A woman from Adelaide, Australia who was diagnosed with mesothelioma a decade ago is now pregnant with her second child.

According to an article in The World Today, 39-year-old Belinda Dunn took part in a gene therapy trial soon after she received the news she had mesothelioma ten years ago and is now expecting. Doctors are baffled both by her survival rate and her pregnancy.

Dunn just feels thankful. When she was diagnosed 10 years ago, doctors told her she’d be dead within a year. Dunn believes her survival is attributed not only to the gene therapy, which she received in the United States, but also the other little things she does in an attempt to stay healthy.

“I’ve taken lots and lots of vitamins at the time of – under the guidance of my naturopath – with the gene therapy trial, and I’m just wondering if it was because my immune system was in good shape when I had the trial that perhaps that’s helped it,” Dunn said.

But Professor Doug Henderson of Flinders Medical Center, the doctor who diagnosed Dunn, says that her recovery “cannot be explained by science, and therefore has little significance at this stage for other sufferers.”

”I have seen other rare cases of mesothelioma that have gone into apparently spontaneous complete remission and one patient whom I remember very vividly was alive with a completely normal chest X-ray and otherwise well, eight years after the diagnosis had been made,” he added.

“We don’t know the reasons for spontaneous regression like this in tumors. It might be due to some altered cellular dynamics within the tumor itself, but why that should happen we really have no clear idea,” he explained

The other theory is that the immune system of a body somehow gains a boost and gains ascendancy over the tumor and puts it into remission, the article noted

In the meantime, Dunn’s pregnancy is progressing without complication and she hopes her case is giving hope to others with this normally-aggressive, hard-to-treat disease.

Concerns have arisen about residents living near an old James Hardie-operated mine on Australia’s New South Wales North Coast who are still being affected by the mine despite the fact that it closed nearly 30 years ago.

Environmental groups who’ve surveyed the area recently told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that vehicles using the area’s gravel roads are spreading asbestos tailings and residents in the area are being “blanketed with asbestos dust.”

Spokesman John Tredrea of the Nimbin Environmental Centre told the news network that logging trucks draw up plumes of the asbestos-contaminated dust from the Baryulgil mine near Grafton. During the days before asbestos was deemed dangerous, it was normal practice to use asbestos-containing materials for road construction. That’s the case with the roads near the Baryulgil mine, which operated from 1950-1979.
Mr. Tredrea says residents, tourist vehicles and animals are being blanketed.
“People on their way to Washpool World Heritage National Park, if they happen to be behind a logging truck – the plume of dust being sucked off the road is massive,” he said. “It’s 10 times wider than the truck itself. It is a major can of worms.”
Tredrea also noted that indigenous peoples who live in the area are being greatly affected by the dust. “I’ve been to Aboriginal communities out there where they showed me their school photographs and the whole ground is blue,” he added.

In an ongoing study conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency, the dust of lower Manhattan is being monitored for asbestos following the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. The area within 1,500 feet of Ground Zero is being closely monitored for asbestos and other toxin levels.

In a November sampling recently released by the agency, at least three dust samples contained levels of asbestos exceeding federal standards. Any sample testing above federal standards indicates levels of asbestos that pose a risk for exposure to residents and visitors to the area. While three samples may not seem significant, the population density of the area would indicate this to be a dangerous revelation, particularly when considering how many more samples may test positive in the area.

EPA officials estimate that the World Trade Center towers contained as much as 300 tons of asbestos, nearly all of which was released into the air when the towers collapsed following the attacks. Asbestos causes respiratory conditions such as mesothelioma, a disease one 9/11 first responder has already died of and many others may contract in the coming years.

New York City officials have indicated that any positive sample will be dealt with through a professional abatement firm at no cost to residents.

Of more than one million public and private facilities in Japan that have been inspected since 2005, the Japanese government reports that more than forty percent of those pegged as dangerous due to asbestos have done little or nothing to remedy the situation.

An article on Asahi.com points out that the inspected facilities have failed to correct their problems largely due to the high cost of asbestos removal in Japan. Earlier this week, the internal affairs ministry urged the infrastructure ministry and other government agencies to take appropriate action, such as expanding the number of municipalities receiving subsidies to pay for asbestos removal.

During the last year and a half, the government has conducted follow-ups on nearly 400 particularly hazardous sites and found that 36 of those still pose significant asbestos dangers, including the potential release of airborne asbestos fibers.

“Among the 36 facilities, 15 have done nothing to prevent asbestos exposure, such as closing off areas where the fire-resistant material remains,” states the article.

