2007 Archives
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2007 News & Events
Belvedere Family raises $20,000 to support mesothelioma research (December 2007)
Experts Work to Advance Research, Erase Asbestos Exposure (November 2007)
EPP vs P/D: Dr. Cameron favors the Pleurectomy/Decortication (October 2007)
Roger Worthington memorializes father, Punch Worthington, donates $250,000 to knock-out asbestos cancer! (September 2007)
John and TC McNamara donate apartment to PHLBI providing out-of-state patients access to UCLA. See the apartment! (September 2007)
Nikos Hontzeas: New scientific investigator for PWR Lab (September 2007)
Drop the Rock! California state rock causes cancer (August 2007)
Asbestos Found in Dust from NYC Eruption (July 2007)
MESOMARK Blood Test: World's first biomarker test for mesothelioma (June 2007)
ADAO supports Ban Asbestos in America Act, 2007 (March 2007)
Ban Asbestos in America Act, 2007 (March 2007)
PHLBI Urges Senate to Ban Asbestos (March 2007)
Celebrex available in clinical trial (February 2007)
PHLBI Raises $250,000 for Mesothelioma Research (February 2007)
International Association of Heat and Frost Insulators Donates $15,000 to PHLBI (February 2007)
L.A. Lab Works To Improve Odds Against Asbestos Cancer (February 2007)
Mesothelioma help available now! (January 2007)
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Mission: Mesothelioma. Experts Work to Advance Research, Erase Asbestos Exposure
By Thyda Duong
Staff Writer at the Long Beach Business Journal
November 28, 2007
Original link to published article
Asbestos has been mined for use in construction and consumer products since the late 1800s, but experienced a significant boom in usage during World War II. Now, several decades after exposure, many people have developed malignant mesothelioma– an incurable cancer that is expected to become even more prevalent within the next 10 to 15 years, according to Dr. Simon Tchekmedyian, medical director of Pacific Shores Medical Group.
“[Even] with all the precautions being taken, [there are still] many people who were exposed to asbestos . . . and that group at risk is actually pretty large,” he says.
There are roughly 2,000 to 4,000 new cases of mesothelioma reported each year, and known asbestos exposure is reported in 70 percent to 80 percent of all cases. The general lag time for mesothelioma is 20 to 50 years, and many people who develop the cancer are between 60 and 80 years old, though the youngest case reported was a 23-year-old, according to Jessica Like, executive director of the Pacific Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which operates the Punch Worthington Research (PWR) Laboratory housed at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine.
Most people who develop malignant mesothelioma – which usually develops in the lining of the chest or the abdomen – have worked in the construction industry, but the disease is also prevalent among U.S. Navy veterans.
“It’s a relatively uncommon tumor, although we see a fair amount in Long Beach because of people who worked in the shipyards,” Tchekmedyian says. “I have people in their 60s and 70s who had a relatively brief exposure – like they had a summer job at the shipyard 30, 40, 50 years ago – and that was when they were exposed to asbestos, and they ended up with malignant mesothelioma.”
The mesothelium is a membrane that covers and protects most of the internal organs. It produces a lubricating fluid that allows organs to glide easily against each other. While roughly 90 percent of all cases are reported as pleural mesothelioma, which occurs in the chest, patients can also develop mesothelioma in the abdomen, the testicle area and the uterus.
According to Like, California has the highest rate of asbestos-related diseases in the nation, and Los Angeles has the highest incidence rate per county. Theories point to the large number of areas in California that mine asbestos and the significant amount of shipbuilding and harbors.
California’s state rock, serpentine, may also be a culprit, Like says. Serpentine is found naturally throughout the state and is the host rock for asbestos. When the rock starts to decompose, the fibers become airborne.
“We are actually trying to have the state rock changed,” Like says. “We think it’s a mockery of people who have died from this disease. People really just don’t understand the gravity of asbestos, and we certainly don’t think that it should ever have been the state rock. It’s kind of disgusting that the politicians at the time would elect to have it, because companies, corporations, knew at that time that asbestos causes cancer. I believe the first case was documented in 1900.”
