The Kiss of Death – How Secondhand Asbestos Exposure Might Have Poisoned Your Loved One

What if every time you hugged or kissed your spouse upon returning home from work, you were unknowingly transmitting to him or her a toxin so deadly that it is classified as a Group One carcinogen in the United States?

This invisible menace is still killing loved ones, decades after it was largely eliminated from workplace construction. We are talking about asbestos dust, and its clandestine ability to cause the deadly asbestos cancer, mesothelioma, in those we love, as well as ourselves, years after one’s last exposure.

Secondhand exposure to asbestos was documented as early as 1960. By 1965, a case-controlled study had been conducted in London, which identified nine instances of mesothelioma in patients whose relatives worked with asbestos, even though the patients themselves never did. North American studies conducted on women in 1978 and 1980 further documented the phenomena of asbestos contamination carried home from work by family members.

In conjunction with the Workers’ Family Protection Act of 1992, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) produced a report to Congress in 1995. It concluded that domestic asbestos exposure might indeed pose an increased risk of disease. Women, who traditionally performed a majority of the housework throughout the 1900s, have been contracting deadly mesothelioma and other asbestos diseases at alarming rates after inadvertently breathing in the dust on their family member dirty work clothes. Husbands who greeted their wives and children with an affectionate hug or kiss upon returning home from work risked shedding off particles of asbestos dust from their hair, sideburns, and mustaches, where it was then breathed into the lungs of the loved ones they held close.

Microscopic grains of asbestos dust tended to settle into facial hair and onto clothes while workers toiled at dusty jobs. Deadly asbestos fibrils, so thin they can penetrate internal organs once inhaled or ingested, came home in the hair and on the clothes of the workers who labored at construction, foundry and industrial jobs across America. Unfortunately, spouses and other family members affectionately welcomed their return and collected their soiled garments for washing. A majority of female mesothelioma patients report having greeted their dust-laden husbands with a hug or a kiss, then shaking out their husbands’ work clothes before putting them into the washing machine.

Contracting mesothelioma from washing a spouse’s dirty work clothes is bad enough, but knowing that your beloved spouse developed mesothelioma from your innocent expressions of affection remains one of the most tragic ways in which our loved ones have been exposed to this deadly carcinogen.

The mesothelioma attorneys at Baron & Budd have witnessed firsthand how corporate contempt for the safety of employees and citizens has resulted in death sentences for thousands of people. There is no better way to fight back against such disregard for human life than to make the asbestos manufacturers pay for the devastating harm they have caused so many families.

If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, please call Baron & Budd at 855-280-7664 or complete our contact form to receive a completely confidential evaluation.