Diseases Caused by Asbestos Exposure | New York City Personal Injury
Diseases Caused by Asbestos Exposure
Let’s talk about some of the diseases that exposure to asbestos can cause. Hi, I’m Joe Williams. I’m a mesothelioma and asbestos attorney in New York City. I can answer some questions for you as to the asbestos related diseases that are widely accepted in the medical and scientific community. These would be broken down into two types of diseases.
Non-Cancerous Diseases
The first are what we call scarring diseases, which are not cancerous diseases. The second are malignant diseases, which are a cancer process. So the first two diseases I’ll talk to you about is asbestosis and pleural plaque. Asbestosis is a fibrotic scarring of the inside of the lungs. The doctors will call it the parenchyma or the meat of the lung. A fibrotic scarring on the inside of the lungs, which can cause a lot of disability. It’s not cancer, but it can be quite serious.
The next non-cancerous disease is known as pleural plaques. And the pleura is a sac-like lining outside the lung. So if you think of a piece of saran wrap. That’s the texture of the pleura. And the pleura can develop scarring from the asbestos fibers that a worker breathes in over the course of their life. On a CAT scan, or even sometimes on an X-ray, these show up as what’s called as pleural plaques. Again, not cancer but can be serious.
Cancerous Diseases
With respect to the cancerous diseases, there’s two that I want to focus on today. The first is lung cancer. Lung cancer is a cancerous tumor, a malignant tumor in the meat of the lungs, in the lung parenchyma. And the second cancerous diseases caused by asbestos that I want to focus on today, and it’s certainly the most important asbestos related disease because of the severity of it, is malignant mesothelioma.
Malignant mesothelioma of the pleura is a cancerous tumor that grows on that pleura surface that I described a moment ago, that saran wrap-like sac that surrounds the outside of the lung. This malignant mesothelioma tumor grows in a diffused pattern. If you think the rind of a grapefruit. Sometimes people think of a cancerous tumor as, what we call like a golf ball tumor. Malignant mesothelioma doesn’t grow in that way. It’s more of a diffused pattern, like the rind of a grapefruit, and it’s caused by exposure to asbestos.
Now I’m sure you have many other questions about the disease pattern and the diseases caused by asbestos, and we can answer those questions. I’m Joe Williams and everyday at our firm, we handle cases from mesothelioma victims and their families. And we certainly can answer your questions, and we’d be happy to do that. I hope you found this video informative, and I thank you very much for watching.