Asbestos and the risk of mesothelioma is something that Louisiana workers are often exposed to both in the workplace and at home. Experts agree that the most common situations where asbestos exposure can occur are found in many places throughout Louisiana. These areas include: Ship building and repair. Southern Louisiana, and especially the New Orleans area, is a bustling area for ports and there are many facilities where ships are built or repaired. Any of these facilities may have used asbestos-containing materials at some time. Pipe fitters, boiler makers, electricians and even general laborers who may have had to walk through areas with heavy asbestos exposure are all at risk of contracting diseases such as mesothelioma.

Residential and commercial construction. Asbestos-containing materials may have been used in many types of construction projects including commercial buildings, schools, hospitals and residential homes. Insulation, roofing shingles and even joint compound has been shown to contain asbestos.

Insulation manufacturing. Several manufacturing facilities located in the New Orleans area which manufactured products containing asbestos are often linked in mesothelioma lawsuits. Workers at these facilities run a high risk of bringing asbestos home on their skin or clothes and causing second hand, or Family Exposure. This family exposure to asbestos can sometimes be enough to bring on a case of mesothelioma in later years.

Automobile brake and clutch work. Automobile and brake shops can be found throughout Louisiana and may be a dangerous source of asbestos exposure. For many years asbestos was a primary compound in brake linings.

Experienced Louisiana Asbestos Law Specialists The majority of mesothelioma lawsuits involve claims against asbestos manufacturers or employers for negligence in implementing safety measures to adequately protect employees and consumers. Establishing direct or sole liability can be difficult to prove - making the need for a specialist with experience in these types of cases even more critical for success.

Numerous scientific papers have been written describing surveys and research studies about the epidemiology, or cause, or mesothelioma. The overwhelming consensus is that asbestos fibers are the unique cause of this devastating disease.

Research done in Great Britain, Europe, South Africa and the United States all confirm these findings. In Great Britain, death records dating back to the 1950s and 1960s stating the cause of death as pleural mesothelioma correlate with the deceased having worked in environments where they were exposed to asbestos. The statistics further correlate with increased numbers of cases of mesothelioma in women who worked in factories using asbestos, such as manufacturing gas masks. In one study covering an 11-year period from 1968 to 1978 deaths in England and Wales from pleural mesothelioma rose by 75% in men working in asbestos related jobs.

In South Africa data supports the cause of death from malignant mesothelioma to be attributed to miners mining crocidolite asbestos specifically, with no correlation to those mining amosite and chrysotile asbestos. This report points out that there are at least five silicate minerals that are all referred to as asbestos. Each of these minerals has unique properties, and, often, several types are found together in nature. This natural combination has hampered research by collective naming that doesn't specify which type causes disease. It appears that crocidolite is the one responsible for causing mesothelioma.

This 2002 report from "{a href-http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11836665}Seminars in Oncology" says, "…mortality continues to rise steeply (5% to 10% per year) in most industrialized countries." It goes on to predict a continued increase in mesothelioma cases until 2020 in Western Europe and the United States, and an undetermined rise in less industrialized countries where use is unregulated.

While asbestos has been banned for new uses in the United States, many countries are still manufacturing products using asbestos that they export. Paradoxically, there exists a global effort to address worldwide marketing of products containing asbestos and a simultaneous effort to suppress both scientific discoveries about asbestos-related diseases and to reverse current U.S. regulation of asbestos-related industries. This effort has extended so far as to support publication of scientific articles contradicting the research done over the last 50 years that has isolated asbestos as the single cause of mesothelioma.

And who is behind this effort? This concern is discussed in a report from a 2006 issue of "International Journal of Health Services" titled Asbestos Products, Hazards, and Regulation. The short answer is corporations and industries that stand to benefit from the use of asbestos, and to lose from the evidence that supports litigation against them.

It's bad enough that millions of people worldwide have been inflicted with suffering and death from the devastating diseases caused by asbestos exposure. But these avaricious employers seek, not to make the working environment safer, but, instead, to use their wealth to finance false research and legislation that removes existing protections from American workers and those suffering from secondary exposure.