their posters and available to discuss the contents with the attendees. Each afternoon, the senior faculty at the conference will select for discussion approximately five of these posters for a more extensive presentation. We are particularly proud that the IMIG Organizing Committee has accepted our additional financial support to sponsor two €2,000 “outstanding young investigator” awards, to be presented at these poster discussion sessions in honor of and by representatives of both the IBAS and ADAO.

In addition, we are sponsoring two €500 “best poster” awards as well. I hope to be able to post additional notes from the conference, so come back and check in with us again soon.

On August 6, we posted news of the availability of this monograph in Bangla. Now available online at WorldAsbestosReport.org is a translation of this work into Chinese which will make it more accessible to the largest currently at-risk national population in the world.

Coming soon will be a new monograph edited by David Allen and Laurie Kazan-Allen of the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat titled India’s Asbestos Time Bomb. Look for this on September 25. Our firm, through its Foundation, is proud that our support of IBAS over the past 10 years has helped make it possible for it to publish works of this quality. As always, your comments are welcome.

Each year, the Stanford Law School sponsors a two-day student-organized conference for over 250 law students, attorneys, and academics from around the country devoted to building a community of those committed to using the law for positive social change. This year’s conference, titled "Shaking the Foundations: The West Coast Progressive Lawyering Conference," will be held at Stanford October 3 and 4. We are pleased and proud to once again be a financial sponsor of this event and participate in the proceedings, including the career forum on Friday, October 3.

The conference features an opening keynote address by Vincent Warren, Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who has led the legal battle over events at Guantanamo, with panelists including distinguished faculty from U.C. Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law and Duke University. Also featured is Henry Weinstein, a distinguished and nationally respected reporter on legal matters for the Los Angeles Times.

For additional details of the program and how to register, click here.

Over the last 30 or so years, I’ve represented family members of mesothelioma patients who themselves develop mesothelioma, and so have other plaintiffs attorneys.

Doctors and researchers working with the victims of mesothelioma began to publish reports of clusters of the disease. A 2004 survey of 610 pleural mesotheliomas (Bianchi, Ind Health 2004 Apr 42(2):235-9: Familial Mesothelioma of the Pleura) found 40 familial cases.  While it is likely that shared asbestos exposure is a major factor, researchers are now exploring the possibility that genetic factors might play a role in determining the susceptibility to asbestos-related cancer. A recent article explores this possibility (Ugolini, Mutat Res 2008 Mar-Apr 658 (3):162-71: Genetic susceptibility to malignant mesothelioma and exposure to asbestos: the influence of the familial factor).

Ugolini analyzed cases of clustering in reported medical literature and concluded that the available medical literature supports the hypothesis that familial clustering of malignant mesothelioma is largely attributable to shared asbestos exposure.  The additional contribution of factors dealing with genetic susceptibility may also play a role.  This is important as the understanding of the genetic profiling of malignant mesothelioma may lead to new preventive and therapeutic treatments for this devastating disease, at least in some cases.

Anything we can learn about mesothelioma’s development can only be helpful in the worldwide effort to find a cure.  It remains true, however, that the best treatment is still prevention, so efforts to ban asbestos and protect workers and their families from all exposures must remain our goal.

Last year, we posted on www.WorldAsbestosReport.org a new monograph titled "Killing the Future: Asbestos Use in Asia," written by Laurie Kazan-Allen and published by an international consortium of unions, victims’ groups, occupational health and safety organizations, and university groups under the overall coordination of the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat. Published in July 2007, this monograph reviewed the experiences of China, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Pakistan, Korea, and Japan in dealing with the problems of asbestos contamination. It documents the West’s dumping of contaminated ocean-going vessels into the ship-breaking industries of India and Bangladesh, and addresses the impact of natural disasters on the scope of asbestos contamination. This work built on the work begun at the 2004 Global Asbestos Conference in Tokyo and at subsequent meetings in Asia. In January 2008, we posted a Japanese translation and are delighted to now make available a translation into Bangla (Bengali), the primary language of Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura. We hope to continue adding newly published materials to the www.WorldAsbestosReport.org web site as they become available. Our firm, through The Kazan, McClain, Abrams, Fernandez, Lyons, Greenwood, Oberman, Satterley & Bosl Foundation, Inc, is proud that our support of IBAS over the past 10 years has helped make it possible for it to publish works of this quality. As always, your comments are welcome.

A recent article published in The Lancet, one of the world’s leading medical journals (and a fan of our website!), once again demonstrates that there is as yet no really good treatment for Mesothelioma. The article focused on an analysis of a multicentre randomized trial to determine whether adding chemotherapy to active symptom control in the treatment of patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma made any difference. It noted:

"Malignant pleural mesothelioma is almost always fatal, and few treatment options are available. Although active symptom control (ASC) has been recommended for the management of this disease, no consensus exists for the role of chemotherapy. We investigated whether the addition of chemotherapy to ASC improved survival and quality of life."  

Regrettably, the authors concluded:

"We observed no between-group differences in four predefined quality-of-life subscales (physical functioning, pain, dyspnoea, and global health status) at any of the assessments in the first 6 months."  

which means that "The addition of chemotherapy to ASC offers no significant benefits in terms of overall survival or quality of life."  

It still seems that the best hope for mesothelioma patients and their families is renewed efforts to understand how this disease evolves and find new treatment methods. This further highlights the overwhelming importance of eliminating future asbestos exposure in an effort to prevent future cases of this as-yet-incurable disease.  

Read the abstract on this trial of 409 patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma.