Causes of Mesothelioma

What causes mesothelioma and who are vulnerable to mesothelioma?
A devastating body of medical and scientific facts has proven that malignant mesothelioma is caused by the exposure to asbestos. Over 50% of mesothelioma patients have a history of asbestos exposure. This exposure could take place while directly dealing with the fibrous material, or it could take place through just environmental or ecological exposure. Presently, there is no other proven cause for mesothelioma.

At some part of our lives, I believe that some of us have been somehow experience an asbestos exposure. This exposure might be from the air that we breathe or probably the water that we drink; as of natural deposits in our earth, and the use of asbestos products around us. Nevertheless, most of us don’t undergo asbestos-related disease due to our exposure. More frequently, those who at certain point are diagnosed with asbestos disease have worked in jobs dealing with asbestos particles and where more substantial asbestos exposure took place over more extended periods of time. However, mesothelioma cases have been recorded as the result of lesser asbestos exposure, affecting the members of a family of workers who worked in a manufacture using asbestos and thus brought the asbestos home on their skin, clothing or hair. Those who lived in closeness to asbestos manufacturing facilities can develop asbestos-related disease when some of the fibers became airborne. Persons most frequently afflicted include construction workers, shipyard workers, automobile mechanics (mostly those working on brake linings), pipe and heater installation, insulation workers and flooring workers and roofers. In fact, symptoms of asbestos-related disease normally are not apparent until 20-50 years after exposure.

For smoking people who have experienced asbestos exposure, the risk becomes inflated. Researches show that asbestos employees who also smoke are 55 times more possible to die due to mesothelioma than nonsmokers without exposure to asbestos.

What is asbestos?
Asbestos is a naturally-occurring fibrous mineral that was widely used in industrial, commercial, domestic products and used in manufacturers and builders in the late 19th century. Asbestos was touted for its durability, resistance to heat, chemical and electricity damage, its tensile strength and sound absorption. Asbestos was also known for its excellent insulating properties, and was used in several thousand different manufactured “asbestos products,” including household appliances, construction materials and brake linings.

Asbestos is known to possess toxicity. Thus when asbestos particles are inhaled, they can cause serious illnesses, including malignant mesothelioma, lung cancer, and asbestosis (also called pneumoconiosis).

Since asbestos was so widely used, millions of Americans have had exposure to this toxic material, which has led to the growth of malignant mesothelioma among thousands of Americans.
Asbestos is known to have toxicity. The inhalation of toxic asbestos fibers can cause serious illnesses, including malignant mesothelioma, lung cancer, and asbestosis (also called pneumoconiosis).

Asbestos was exploited commercially in North America in the late 19h century, but the use of asbestos had increased significantly throughout the World War II era when shipyards manufactured massive numbers of ships for the war effort. From that time, asbestos-containing products were exploited by the building and construction trades, the automotive and the manufacturing industry. Altogether, there are more than 5,000 products in the market which contained asbestos.

Since the mid 1980s, a lot of uses of asbestos have been disallowed in several countries. For more than 50 years, there were no rule to regulate the use of asbestos, and the manufacturers and industries of those products stayed to prosper, realizing full well that lots of the millions of employees who dealt with their products would eventually suffer as the result of their deeds. Finally, in the late 1970s, the Consumer Products Safety Commission forbid the exploitation of asbestos in artificial ash for gas fireplaces and wallboard patching compounds since the asbestos fiber could easily be released during use. In the late1980s, the Environmental Protection Agency disallowed all new use of asbestos, but uses began prior to that time were still permitted. Even though awareness of the hazard of asbestos and public concern over the issue have led to a decline in domestic consumption over the years, a total prohibition on asbestos has not come to completion. Asbestos is still imported, still used and still hazardous.

How does asbestos exposure cause mesothelioma?
Our body cavities and internal organs such as the pleura (thoracal cavity), peritoneum (abdominal cavity including the mesentery) and pericardium (heart sac) are protected by a thin tissue membrane called the mesothelium. Mesothelial tissue also surrounds the male internal reproductive organs called the tunica vaginalis testis and covers the internal reproductive organs of women called the tunica serosa uteri.
The mesothelium offers both support and protection for organs and body cavities and provides a source of lubrication that helps organ function and health.
Mesothelioma can extend in the linings of body cavities and organs, usually in the pleura, pericardium, or peritoneum. In very rare cases, mesothelioma can also develop in the mesothelial tissue that surrounds the male internal reproductive organs called the tunica vaginalis testis.
The precise scheme by which asbestos can cause mesothelioma is still being studied, but medical professionals provide four different theories:

Asbestos generates inflammation and irritation of mesothelial cells, which results in irreversible scarring followed by cellular damage and cancer eventually.
Asbestos fibers come into cells and disturb the function of cellular structures that are vital for normal cell division, which causes cellular changes that can lead to cancer.
Asbestos triggers the creation of free radicals. These molecules damage DNA, and set off cells to mutate and turn to be cancerous.
The existence of asbestos can cause cells to create oncoproteins. These molecules make mesothelial cells to ignore normal cellular division controls, and this can lead to the development of free radicals that will turn into cancer.

The element that binds each theory collectively is the truth that asbestos effects in cellular injury, which makes the cells lose restraint over their own cycles of normal division and begin dividing abnormally with no control at all. Normally, healthy cells follow the cycles of the division of cells. This will ensure tissues and organs not to grow beyond normal size - in cancer cells, these restraints are lost.

In mesothelioma cases, the result is that membranes in the affected area begin to thicken, and fluid is generated in the spaces between membrane layers. As cancer cells keep on to divide and pile on top of one another, tumors start to form. The unrestrained division of cancer cells causes the impaired function of the body’s organs and systems (mainly because of factors like internal pressure which is caused by the development of tumors, and the decrease of important nutrients for organs).

Any Other Factors That Can Cause Mesothelioma?
Cancer physicians and research scientists so far have not got sufficient evidence to directly prove any other factors that can develop mesothelioma other than the exposure to asbestos. They do find, nevertheless, that smoking is able to deteriorate a less severe asbestos-related disease, for instance asbestosis, and quicken the formation of tumors and the beginning of mesothelioma. Furthermore, smoking and asbestos exposure have a synergistic influence that are capable to increase a person’s risk of developing lung cancer by as much as 84 times or more. Thus, due to this finding, people who have experienced to asbestos frequently are highly recommended not to smoke.