Although asbestos is no longer manufactured in the United States, it is still imported into the country and used in various products. Like, and many others in the medical, political and civil communities, are pushing for the passage of the Ban Asbestos in America Act of 2007.
“When those products disintegrate . . . asbestos fibers can become airborne. And once you breathe those in, you can’t get rid of the asbestos fibers that are in your lungs,” Like says. “They’re such an indestructible fiber, which makes them great for construction, but bad for our lungs. Everybody truly has asbestos in our lungs, but not everybody develops a disease – just as everyone is exposed to the sun, not everybody develops melanoma.”
The bill, which was passed by the U.S. Senate last month and is awaiting a vote from the House of Representatives, calls for the ban of asbestos and the systematic removal of products over a two-year time period, as well as an increased focus on research and treatment options that would include a network of 10 new research and treatment centers around the country. The bill also calls for the launch of a public education campaign to increase awareness of the dangers of asbestos exposure.
Advancing research is a main objective of the PWR Lab, which is also dedicated to providing education and outreach to the larger community.
“The research lags so far behind, and consequently, treatment options lag very, very far behind,” Like says. “Even now, it’s a terminal cancer – there is no cure. And what we are looking at is, instead of trying to find a cure, per se, we are treating the disease as something that can be maintained and lived with, such as diabetes or high blood pressure. There’s not a cure for those things, but we can provide treatment options to help patients have a high quality of life and a longer life.”
Treatment And Tests
While symptoms of mesothelioma include chest pain, coughing, fever, weight loss, abdominal distension and shortness of breath due to fluid accumulation in the chest, Tchekmedyian notes that these presentations are generally a sign of advanced mesothelioma.
“If you were exposed to asbestos, you probably need to be more proactive, talk to your doctor and have a more dedicated individualized, tailored approach to your own personal safety,” he advises.
Although there is no definitive cure for the disease, a common option for patients diagnosed with malignant mesothelioma is surgery to remove the cancer, though the procedure can be quite challenging, Tchekmedyian says.
“In order to remove it, you very often have to go and dissect over a long period of time, and very meticulously, all of the cancer from the inner chest wall itself, and together with it, you have to remove the entire lung,” he explains. “Unfortunately, . . . that surgery alone is seldom curative, and the cancer can come back over a fairly short period of time, sometimes months, sometimes a few years.”
Additional treatments include chemotherapy and radiation therapy. The most commonly prescribed chemotherapy drugs – which are generally given intravenously, and interfere with the division and reproduction of cancer cells – are Cisplatin, Alimta, Gemzar and Navelbine.
“Those drugs have efficacy, but none of them are curative in the true sense. . . . If you have a cancer patient with extensive advanced mesothelioma that cannot be removed, you give them these drugs, you can control the cancer for a while, you can shrink it in some patients, but you’re not going to totally cure it,” Tchekmedyian says. “Eventually the cells learn their way around and keep growing despite treatment.”
He admits that, while a combination of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation yields the best results, there are few studies that confirm this approach is truly better than surgery alone, or chemotherapy alone.
“It’s a pretty bad disease, and therefore it would be difficult to do a study where you don’t use these treatments in a group of patients, and you use them in another group,” he explains, “because patients will be somewhat reluctant to pursue a course of inaction when we know the cancer is pretty bad. So people tend to gravitate toward having all of the treatments that could potentially help them.”
Still, a number of clinical trials are occurring both in the United States and abroad to test new drugs and treatments. Although no new treatments have been a clear “home run,” Tchekmedyian says slow progress is being made in many areas.
Angiogenesis inhibitors, which are medications that block the formation of new blood vessels, for example, are being studied quite a bit, he says. Because cancer cells need new blood vessels to feed themselves and spread to other tissue, the drugs help interfere with the growth and spread of the cancer.
