Asbestosis and asbestos-related lung cancer are dose responsive diseases, which means that only people who inhale a lot of asbestos are likely to get these diseases. Mesothelioma, which is the more severe and less common disease associated with asbestos is not dose responsive. Some unfortunate individuals (In law school, we learned about "eggshell skull" plaintiffs, people who are profoundly affected by something that would not affect the average person) can get mesothelioma from very low levels of asbestos exposure. For example, I represented a plaintiff who got mesothelioma from only a few years of working on a machine that had asbestos brake linings in the 1980's. It was not thought necessary to remove the brake linings from the machine because the risk of becoming sick from such exposure was so low. My mother knew a man whose wife had died of mesothelioma -- her father brought asbestos dust home from work on his clothes when she was little, and her mother had also died of the disease. But her father, who worked with asbestos all his life, did not get sick. Classic "eggshell skull" cases.

However, these types of cases are few and far between. The average person who is exposed to a tiny amount of asbestos will not get sick from it (and certainly, people who work in buildings where asbestos is contained within the walls and not flying around are at no risk). Even the average client of mine,retired asbestos workers who had installed asbestos insulation for their entire careers, only got asbestosis, a disease which affects breathing and may be a precurser to mesothelioma, assuming the person does not die of something else, which they usually do, as it takes many years for the person to become sick.

Asbestos was a terrible product for those who installed it, and seeing the documents where the companies who marketed it knew the risk to those workers and continued to sell the stuff is a great argument for 1) never trusting corporate America when they say a product is safe and 2) never voting for a political candidate who favors tort reform and damages caps, because fear of lawsuits is the only thing that keeps stuff like this from happening again. But, that said, the amounts of asbestos that are around now do not pose a serious risk to most people. You are probably at a greater risk from mold in your building.

The real problem with asbestos inhalation is the fact that if and/or when the person does develop a disease--cancer or other--unless it's like within a year of their contact with asbestos, there's really no way to trace back the disease to the exposure. Unless, of course, it is mesothelioma but really only as it manifests in the lungs. If you get stomach or esophogeal cancer, or something starts to go wrong with your heart (because the mesothelium is a protective lining that covers most of the body's internal organs), you're screwed--to put it plainly. So, then, the question becomes one of, do YOU want to be put in that risk zone? Let's say people go into that area where you are saying that the risk is so low that there's a greater likelihood that the person will die of something else before they die of asbetosis (lungs) due to exposure. How will you know that that "something else" wasn't related to that same exposure. You don't. You won't. Asbestos is bad stuff, period. No exposure is "safe". The EPA's National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) says that there is no safe level of airborne asbestos for exposure. Asbestos was the first toxic substance to be regulated under the Clean Air Act, it's that bad. And microscopic particles can stay suspended in the air for DAYS. You're a lawyer, and there's only so much you can do within the system that we've got, but I bet you you'd be pretty pissed and somewhat scared (knowing what you know) if you or your family had been exposed to something that you knew had the potential to cut your life short, but the government was telling you it was no big deal. I know I would.

I am not an asbestos lawyer but I work in the construction industry. The stuff is everywhere and you cannot tell asbestos just by looking at the material. There are many materials that look like asbestos but are not and there are many forms of insulation that look like it does not contain asbestos but does.

As a young man I used to rip asbestos paper into sheets by hand to use as fire protection when welding and soldering in ares where there were flammable materials that could not be moved. I was also instructed to simply rip old insulation from steam pipes in order to perform repairs.The amount of asbestos I breathed was more than a little substantial. My boss said Bullshit to any concerns regarding a danger, he said everything causes cancer so what are you going to believe. I was exposed and unprotected for years. The new time frames imposed by the Bush administration for asbestos workers to seek compensation for disease have left me without recourse should i become stricken in the years to come.

Now, properly informed and trained it makes me sick to my stomach to know that there are still hundreds if not thousands of contractors and workers who still think asbestos is no big deal. Any politician or contractor who thinks asbestos is a big joke should be forced to snort the stuff through a straw everday for the rest of their career.

Thank you for your comment. I did reply earlier to say my Father died in 3/7 from mesothelioma. One year, that fast and just the worst time of our lives. You are right. Abestos, how much? ANY AMOUNT IS TOO MUCH!!

My Father was diagnosed with Mesothelioma in April 2001 and died less than one month later. After almost a year of searching (with the help of a great lawyer) we found that he was exposed when he was in his early 20's (he was 48 when he died). He was a janitor and had a boilers license and did very little work on the boiler, but was exposed to the asbestos none the less. It was also in the tiles of the floor which he sanded, again he did very little of that work. I guess he was an eggshell skull case. So how much exposure it too much? ANY exposure. I saw first hand what this disease can do and it incubates for decades.

They are saying there was no asbestos was detected but I don't buy it. Companies will say anything to avoid lawsuits and if they say it's not there, most people will believe it. Twenty years down the road some of these people, these "eggshell skull cases", will be diagnosed with mesothelioma and not know where it came from. Their families will be stuck with the task of trying to figure out what happened to their loved one, just like I had to do. Only then, all the companies that were responsible for the asbestos will have already filed bankrupcy and those families will be stuck paying all the expenses that come along with the disease. My family was lucky, we found the responsible parties and they had to pay. However many of the responsible companies WERE bankrupt and that will only become more prevelant as years pass. Asbestos is dangerous no matter how much exposure there has been because everyone is affected differently...there are always going to be a few "eggshell skull cases" and just because most people are not affected as a result of a small exposure does not mean that a few are not going to contract an asbestos related disease.