MESOTHELIOMA FACTS and STATISTICS
- Approximately 2,500 to 3,000 people are diagnosed with mesothelioma in the United States each year. Most experts projections show that the incidence of mesothelioma will increase over the next ten years.
- Mesothelioma has a long latency (inactive) period of anywhere between 15 and 60 years from the time of someone's first exposure to asbestos to onset of the disease.
- Asbestos exposure is the only known cause of mesothelioma. One study of asbestos insulation workers reported a mesothelioma rate up to 344 times higher than the general population.
- Men are more likely than women to develop mesothelioma because they are more likely to have been exposed to asbestos on the job.
- The average age of diagnosis for mesothelioma is between fifty and seventy years of age. But the number of people diagnosed in their thirties and forties is increasing, which experts theorize could be as a result of secondary exposure to asbestos when these people were children.
- Although the only known cause of mesothelioma is exposure to asbestos, the use of asbestos in various products is still not prohibited in the United States today. A bill to completely ban asbestos in the U.S. has recently been introduced in the Senate.
- It is estimated that between 1940 and 1979, approximately 27.5 million workers were occupationally exposed to asbestos in the United States.
- Asbestos was used in an estimated 3,000 different products between the early 1900s and the mid 1980s.