New Faces of Mesothelioma: Women

If you or your loved one have been diagnosed with mesothelioma or asbestos-related lung cancer, we want to hear from you.

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3,000 Americans a Year Are Diagnosed with Mesothelioma.

We’re not saying women don’t do justice to hard hats or uniforms, but men over 65 – typically targets for malignant mesothelioma – are no longer the only ones receiving the deadly diagnosis in America today.

One in four times the patient is a woman.¹ Secondhand and other non-occupational exposures may be the reason for an increasing number of women diagnosed with mesothelioma at a younger age (starting in their 30s).²

If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with mesothelioma or other asbestos-related lung cancer, it is NOT your fault! We want to hear from you.

“Many people don’t know what it’s like when someone looks you in the eyes and tells you you’re going to die,” 36-year-old Raeleen Minchuk said. “You’ve got a fear you’ve never felt inside of you, but you try to remain positive, and I have to because I have children.”

The Facts Don’t Lie.

Mesothelioma is only caused by asbestos

It is not your fault

It is not your job to prove your exposure

Experienced attorneys will work diligently to track your exposure to asbestos

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Or submit the form to learn more about Mesothelioma and your legal options. There is zero obligation in talking to us and everything is confidential; the power is in your hands.

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If You Have Mesothelioma, You Were Exposed to Asbestos.

Most people don’t even realize they have been exposed until they get a mesothelioma diagnosis, at which point they are shocked. Like so many, they mistakenly believed that asbestos use was banned in the United States.

In 2002, asbestos mining was banned in the United States. However, imported products containing raw chrysotile asbestos doubled in 2022, and crackdowns have done little to control the surge.³

It’s Not Just Industrial Workers and Veterans. Women and Younger People Are Now Being Diagnosed More Than Ever Before.

Products containing asbestos are still allowed into the U.S. in the form of some construction materials and auto parts, to name a few. A serious problem with asbestos stems from the fact that it easily fractures into tiny, invisible airborne pieces that cannot be seen, felt or smelled. However, these pieces can be inhaled or swallowed, causing either pleural (lung) mesothelioma or peritoneal (abdominal) mesothelioma.

Women Are Breathing Asbestos Secondhand.

No amount of exposure to asbestos is considered safe. This worrisome new trend is growing. Women under 40 who are surviving mesothelioma longer with new treatments say the first thing they do upon learning the diagnosis is rack their brain trying to figure out when or how they were exposed. To make matters more complicated, the rule of thumb used to be that mesothelioma symptoms may not emerge until 45-55 years after initially coming directly into contact with asbestos.

Not so in the most recent studies. Now we know you can be indirectly exposed by breathing the fibers secondhand off something or someone else who has been in direct proximity – like the clothes your dad worked in. You can even be exposed as an infant.⁴

Mesothelioma is still diagnosed in roughly 3,000 people in the U.S. per year. But women now represent 25% of those diagnoses, according to the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database. Since 1975, the incidence rate among women is up by 8%.⁵

“It was like someone took every breath out of my body. You just want to collapse. Then you start reading prognoses and all this stuff and you just think oh my God, I can’t.”

– Casie Coleman, 41.

As more women develop the disease, they face challenges men will likely not experience during their cancer journey, according to the Centers for Disease Prevention & Control (CDC). For one thing, they may have children to raise. The good news is that patients once given a terminal prognosis are now surviving longer with new methods of treatment, and thriving well past the 10-year mark.

Most People Wrongly Assume They Have to “Prove” Their Mesothelioma Was Caused by Asbestos.

Peritoneal vs. Pleural

From 2009 to 2013, more women between ages 35-39 were diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma than men in that age group, according to SEER’s age-adjusted and age-specific incidence rates. The latest SEER data shows women have nearly the same chance, if not more, of developing the pleural form than men, and at an earlier age.

Since 2011, however, peritoneal mesothelioma has been more prevalent in women, and the ratio is widening, according to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control & Prevention).⁶

The pleural cavity houses the lungs; it’s lined with a thin membrane of tissue like as impressionable as carbon paper that is oh-so vulnerable to scratching and scarring from inhalation of microscopic asbestos shards (like invisible glass dust).

