Author: Alex Strauss

Exposure to asbestos can trigger lethal malignant mesothelioma, regardless of how long ago – or how recently – that exposure happened. This point, highlighted in a recent issue of the Journal of Occupational Health, could impact compensation for mesothelioma patients around the world. The Backstory on Asbestos Exposure Once a popular building material and insulator, asbestos rapidly declined in popularity after it was found to be the primary cause of mesothelioma around the 1960s. Unfortunately, the asbestos bans and regulations that were established in many countries after that came too late for tens of thousands of workers who had already been exposed to the toxin. But years later, when these workers developed the symptoms of mesothelioma, many began to come…

A popular air-drying modeling clay used across Europe in the 1960s and 70s may have raised the mesothelioma risk for thousands of teachers and students. The case of an Italian elementary school teacher who recently died of malignant mesothelioma, although she had never worked in a school building with crumbling asbestos, brings the point home. DAS Modeling Paste An estimated 55 million packs of DAS paste, a Playdough-like modeling clay, were sold as a toy and used in schools in the UK and Europe between 1963 and 1975. (A similar product called Fibro-Clay by Milton Bradley was produced and sold in the US around the same time.) At a time when asbestos was a popular additive to a wide variety…