The primary reason cited by respondents for inaction is the high cost of asbestos removal, a recent survey found.
“Removal costs about 60 million yen,” said a parking lot operator in Kagawa Prefecture. “We cannot afford to pay that.”

“There is no risk of asbestos becoming airborne because the area where asbestos is used is swept regularly with a broom,” said an official at a hotel in Hokkaido, not realizing that the very act of sweeping could cause fibers to become airborne.

Officials of the internal affairs ministry complained the scope of the infrastructure ministry survey was too limited. It should have covered at least 2 million sites and included smaller facilities, they said.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw threw out a criminal conviction against San Diego Gas and Electric and two of its employees, who were charged with violating safety standards while removing asbestos from a Lemon Grove (CA) site seven years ago.

According to an article in the San Diego Union-Tribune, the judge said his reason for the reversal was that government investigators used “incorrect methods” to collect and test the asbestos samples presented to jurors.

“The court is persuaded a serious miscarriage of justice occurred,” Sabraw wrote in a ruling released last Friday. Attorneys in the case were ordered to return to court Dec. 21 to set a new trial date.

Attorneys for SDG&E were delighted with the ruling, especially since the company was facing a fine of $2 million after being convicted in July of three counts of improperly removing asbestos and one count of making a false statement.

In addition, David Williamson, an SDG&E environmental specialist, and Kyle Rhuebottom, a contractor working for SDG&E, were each convicted of one count of improperly disposing of asbestos. They faced up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. A third worker was acquitted during the July court hearings.

In his ruling, Sabraw said government inspectors shouldn’t have tested samples of debris that came from a stripping machine that removed the asbestos from the pipes, which once stored natural gas.

“That wasn’t representative of the material found at the site,” the judge said, noting that twelve of the 18 samples presented at trial came from debris.

In an article set to appear in this month’s edition of the periodical Risk Analysis, the Environmental Protection Agency says that “except for inhalation exposures that may have occurred on 9/11, and a few days afterward, the ambient (air concentration) data suggest that persons in the general population were unlikely to suffer short-term or long-term adverse health effects caused by inhalation exposures [as a result of 9/11].”

The article, which will be released on December 11, 2007, was written by Matthew Lorber of the EPA’s National Center for Environmental Assessment (NCEA), Office of Research and Development (ORD), Washington; four EPA colleagues, and a scientist with the consulting firm Sciences International of Alexandria, Va.

In the article, the authors point out that “the EPA initiated numerous air-monitoring activities to better understand the ongoing impact of emissions from that disaster” Among the contaminants evaluated were particulate matter (PM), metals, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxins, asbestos, volatile organic compounds, particle-bound polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), silica and synthetic vitreous fibers (SVFs).

Asbestos has been of particular concern because much of the World Trade Center – particularly the lower floors – was insulated with the dangerous material and much asbestos was found on the streets of New York following the disaster. Inhalation of asbestos fibers can eventually cause cancer and a few emergency workers have already been afflicted with or died of asbestos-related diseases.

The authors did acknowledge that there were “limitations” to their study, including uncertainty about air quality during the first few hours and days after 9/11, and the fact that difficulties associated with site access and security, power supply sources, equipment availability and analytical capacity hindered efforts to begin regular monitoring for several days.

With the “experimental” demolition of a Fort Worth (TX) apartment scheduled for this Thursday, environmental activists and a number of experts are still unsure about the safety of the new method being used to tear down buildings that are laden with asbestos.

Despite concerns by a number of watchdog and other groups, local government officials are allowing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to use the new updated “wet method” to take down one building in the now vacant Oak Hollow Apartment complex. Those opposed to the “experiment” have not been able to garner enough support to stop the project, notes an article in the Dallas Morning News.

“A successful test could help pave the way for federal approval of the first new asbestos abatement method in decades and potentially make it cheaper to demolish buildings that have become eyesores and neighborhood dangers nationwide,” the article points out.

However, opponents fear that people in this East Fort Worth neighborhood will be exposed to escaping asbestos fibers, which can eventually cause lung ailments. Most experts believe that the exposure will not be enough to cause concern. Others think the local government is allowing the experiment because the neighborhood is largely made up of minorities.

At a news conference Monday, members of the International Association of Heat & Frost Insulators and Asbestos Workers said they had no doubt that the proposed demolition would release asbestos fibers into the air and that concerns them.

“You’re going to have a whole new generation of people who are going to be sick” if the technique becomes widely used, said Terry Lynch, the union’s at-large vice president.