Current drugs undergoing ongoing testing include Avastin, which is currently approved for the treatment of colon cancer; Dasatinib, which has been approved for use with leukemia; and Sunitinib, an oral drug that blocks blood vessel genesis and also works through enzymes in the cancer cells known as tyrosine kinases, which are involved in the division and behavior of cancer cells.
“These are clinical trials, completely investigational, and we do not know if these approaches are going to work,” Tchekmedyian says. “Mesothelioma is not a problem just in the U.S.; it’s really a problem in the industrialized world. I think the highest rates are in Australia, Belgium and Great Britain, in addition to the U.S. So this is a joint effort with our colleagues across the world to try to address it.”
*As published by the Long Beach Business Journal. November 28, 2007.
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Asbestos Found in Dust From NYC Eruption
NEW YORK - A massive geyser of steam and debris that erupted through a midtown Manhattan street left asbestos in the dust that settled, but city officials said Thursday that tests indicated the air was safe.
The city's Office of Emergency Management said in a statement that long-term health problems from the rupture of the 83-year-old steam pipe and its debris were "unlikely."
Streets were still closed Thursday morning around the crater left by the eruption near Grand Central Terminal, creating near-gridlock during the morning rush. New Yorkers streamed down Park Avenue, some wearing masks to filter the air as they weaved around utility trucks amid the sound of jackhammers.
Clumps of office workers, BlackBerries in hand, huddled on corners for word on whether their offices would open. Keith Williams, who installs home theaters, stood at a barricade hoping to get to the tools he had ditched a day earlier as he ran from the rumbling blast.
"I said, 'I hope that's a train,'" the 29-year-old recalled. "I didn't know whether a building was collapsing. We heard it, and I just took off."
The eruption began shortly before 6 p.m. Wednesday, breaking windows and rattling buildings as the pipe spewed steam, dirt and debris hundreds of feet into the air. One woman died of an apparent heart attack, and about 40 people were taken to hospitals. One was in critical condition Thursday, and another was in serious condition.
Officials quickly ruled out terrorism as the cause of the blast, but for some witnesses, the explosion, dust and chaos were frighteningly reminiscent of the scene on Sept. 11, 2001.
"We were scared to death. It sounded like a bomb hit or a bomb went off, just like 9/11. People were hysterical, crying, running down the street," said Karyn Easton, a customer at a salon a few blocks from the site of the blast. "It was really surreal."
City crews worked overnight to assess and repair the damage and to determine what happened. Most subway service was restored, though most of the trains were passing Grand Central.
On Thursday, asbestos contamination was the main lingering health concern, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. Some of the pipes that pump steam beneath the city to heat and cool thousands of buildings are wrapped in asbestos, which can cause cancer and other serious illnesses with prolonged exposure.
Area residents were urged to keep windows closed, and anyone exposed to the falling debris was instructed to wash carefully and isolate the clothing they were wearing in plastic bags. Eight air samples in the area around the explosion found no sign of asbestos, but six of 10 samples of debris and dust came back positive, the emergency-management agency said Thursday.
City engineers also warned that up to six feet surrounding the giant hole might be in danger of further collapse, and officials said workers would not be allowed into office buildings in a zone that covered several blocks.
Officials said the steam pipe might have exploded under pressure caused by an infiltration of cold rainwater, or it might have been damaged by a water main break.
Con Edison head Kevin Burke said the site had been inspected hours before the blast as part of a routine response to heavy rain that flooded parts of the city. He said crews had found nothing as they searched for steam rising from manhole covers or cracks in the street — indications that pipes could be in jeopardy. The steam systems are normally inspected every six weeks.
It was rush hour Wednesday evening when the geyser erupted, generating a tremendous roar as 200-degree vapor sprayed as high as the top of the nearby Chrysler Building. Steam and dirt boiled from the ground for hours.
Several people were struck by falling chunks of asphalt or rock that had been blasted out of the ground. Mud covered others. A woman who was bleeding heavily was helped by police while a man lay on a stretcher in the street.
