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Risk of cancer in USA is
barely measurable
U.S. Today Online - Feb 11, 1999
A USA TODAY investigation has found incontrovertible
scientific evidence that asbestos in buildings creates a cancer
risk so low that it barely can be measured.
A person who spends a career inside a building rich with asbestos
materials is more likely to die of a lightning bolt, a bee sting
or a toothpick lodged in the throat than an asbestos-related cancer.
Despite the minimal risk, asbestos continues to be removed from
U.S buildings at a cost of about $3 billion a year, largely because
the risks were overestimated two decades ago and new scientific
evidence has never changed the public perception that asbestos in
any form is deadly.
The U.S. situation is very different from that in the developing
world, where millions of people in mining and manufacturing are
exposed to enough asbestos fibers and dust to cause incurable cancer
and other diseases.
But in the USA, the amount spent on asbestos removal "makes no
sense from a public health standpoint," says Michael Thune, chief
epidemiologist at the American Cancer society. "People have a hard
time understanding the magnitude of different risks.The risk
of getting cancer from asbestos in buildings is so small that eliminating
it wouldn't create a measurable blip in the (171,000) lung cancer
deaths that occur every year."
Even the fiercest critics of asbestos doubt the wisdom of removing
it from buildings.
"I'm sure you expect me to say, 'Take it out!' " says David Egilman,
a Brown University doctor who is a critic of the asbestos industry
and a frequent expert witness for workers suing asbestos companies.
"But that would be lunacy, and I'm not a lunatic. There are far
better ways to spend our money."
Adds Tim Flood, an epidemiologist at the Arizona Health Department:
"Asbestos abatement is pretty much a fiasco. It's hard to think
of a worse investment." Many more lives would be saved, Flood Says,
if the money were spent on drug prevention, guardrails, sunscreen,
medical research -- "almost anything, really."
Indoor radon will cause 3,000 times as many deaths. Driving will
kill 20,000 times more people. Smoking will kill 50,000 times as
many.
For each life saved, asbestos removal costs $ 100 million to $500
million.
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