Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
asbestos. About 200 deaths per year are attributed to asbestosis, a bit
more than double the number killed by lightning.
Mesothelioma is a cancer in the lung that has the same cause as
asbestosis. It affects mostly men who worked in the construction
industry in the 1970s and 1980s, before asbestos use was heavily
regulated. Because the disease does not appear until ten to forty years
after exposure, its incidence is still rising in 2009 but is expected to
peak within the next few years. According to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention in Atlanta, deaths from the disease climbed
from 2,482 to 2,704 between 1999 and 2005. The annual death rate
is about 14 per 1 million people. Mesothelioma is rapidly fatal once
it appears.
Federal legislation requires that asbestos that is visibly deteriorating,
such as in ceiling tiles or pipe wrappings, must be removed regardless of
the number of fi bers in the air. Hence, despite evidence that the removal
process itself stirs up a higher level of asbestos fi bers in the air than were
present before removal, removal proceeds in all public buildings. Statisti-
cal experts say that the risk of a child's dying from an asbestos-related
disease by attending a school containing asbestos is one-hundredth of
the risk of that child being killed by lightning.
32
The chance of being hit
by lightning is 1 in 750,000.
Black Lung Disease
About 40 percent of 140,000 active coal miners today work under-
ground, an intrinsically unhealthy environment. Mining machines of
various kinds rip into the coal, generating large amounts of coal dust.
Inhalation of this dust has disastrous effects on human lungs, effects
known collectively as black lung disease.
Black lung disease includes components of chronic bronchitis and
emphysema, and it causes prolonged suffering and death. The accumula-
tion and retention of coal dust in miners' lungs are directly correlated
with their years of underground exposure, increasing from 13 percent of
miners with less than ten years' exposure to 59 percent in those with
more than forty years of exposure. Technological advances in mining
equipment and the quality of ventilation, coupled with stricter federal
regulation of underground mining operations, have reduced the number
of miners needed below ground. Fewer of these miners develop black
lung disease than was the case decades ago, but coal mining remains a
dangerous occupation.
