NIOSH STATISTICS ON ASBESTOS

According to National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, between 1993 and 2002, more than a 1,000 people died from asbestosis caused by exposures at their work.

From 1999 to 2002, NIOSH reports, 1,001 people died from mesothelioma, a rare cancer and deadly cancer generally caused by asbestos. These figures do not include the deaths from lung cancer and other diseases that asbestos can cause, or the deaths that the government tracking system may have missed.

The deaths of hard-working people exposed to asbestos at their work only tell part of the story. Workers can take asbestos into their homes on their clothes.

After a hard day at work, they go home and hug their children or sit with their families at the dinner table. Their spouses may handle their asbestos-laden clothes. Nobody can see the fibers, but they can still kill.