In addition to breathing the fibers, people can also swallow them, where they are filtered into the peritoneal cavity, or stomach lining, through the lymph system.

Peritoneal cancer shows up more in women but patients with this diagnosis usually live longer; today some women have survived since 2010. But because peritoneal mesothelioma is extremely rare, getting a diagnosis is often a challenge – wasting time when every minute is precious.

One woman reported travelling 1,200 miles to see a specialist. Another woman died of pleural mesothelioma because it took six months to get an accurate diagnose for her chronic coughing (not allergies).

Delayed diagnosis greatly impacts the prognosis for long-term survival. But the illnesses are so rare that not many physicians are trained to detect early symptoms.

When a woman presents with symptoms, mesothelioma is not something her doctor is suspecting to find. Researchers have interviewed dozens of patients who say one thing: KNOW YOUR BODY.

Why file a lawsuit?

The most obvious reason to file a lawsuit is to recover money to help pay for expensive treatments or other medical expenses, but filing a lawsuit means more than just money. For years, companies knew they were exposing people to something that could cause cancer, and they should be held responsible. By filing a lawsuit, you are standing up against these companies and forcing them to acknowledge that what they did was wrong. This action alone helps prevent others from being hurt.

The asbestos tragedy was preventable had the asbestos industry acted to protect the American worker.

The unfortunate legacy of the asbestos industry inaction is the public health crisis that continues to plague the U.S. today.

Examples of the many documents showing a massive coverup.

The Asbestos Companies Lied.

By 1930, it was widely known in industry circles that inhaling asbestos was dangerous. There was no doubt in the asbestos manufacturing community that asbestos killed. Yet industry workers were kept in the dark and even told that the product was safe.

Despite all of the published scientific articles about the dangers of asbestos, world-wide asbestos mining and production grew rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s.

Even more shocking, world-wide asbestos mining and production in 2000 was more than 20,000,000 tons higher than it was in 1960.

Is it any wonder that you were exposed to asbestos?

HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE

Don’t let them get away with this.

While traditional asbestos related exposure was focused on construction and certain industries, more recently we have learned about ovarian cancer being caused by talcum powder. As the hypocrisy of Johnson & Johnson and other companies like Colgate-Palmolive have come to light in the discovery that talcum powder causes ovarian cancer, it has come to light that their powders contain asbestos, which of course, causes lung cancer and mesothelioma as well.

Regardless of where exposed, it is a known fact that asbestos causes mesothelioma. The World Health organization calculated that that in 2009 over 90,000 deaths were directly linked to asbestos exposure in this country alone.

Learn more about filing a potential lawsuit. There’s no out-of-pocket cost, and filing a lawsuit can help your family if you were diagnosed with Mesothelioma.

Sources

1 Jacek M. Mazurek, MD; David J. Blackley, DrPH; David N. Weissman, MD, “Malignant Mesothelioma Mortality in Women — United States, 1999–2020,” CDC Mortality & Morbidity Weekly Report (Centers for Disease Control & Prevention), May 13, 2022.2 Ibid.
3 Coral Davenport, “U.S. Bans the Last Type of Asbestos Still in Use,” New York Times, March 18, 2024.

4 Ibid, Mazurek, Blackley, Weissman, CDC.

5 Luigi Cerbone, Sara Delfanti, Antonina M De Angelis, Stefania Crivelleri, Francesco Boccuzzi, Angela Cimorelli, Marinella Bertolotti, Luisella Righi, Pietro Bertino, Federica Grosso, “Unprecedented long-term survival in a patient with malignant pleural mesothelioma treated with subsequent systemic chemo- and immunotherapeutic regimens,” NIH/PubMed, January 4, 2023.

6 Ibid.

WE WEAR THIS BADGE PROUDLY. Because, in a time when legal services are still dominated by men, only a Women Owned Business can bring the woman’s perspective to issues that disproportionately affect women.

We are the ones, far more than men, who are injured by sexual assault, financial scams, the gender pay gap, toxic chemicals, and the misguided practices of powerful pharmaceutical companies.