Legal action on asbestos-related disease

Legal action on asbestos-related disease Karen Lee Morrissette, MD, explores the impact of administrative and legal issues on the identification and prevention of asbestos-related diseases. One of the less talked-about factors affecting the identification and prevention of asbestos-related disease is the administrative and legal milieu surrounding it. This, however, is a relatively recent development in the history of asbestos. Evidence shows that fire-resistant properties were identified as far back as 3500 B.C. Archeologists have found asbestos fibers in cookware in Finland from that period. (1) Roman Magistrate Pliny the Younger wrote about an illness affecting miners of asbestos, the name of which comes from the Greek for ‘inextinguishable,’ but did not link the cause. (2) The first large-scale commercial mining of asbestos occurred in the 1870’s in Quebec, with others soon following in Russia, Australia, and South Africa. (2) In the early twentieth century, medical reports started to circulate of lung disease in asbestos miners and textile workers using asbestos. (2)