Paper Mill Workers

A French study carried out for the International Agency for Research on Cancer examined almost 63,000 men who had worked for at least a year in the pulp and paper industry between 1945 and 1996. The men came from a total of thirteen different countries. Around 36% of the men had been exposed to asbestos. Of the exposed group, which totaled around 22,650 men, 14 died from pleural mesothelioma. In the unexposed group, which numbered some 47,000 men, ten died from the same type of cancer.

Those numbers might not seem significant, but if you do the math you'll see that the rate of mesothelioma death was almost three times as high in the exposed group than in the unexposed group. Ironically, prior to this study asbestos exposure had not been considered a serious risk in the pulp and paper industry.

Another important issue is that many machines contained a type of asbestos known as chrysotile. Many companies have claimed that chrysotile asbestos is much less dangerous than other types; however the results of some studies indicate that this may not be the case. Chrysotile asbestos is capable of causing serious diseases (including asbestos cancers), although perhaps at a slightly lower rate than amphibole asbestos.

This means that you can't ignore the risks of asbestos exposure if your exposure was to chrysotile asbestos. Exposure to even a small amount of any kind of asbestos can be dangerous. If you have worked around any type of asbestos for any length of time protecting your health should be a primary concern.

Paper Mill Asbestos Uses

Asbestos is a fibrous mineral that has high tensile strength, and is very resistant to chemical and thermal degradation. Prior to the 1980s, asbestos was often added to construction products, to provide strength, stability, and thermal insulation to the materials.

Due to these important chemical and physical properties, asbestos was added to many of the moving parts in paper and fabric mill machines. The addition of asbestos provided extra thermal stability and insulation for high-friction, high-heat moving parts. The addition of asbestos also put machine operators at risk of exposure, and the development of asbestos-related diseases.

In addition, asbestos was also used in machinery and plant insulation, particularly in locations where a high risk of fire was present. The use of volatile chemicals and high-heat processes necessitates the use of insulation and construction materials that have a low fire risk: asbestos was ideal for use in pulp and paper industrial plants due to its inability to burn or conduct heat.

What Paper Mill Workers Should Know

Working around machinery that contains asbestos presents a health risk because the movement of the parts that contain asbestos is likely to throw off tiny, invisible fibers. The danger could not be seen, so in many cases it was simply ignored.

Asbestos fibers present an exposure risk because when inhaled, they can be transported to the lungs, where they cause chronic inflammation and irritation. Over time this causes asbestosis, due to the build-up of scar tissue in the lungs. Asbestosis, which is characterized by painful breathing and reduced lung function, is incurable.

Another serious asbestos-related diseases is a type of cancer called mesothelioma. This disease is also incurable, and is particularly lethal because it spreads aggressively and is resistant to current treatments.

One major problem in diagnosing and treating asbestos-related diseases, and mesothelioma in particular, is the long latency period between asbestos exposure and the onset of the first disease symptoms. In the case of mesothelioma three to six decades may elapse between exposure and the appearance of symptoms. In the mean time the person in question may feel and appear healthy, without realizing that cancer is developing within their lungs.

This means that not only are the diseases difficult to treat, but also that the true effects of the massive amount of asbestos exposure that occurred last century are yet to be seen. It's been estimated that 27.5 million people experienced occupational asbestos exposure in the twentieth century, including tens of thousands of paper mill workers.

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