British family all suffering from asbestos disease
The Mesothelioma & Asbestos Awareness Center has reported that eight siblings have been diagnosed with asbestos-related lung disease despite never having worked around the toxic mineral known to cause lung cancer and mesothelioma a rare cancer of the lining of the chest and abdomen and the organs they contain. The siblings have pleural plaques, scarring of the lungs caused by long-term asbestos exposure.
The key to this family’s illness is its patriarch Korah Leah, who was a foreman at Cape Asbestos in Hebden Bridge, England, and who regularly had to unblock asbestos-clogged extractor fans. Korah died of lung cancer at 68. Only two of his ten children haven’t developed an asbestos-related illness, but they were born once he’d left the firm.
"When he came in from work, we’d all crawl all over him and hug him and he would be covered in dust,” recalls Maureen McGeogh. "I remember my mother shaking his overalls and dust going everywhere. 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."
A change in British law entitles those with plaques or pleural mesothelioma, one of the most common asbestos-related cancers and which attacks the lining of the lungs, to £5,000 compensation only if the sufferer worked with asbestos. England will not pay out to secondary exposure cases, unlike Scotland, where all cases receive a payout.
"Dad’s death was awful, just terrible. He was such a doting dad. He would be devastated if he knew about this," says Maureen of the government’s unwillingness to assist her family.
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