The deadly health effects of asbestos exposure have been known and documented since Roman times, when asbestosis was known as the "disease of slaves" who worked with the substance.By the early 1900s, it was becoming apparent to the medical community in Europe that there was a connection between asbestos and the high incidence of respiratory disease among those who worked around it.
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In the United States, the connection between asbestos and respiratory disease had been scientifically proven in studies commissioned by insurance carriers and the asbestos industries during the 1930s. Lawyers have argued that the asbestos industry weighed the cost, and decided that it would be less expensive to simply conceal the evidence, allow workers to die and pay whatever legal mesothelioma costs might be incurred as a result. Meanwhile, the federal government, reacting to the S.S. Morro Castle tragedy (a shipboard fire) in 1934 became the largest buyer of asbestos products.
In 1977, the corporate conspiracy of silence was exposed, and the industry that reaped large profits while disdaining human life has been paying a staggering financial price ever since.
Incredibly, asbestos is still legal in the United States. In 1989, the Environmental mesothelioma Protection Agency passed a ban on asbestos that was overturned by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals under corporate pressure. This however may soon change; U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) has reintroduced a bill in Congress called the "Ban Asbestos mesothelioma in America Act of 2007" (S. 742)and the efforts of Sokolove Law and its "Ban Asbestos Now" grass roots effort.
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