Clapper, Patti, Schweizer and Mason

In a landmark case, Margaret Dawson was awarded $400,000 by the Dust Diseases Tribunal in New South Wales after contracting mesothelioma, which took her life less than a year after her initial diagnosis. Mesothelioma is an incurable cancer caused by exposure to asbestos, and can take twenty to fifty years after the time of exposure to develop. Margaret’s exposure occurred decades earlier when she would wash both her father and her husband’s clothes after they returned home from work. Both men worked for James Hardie, a building materials company that once widely used asbestos in their industrial products. 

 

Asbestos related diseases are more commonly diagnosed in employees who have direct exposure. Employees who work in an environment with repeated exposure to asbestos are at high risk of contacting diseases such as mesothelioma and asbestosis.  Recently, however, there have been more cases reported where a person has contracted mesothelioma through secondary exposure. 

 

Secondary exposure can occur in multiple ways. One way is by sharing workspace where others are handling asbestos. Another is by working or being in an area where asbestos is released into the air or soil, for example surrounding areas of factories, shipyards, and building demolitions. A third way, as in the case of Margaret Dawson, is by family members coming into contact with asbestos through a worker’s skin, hair and clothing. In the past, proper hygiene and clean up measures were lacking and many asbestos workers would return home covered in asbestos dust. 

 

Sadly, even when the dangers of asbestos were not widely accepted, safety regulations did exist that required employers to protect workers from hazardous dust, and many cases of mesothelioma due to secondary exposure could have been easily avoided and lives saved.