Other Asbestos-Related Cancers

Besides mesothelioma, asbestos exposure can cause or contribute to other forms of cancer. This includes lung cancer, and cancer of the upper air passageway in the throat, called laryngeal cancer.

Most asbestos fibers are long, thin, sharp, and so tiny that they can’t be seen with the human eye. They float in the air and are easily inhaled. Once inhaled, the rush of oxygen carries the asbestos fibers along the throat and into the lungs, where, as the passageways get smaller and smaller, the fibers are deposited along the path.

In the lungs, the sharp end of one needle-like asbestos fiber can puncture the wall of a single cell, damaging the DNA within and sometimes even erasing it. Without its DNA, of course, the cell can no longer reproduce properly. Sometimes it begins to multiply erratically, forming a mass of tissue that threatens and then overwhelms its neighboring tissues. This mass is called a tumor.

These floating asbestos fibers can also be swallowed, of course, and during surgeries, doctors have found asbestos fibers throughout people’s interiors. And there is some medical evidence that asbestos exposure can also cause or contribute to cancer in the stomach, colon, rectum, and the food passageway in the throat called the esophagus. But in 2006, scientists of the National Academies reviewed all the studies performed to date. Their final report called that evidence “suggestive but not sufficient,” and asked for more research to finally settle the issue.

The smoking gun
Although mesothelioma has nothing to do with cigarette smoking, lung cancer most certainly does. Asbestos and nicotine are called co-carcinogens, because together they heighten the risk of lung cancer dramatically over either one of them separately.

For example, smokers are thirteen times more likely, and people who often breathe second-hand smoke are 1.5 times more likely, to develop lung cancer than nonsmokers. Asbestos exposed nonsmokers are five times more likely to develop lung cancer than unexposed nonsmokers.

But smoking multiplies that risk enormously. Smokers who were also exposed to asbestos are ninety times more likely to develop lung cancer than unexposed nonsmokers. And most exposed people still alive today worked with asbestos from the 1940s through the middle 1970s, the era when it was considered fashionable to smoke. This double whammy is the main reason that up to one quarter of all people who were heavily exposed to asbestos are expected to develop lung cancer—because most of them also smoked.

For this reason, the single most important thing a person with asbestosis can do to protect themselves against cancer is to quit smoking. Besides, if your lungs are already damaged, why would anyone want to deliberately damage them further?

So was it smoking or asbestos?
It’s possible to develop asbestos-related lung cancer without ever showing signs of asbestosis or pleural plaques or pleural thickening. But usually, the patients who get lung cancer were the people who inhaled enough asbestos fibers during their working hours to get all three. And, since the lag time between asbestos exposure and developing lung cancer is usually twenty to thirty years, the other diseases have time to develop, too.

In court cases, where proving what caused the cancer is what matters, the asbestos companies will try to claim it was smoking that did it, not asbestos. If a victim also has an underlying disease, such as asbestosis or pleural problems, it’s unfortunate, but it makes the point.

Otherwise
Once past the issue of what caused the problem, asbestos-related lung or laryngeal cancer is just like the other kind. It’s detected, diagnosed, and treated in exactly the same way.

The warning signs are coughing, spitting up blood, shortness of breath, wheezing, and chest pain. X-ray or CT scan pinpoints the tumor. Possible treatment includes surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation, and is jointly decided by the patient and the medical staff.