The world has known about the dangers of asbestos for a very long time. As early as the 1920′s the international medical community was beginning to agree that asbestos fibers did indeed pose a serious threat to human health. A report that was published around that time in Britain, later known as the Merewether report, detailed a health investigation that examined 360 people that worked at an asbestos textile plant. The report discovered that nearly a quarter of the plant workers suffered from severe shortness of breath due to scarring of the lungs and soft tissues around the lungs, a condition known at the time as pulmonary fibrosis.

A few short years later in 1930 doctors in the United States cited tumors from asbestos related diseases as the cause of death in several autopsies, marking the first times that asbestos related deaths were officially recorded. In the same year many persons working in the asbestos mining and milling industry began filing worker’s compensation claims. These events incited a reaction from the asbestos industry, which began actively denying the risks of the substance to protect their profits. The industry officials often went as far as paying off victims in return for not going public with their disease, editing investigative reports and launching huge and expensive counter-campaigns to maintain the public’s acceptance and approval of the industry. Many of these practices still go on today.

Today mesothelioma, a terminal cancer caused by asbestos exposure, is diagnosed roughly 3,000 times every year in the United States alone, and the diagnoses are growing. The obvious dangers of asbestos and the irresponsibility of the asbestos industry have led to the shutdown of an overwhelming majority of asbestos mining operations, and bans and strict regulations concerning safe handling of the substance being instated. Considering the fact that asbestos is so obviously a hazard to human health, it makes sense that many governments across the world have called for a total ban on the substance in every industry. Oddly, that’s not the case in Canada.

Since the early 1980′s, Ottowa, Canada has spent more than $20 million on PR campaigns bent on improving asbestos’s acceptance by the public. The campaigns are, overall, fairly effective, as Canada remains the world’s second largest asbestos producer. Thetford Mines, Quebec, is the home of the largest asbestos mining operation on all of North America, as well as a population of 26,000. Canada itself still maintains fairly strict regulations on the use of the substance withing the country; the vast majority of the asbestos and asbestos products are exported to poorer, developing nations that cannot afford safer building materials.

Two former executives of the Swiss building firm Eternit went on trial Thursday for negligence resulting in more than 2,000 deaths and hundreds of injuries. Stephan Schmidheiny, owner of the firm, and former managing director Jean-Louis de Cartier de Machienne, could face up to twelve years in prison. The trial is taking place in Turin, Italy.

The executives allegedly did not ensure that the proper precautions were taken regarding the safe handling of asbestos, a carcinogenic component of the building materials that their firm manufactures. More than 3,000 individuals are seeking damages in the case, claiming that they have developed asbestos related diseases from working at or living near the firm’s factories, or otherwise being exposed to the potentially lethal asbestos fibers.

Asbestos litigation has been on the rise over the past several years for a number of reasons. Among those reasons, the two most prevalent are the rise of mesothelioma and other asbestos related disease diagnoses, and the radically changed face of the asbestos industry. The asbestos industry, which is effectively dead at present, played an important part in shipbuilding and other defensive measures during World War II, and helped to support the construction, automobile manufacturing, and heavy industry fields worldwide in the subsequent race for industrial supremacy. While the dangers of asbestos were vaguely understood even before the war, the ramifications of its use were downplayed because of its significance in the defense and industrialization agendas.

Three entire court rooms were allocated for the trial’s use in Turin, Italy, connected to the central court room using a closed circuit television system. On the first day of the trial, just two days ago, all three court rooms were filled with journalists, friends and family of those involved in the trial, and spectators. Additionally, demonstrators crowded outside the court building bearing signs and banners that demand the executives be brought to justice.

The owner of Eternit and its former managing director have assembled a formidable defense team of 26 lawyers. Prosecutors are claiming that this is the single largest trial of its kind to date, while ANSA, an Italian news cooperative, has dubbed it “The Trial of the Century.”

Dudley Maasz, a former employee of Great Western Railway in the United Kingdom, died in July 2006 from mesothelioma, a cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. Mesothelioma diagnoses have been on the rise in individuals who were negligently exposed to asbestos fibers by their employers in the mechanical, construction, and manufacturing industries as well as select other industrial places of employment.

Mesothelioma is a very aggressive and incurable cancer caused exclusively by exposure to asbestos fibers. Asbestos fibers that become airborne can be inhaled or ingested. These fibers then lodge themselves in a protective tissue that encases all of our organs called the mesothelium. Fibers that become entangled in the mesothelium cause tissue scarring than can eventually develop into malignant tumors. The disease can take decades to fully develop from the time of exposure to asbestos to the time of diagnosis with the cancer. By the time cancerous tumors have developed, however, the prognosis for the disease is very poor, often giving the patient no more than 6 to 18 months to live.

Asbestos was heavily used throughout the twentieth century as a construction material and heavy grade insulator. The substance is incredibly resistant to heat and fire, a fantastic insulator, and can easily be woven into pliable fabrics or pressed into dense boards. Even though the hazard that asbestos presented to human health was known as early as the 1930′s, its use continued until the turn of the century due to its immense usefulness and what some are claiming is a concerted effort to downplay its harmful effects. Regardless of why asbestos was used for so long after its dangers were known, employers are now paying for their negligence decades and decades later.

Mr. Maasz was regularly exposed to asbestos when he worked for the Great Western Railway as a fireman and cleaner during the 1940′s. The material was used extensively throughout the locomotives on which he worked, insulating and coating various elements of the machine and releasing dangerous fibers into the air. Employers at the time, while vaguely aware of the danger of asbestos, chose not to pursue healthier environments for their employees.

Mesothelioma is difficult to diagnose due to the obscurity of its symptoms and its long latency, or the time it takes to develop from the time of exposure to the carcinogenic agent. Many victims of mesothelioma are unaware that they worked around asbestos because there was no publicity about the issue at the time of their exposure.

Mr. Maasz also worked for the Oxford University Press and Morris Motors after working for the Great Western Railway. In 2005 he noticed some recurring pain and discomfort in his shoulder and side, and after conferring with his doctor, was diagnosed with mesothelioma. He died of the disease in July of 2006, at seventy four years old.

Maasz’s family has been paid their claim of £98,000 plus costs by BRB (Residuary) Limited, formerly British Rail.