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Asbestos Research Paper

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Asbestos, historically referred to as the “magic mineral”, has recently been renamed the world’s largest occupational killer. Despite the wealth of information concerning its harmful effects, there continues to be a nationwide epidemic of asbestos-related diseases. This raises concern in the eyes of many public health advocates who are fighting for the gap closure between the knowledge base of the harmful effects due to asbestos and intervention implementation.
Background
Asbestos use dates back to as early as 2500 BC, however, it was not used commercially until the mid 1800s. Asbestos growth began with products such as textiles and brakes. It was also commonly found in the shipbuilding and construction industries. Asbestos can now be found …show more content…

Although there have been reports that certain types of asbestos are safe, this is a well-documented myth. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) recently reported that all types of asbestos (chrysotile, amosite, crocidolite, tremolite, actinolite, and anthophylite) are group 1: carcinogenic to humans (IARC 2012). Moreover, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 107000 people die of mesothelioma, lung cancer or asbestosis related to asbestos exposure every year. Furthermore, 125 million people worldwide are currently exposed to asbestos at the workplace. Asbestos is causally linked to an increase in occupational hazard and subsequent …show more content…

Firstly, this is necessary because the use of a standardization technique improves reliability. In order to improve marginal productivity, a standard may be used nationally and possibly internationally to lower the chance of error due to exposure assessment and subsequently misleading or false conclusions. Moreover, using a standard has been shown to increase consistency and validity of studies. Secondly, this could potentially explain heterogeneity across studies such as the example mentioned above (Sebastien, McDonald et al. 1989) as well as a cancer case–control study conducted in the Greater Toronto Area, 1997–2002 (Hardt, Vermeulen et al. 2014). In fact, Hardt et al have already shown improvements in exposure assessment using the DOM-JEM. In the Greater Toronto Area study, self-reported data showed no increased risk in lung cancer in those exposed to asbestos, whereas a nearly twofold increased risk was associated with exposure to asbestos when using the DOM-JEM. Lastly, this method could be extended to situations concerning household and environmental exposure as opposed to solely occupational exposure. There have been several cases of people experiencing asbestos exposure in an area where they were unaware of their exposure; take for example if a school teacher were

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