When the steam dispersed almost two hours later, a large crater was visible in the street and a red truck lay at the bottom of the hole. Two city buses and a small school bus sat abandoned and covered with grit in the middle of Lexington Avenue.
The steam pipes have ruptured before. In 1989, a steam pipe explosion near Gramercy Park killed three people and spewed loads of asbestos into the air — a fact that Con Ed later admitted it concealed for days while residents were exposed.
That explosion was caused by a condition known as "water hammer," in which water condenses in a closed section of pipe. The sudden mix of hot steam and cool water can cause pressure to skyrocket, bursting the pipe.
Authorities Thursday couldn't immediately account for how the most seriously wounded victims of the latest eruption were hurt. Police said the woman who died, identified as Lois Baumerich, 57, of Hawthorne, N.J., suffered cardiac arrest.
Among the injured were several firefighters and police Officer Robert Mirfield, who helped evacuate 75 people trapped in a nearby office building by cutting open a gate, authorities said.
Associated Press Writers Jennifer Peltz, Eric Vora, Richard Pyle, Tom Hays, Marcus Franklin, David B. Caruso and Verena Dobnik and AP National Writer Deborah Hastings contributed to this report.
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The Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) Supports Ban Asbestos in America Act, 2007
Thursday, March 22, 2007
The Honorable Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader
The Honorable Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader
The United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
Re: S. Res. 108, the Asbestos Awareness Resolution
Dear Senator Reid and Senator McConnell,
The Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO), an independent volunteer organization, strongly supports S. Res. 108, the Asbestos Awareness Resolution, currently before the Senate. Americans are still being subjected to asbestos exposure, illness and death.
Our message is prevention. There is strong public support that Americans deserve asbestos education to prevent exposure and deadly asbestos-caused diseases. There is strong public support for banning asbestos products in our country, as 40 other countries have already done. There is strong public support for warning people whose attics are full of asbestos to not let their children play up there.
Just for the record, ADAO is not convinced that Corporate America or Medicare are in grave danger of succumbing to the legal claims brought by thousands of asbestos victims. Rather, it is the victims that incur enormous medical expenses, lose their jobs, lives, and are forced into bankruptcy. The public health message would be irreparably harmed by muddying the issue with controversial statements having nothing to do with preventing and minimizing future public exposure to asbestos.
On behalf of American workers, veterans and taxpayers who have been stricken by asbestos disease, we urge the U.S. Senate to pass S. Res. 108 by unanimous consent today. Preventing asbestos exposure is the only way to eliminate disabilities, diseases and deaths. We cannot let history repeat itself; there is no safe level of asbestos exposure and Congress should educate Americans now.
Sincerely,
Linda Reinstein
ADAO Executive Director and Co-Founder, Mesothelioma Widow
Richard Lemen, PhD, MSPH
Assistant Surgeon General, USPHS (Ret.) ADAO Science Advisory Board Co-Chair
Arthur L. Frank, MD, PhD
Chair, Depart
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International Association of Heat and Frost Insulators Donates $15,000
The International Association of Heat and Frost Insulators and Asbestos Workers has donated $15,000 to the Pacific Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. This generous gift was given as a result of PHLBI's outreach to union workers who are most at risk for asbestos-related illnesses due to occupational exposure. The money will be used to further medical research that will result in better medical options for those with asbestos-related diseases, and ultimately to find a cure for illnesses caused by asbestos such as mesothelioma.
"This is a wonderful gift and a tremendous expression of support for PHLBI's mission. The union has really stepped forward to put real dollars into research that can improve the lives of people with asbestos-related diseases," says executive director of PHLBI Jessica Like. "We owe the union a huge debt of gratitude for helping make our work possible."
Vice President of the international union and director of the union's health, safety, and hazards program Terry Lynch, who also serves on the board of PHLBI, was in California for PHLBI's fundraising concert with Grammy Award winner Chris Botti. The proceeds of the event will go to research projects at PHLBI.
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