Asbestos News

A report broadcast by BBC News addressed the rising rate of asbestos-related fatalities in the UK. The story's central focus is carpenter Derek Reid, who was recently diagnosed with a terminal lung disease and told that he had just five years to live.

Reid expressed shock and anger that he'd been allowed to work so freely with asbestos. The news source said that he is one of hundreds of Britons who have been diagnosed with mesothelioma this year.

In Essex county, a 2010 inquiry into the deaths of more than 100 industrial workers found that all of them had been exposed to asbestos, a known carcinogen and the only proven cause of mesothelioma.

The Health and Safety Executive, an asbestos watchdog group in the UK, warns that asbestos-related lung diseases and deaths will likely continue to increase over the next five years, the news report noted.

Occupational exposure to the carcinogen was once quite common, and still occurs in many nations around the globe.

The World Health Organization estimates that, each year, 125 million people come into contact with asbestos in their course of their jobs.