In the last decade or so we’ve seen a rise in the number of cases which we refer to as secondary exposure cases in which a secondary bystander is exposed to asbestos and develops mesothelioma. These cases typically present as a housewife, or a daughter who helps launder the work clothes of a husband or father who works around asbestos. And what happens is the husband or father is around asbestos all day, it gets on his hair, on his clothing. He comes home from work, the clothes come off, go into the hamper, which is usually in the bathroom, or in a laundry room. And the wife or daughter at some point in time during the week, several times a week sometimes, would take the clothing out, shake it out a little bit to clean them off, throw them in the washing machine, and to do the laundry.
And what that’s doing is releasing asbestos fibers from the clothing, and that kicks up into a little cloud of dust, most of the time invisible, usually not something that they notice that there’s actual dust on the clothes. And these invisible fibers are getting right in their breathing zone, and they’re breathing in these fibers while they’re doing the laundry. And these fibers are staying in the house. The house is – even if you vacuum it, and have the windows open, these asbestos fibers are very aerodynamic, and they will stay in the air of the house. They will get in the carpets. They will get on the floor. And every time you walk through a room, you’re kicking up a little draft or a little breeze, that’s again kicking those fibers up into the air and giving you the opportunity to breathe them in.
And over time, these are enough of an exposure for a housewife or a daughter or someone else in the home to get enough fibers in their lungs to develop, again twenty, thirty, forty years from now, mesothelioma. And when we ask some of these secondary exposure people where were you exposed to asbestos, often time the answer is I was never exposed to asbestos that I know. And it’s not until we dig a little deeper and we find out what their father did for a living, what their husband did for a living, what brothers or uncles did for a living, that we find out that asbestos fibers were getting into the house and that there were these spouses and daughters were being exposed to asbestos that way.
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