Malignant mesothelioma is a deadly disease that attacks the lining of several organs in the body, most notably the lungs. It is now known that exposure to asbestos is the primary cause for this disease. However, for over 100 years of mining and producing asbestos, the link between asbestos and mesothelioma remained obscured.
In the early 1900's, workers at asbestos factories in Britain were experiencing an extremely high rate of lung disease. By the late 1920's, lung disease problems associated with asbestos mining and production were becoming well known, so much so that the British government commissioned a study in 1930. The study results showed that asbestosis was an occupational disease and was associated with asbestos exposure.
The link between lung cancer and asbestos emerged slowly. As many asbestos workers were dying of lung cancer in the 1930's and 1940's, there was also high growth rate of tobacco use and a high occurance of tuberculosis. Unless an autopsy was performed, it was difficult to determine the exact type of lung cancer that caused death. During this time period, it appears that the asbestos industry officials made hardly any effort to establish the link between asbestos and mesothelioma, even though a lot of evidence suggested this link.
Post-World War II, asbestos mining in South Africa grew rapidly. South Africa had plenty of cheap labor and new technologies were making asbestos mining much more efficient. Even though a well known South African medical researcher noted that asbestos exposure could be hazardous, he attributed the dangers to asbestos processing, not mining.
In 1948, South Africa commissioned the first chest and infectious disease hospital near the asbestos mines. The hospital's first medical superintendent, Chris Sleggs, was the first physician in the world to work with a significant number of mesothelioma cases. He noted the presence of atypical cases of lung disease in many of the wards. Most cases of tuberculosis recovered with treatment, but only a few of the cases appeared to be resistant to drugs. He then began to investigate.
Chris Wagner, a medical researcher, became aware of the unusual lung disease in the mid 1950's. He started a research project to better understand the occupational hazards associated with the asbestos mining. Thanks to the efforts of Drs. Sleggs and Wagner, along with a third researcher, Ian Webster, by the late 1950's, the connection between mesothelioma and asbestos was well documented.
In 1959, these three researchers attended an international conference in Johannesburg, South Africa. They presented papers, based on their research, showing the connection between mesothelioma and asbestos. After the conference, they combined their data and submitted it to a prestigious British medical journal. Their data showed that of the 33 cases of pleural mesothelioma investigated by them, 32 had proven exposure to asbestos mining.
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