Asbestos News

Two sisters from the UK recently died of an asbestos disease that was contracted as a result of their father inadvertently bringing home the hazardous substance on his work clothes.

Marjorie King and her sister Cecelia passed away six months apart due to pleural plaques, which occurs when asbestos scars one's lungs. The two sisters are part of a set of eight siblings who suffer from the condition because their construction foreman father brought the asbestos home on his clothes, according to the Yorkshire Post.

"I remember my mother shaking his overalls and dust going everywhere," the woman's sister Maureen McGeogh told the news provider. "We sometimes went to work with him on Sunday and would play in the piles of dust. We just didn't realize it was dangerous."

In decades past it was common for blue collar jobs to involve exposure to asbestos as the substance was used as a flame retardant and insulator. Sadly, many of these workers unintentionally brought the substance home on their clothes, exposing their families to the carcinogen that causes asbestosis, lung cancer and malignant mesothelioma.

The siblings' father reportedly died of lung cancer in the 1950s.