Freddy Polanco, a peer review panelist and member of the Asbestos Advisory Committee for the Texas Department of Health, said this method “has the potential to be safe,” but he’s concerned that if it’s approved for widespread use, contractors who take shortcuts would put people at risk. He also had issues with the cost savings estimated.

“The EPA seems to inflate the cost of the standard NESHAP method to show that this alternative method is a fiscal way to do it,” he said.

At a state funeral held last week, more than 1500 Australians and asbestos activists from a number of other countries joined together to pay homage to Bernie Banton, the Australian who was largely responsible for bringing the plight of asbestos workers in that country to the public eye.

According to an article in the Australian, the event “reunited the politicians, union leaders, lawyers and victims who had fought the long and painful campaign to force Hardie to compensate victims of the asbestos products the building materials company manufactured until 1987.”

Banton’s funeral was held at Sydney’s Olympic Stadium because Premier Morris Iemma said, “they just don’t make churches big enough to farewell men like Bernie Banton”.

Greg Combet, the former trade union leader and now federal Labor MP, who helped Banton negotiate a $4 billion agreement with Hardie, said that without his friend and comrade the company “might not have buckled.”

“Bernie had a rare capacity, a capacity to connect with people and to inspire in them the same passion for justice that he himself felt,” Mr. Combet told the congregation.

Bernie’s brother, the Reverend Bruce Banton, conducted the service. The pastor was one of four brothers who worked at Hardie and the only one who is yet to be touched by the legacy of asbestos exposure. He helped bury another brother in 2001. Yet another brother has asbestosis and attended the funeral in a wheelchair.
The Prime Minister of Australia proclaimed Banton to be “a hero in an age when we had all become so cynical that we didn’t believe there could be heroes.”
The head of Hardie in Australia, Peter Baker, attended the funeral. But former Hardie chairwoman, Meredith Hellicar, did not. Banton had wanted Hellicar jailed due to her role in the Hardie compensation scandal. Family members said she was tending to a sick parent in France and was unavailable.
The newspaper article notes that “union members lined the way from the Acer Arena to the hearse as an ‘honor guard’. They clapped and shouted ‘good on you, Bernie’ as his coffin was loaded into the hearse and driven away for a private burial beside the graves of his parents.”

Environmental activist groups around the country are appealing to retailers to remove asbestos-laced toys, specifically the CSI Fingerprinting Kit, from the shelves of toy stores and other retail establishments.

One of the groups leading the march against asbestos-containing toys is the Washington D.C.-based Environmental Working Group, notes an article in New York Newsday. The group started the campaign after scientific tests funded by the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization revealed the cancer-causing substance in the product. The kit is made in China and has been particularly popular this holiday season.

“They hired three independent research labs to test hundreds of consumer products, including this toy,” said Alex Formuzis, spokesman for the Environmental Working Group. He noted that all three labs found asbestos at relatively high levels in this particular toy, which contains three different kinds of fingerprint powder and several “tools”.

“They found that 7.2 percent of the fingerprint dust was made up of asbestos. The problem with this toy is that the asbestos is one of the deadliest kinds, if a person breathes it in,” Formuzis said.

Planet Toys, the Manhattan-based distributor for the CSI Fingerprinting Kit, maintains that their independent testing shows no asbestos in the products and no cause for concern.

In what is believed to be the first case of an asbestos-related British death possibly linked to hair salon equipment, a 60-year-old United Kingdom woman has succumbed to mesothelioma, an aggressive form of cancer for which the only known cause is exposure to the toxic mineral.

The Daily Mail reports that the British Health and Safety Laboratory has already tested emissions from heating elements in hair salons which used to be insulated with asbestos and concluded there was “no appreciable risk.” However, family members of the victim can identify no other place where Carol Heaton may have been exposed to asbestos.
Consultant histopathologist Dr. Kim Suvarna reported to the media that an autopsy revealed the victim had a “relatively low level of asbestos fibers in her body” but it showed she had been exposed to asbestos. He said she had no obvious long-term exposure to asbestos in her job such as might be encountered by miners, power station workers, plumbers or electricians. A medical expert called in to review the findings said he had never seen a case like this.
Suvarna believes that perhaps Heaton was somehow environmentally exposed to large amounts of asbestos though no particular situation has been identified.
“On the balance of probabilities, it is more likely this is an unfortunate case of asbestos contamination from environmental pollution,” Suvarna pointed out. “If you are unfortunate to get a good dose you are at risk of mesothelioma.
He added, however, that asbestos was present in hair salons on a daily basis during Heaton’s early days as a hairdresser and salon owner, but no hairdressers should have Mrs. Heaton’s degree of lung contamination, he stressed.