European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - September 25, 1978, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Monday september 25, 1978 the stars and stripes Page 19 May be killing millions by Bill Gardner associated Pressi f Marcos Vela had to get by on the same air the rest of us breathe he would t last Long. After 35 years of working with Asbestos his lungs Are shot and he has to breathe pure oxygen 16 hours a Day. Vela 60, spent his working life at the Johns Man Ville Asbestos products Plant about 15 Miles East of Oak land Calif. It came As no Surprise to him when the Federal government warned that millions May die from Laving worked with Asbestos Over the past 30 years. 1 Vela knows there s a Good Chance he is going to be one i of those millions. He knows that Many of the men who worked with him at the Plant Are already  " about half the people who worked with Asbestos in i the 1940s Are expected to die of Asbestos disease. T Many Are just now showing symptoms because As j bestow diseases usually take 20 to 3 years to show up. I things have gotten better since the 1940s, but Many scientists believe that today s workers Are still breathing too much Asbestos. Asbestos causes three major diseases. One is asbestosis a non cancerous scarring of the lungs that gradually makes it harder and harder to breathe. The other two Are i cancers lung cancer and mesothelium a a cancer of the lining of the stomach or the lung. J mesothelium a is hardly Ever seen in the population be. Neurally but kills nearly one in 10 Asbestos workers. Sever Al other cancers also turn up More frequently in Asbestos workers. There is no cure for asbestosis. Lung cancer is generally fatal and mesothelium a victims rarely live More than i a few months after diagnosis. Asbestos is a general term for several fibrous minerals made from crushing certain kinds of Rock into a White dust. Asbestos won t Burn won t conduct heat and is used in More than 3,000 commercial products including fire proof materials and insulation. Asbestos is everywhere you look. It s in acoustical ceilings Brake linings fireproof roofing shingles floor tiles pipe insulation. It s in virtually every House and building. World production of Asbestos has risen from 50 tons per year in 1870 to 4 million tons per year now. Substitutes such As fiber Glass have been found for insulation but there is yet no Good substitute for some other Asbestos uses such As in Brake Drums. Asbestos is such a common material that anyone can breathe the fibres without even realizing it. Children and wives of Asbestos workers have developed Asbestos canc ers simply by coming into Contact with clothing of the worker. In shipyards insulation workers often stir up enough Asbestos dust to put anyone near them in danger. The danger comes from breathing Asbestos fibres and that generally happens in the working place Asbestos plants at mines and Mills or in the process of insulating or removing old insulation at a construction site. Asbestos fibres in Homes floor tiles and in some acoustic Ceil Ings Are generally locked inside the product and Don t escape into the air unless the ceilings or tiles Are heavily worn. Asbestos fibres escape into the air when a Motorist applies the brakes but there Are no known cases of disease from this source. Nobody knows How much Asbestos is enough to kill. There Are Many cases of Asbestos cancer in people who worked around the Mineral for Only one summer. A Santa Barbara Calif., Man developed mesothelium a 20 years after his Only exposure one Day of tearing Down a building insulated with Asbestos. Vela has asbestosis with such severe scarring of his lungs that any Effort leaves him gasping for breath. I even have to take a Bath slowly he says. Vela has a big oxygen tank in his House in Antioch Calif and he spends most of the Day hooked up to it. That tank holds enough oxygen for four Days and Vela also has a one hour tank he keeps in his car and a four hour tank he takes along when he goes out for awhile. If i go to a Ball game to watch my son play Vela says i take it along with me in Case i get a Little excited and Start breathing hard. Then i d have to have the  Vela says he never smoked a cigarette. If i smoked i would t be alive and talking to you right  he s probably right. Scientists say a person who works with Asbestos and also smokes has 92 times the Chance of dying of lung cancer As a person who neither smokes nor works with Asbestos. Johns Manville the nation s leading Asbestos products company won t allow smoking on the grounds of any of its Asbestos plants. Scientists seem to be linking an Ever growing number of products with cancer based Only on experiments with Laboratory rats that were exposed to unusually High concentrations of the product. The test animals for Asbestos however have been humans millions of them and they breathed Only what Asbestos was there in a Normal Day s work. Joseph Califano Secretary of health education and welfare warned in april that about half of the 8 million to 11 million people who have worked with Asbestos during the past 35 years May die because of Asbestos exposure. Meantime hew has launched a Campaign alerting older and retired Asbestos workers especially. The Mes Sage get medical checkups. Stop smoking. Acquaint yourself with Asbestos hazards. One Public service message for broadcast was filmed on an old Liberty ship and warns you could be a Casu Alty of world War ii and not know  the Campaign concentrates on shipyard Sites and other High risk areas. One might think the dangers of Asbestos suddenly swooped Down on an unsuspecting world earlier this year. Actually the first Case of asbestosis was re Marcos Vela with portable oxygen tank. A ported in 1907 Asbestos lung cancer was first noted in 1935 mesothelium a was reported in 1946. In 1930, a British researcher found 81 percent of work ers with 30 years in Asbestos work had asbestosis. The nation s leading Asbestos researcher or. Irving j. Selikoff of the mount Sinai school of Medicine in new York says the dangers of Asbestos were fairly Well known in 1935. Three years ago he wrote with this background it is difficult to explain the curious quiet of the following de Cades. Little was done regulations were few and government inspections and supervision were  the department of labor estimates about 2 million workers Are now regularly exposed to Asbestos perhaps too much. It s known that there was too much Asbestos in the air at Many jobs in the 1940s and 1950s because the diseases Are now showing up. Norbert Mehan 69, worked in san Francisco Bay shipyards during the 1940s and he recalls the Asbestos was so thick it looked like it was snowing All Day  in the 1960s things were still pretty bad says Roger Hamilton business manager of Asbestos workers Union local 5 in los Angeles. We had no fear of the stuff. We d raise All kinds of dust so the Boss would think we were working real  the labor department s occupational safety and health administration in 1970 set a Standard on just How much airborne Asbestos would be allowed in the work place. In each cubic centimetre of air there can be no More than two Asbestos fibres longer than five microns. That does t sound like much Asbestos until you figure that there Are a million cubic centimetres in a cubic meter and a Man working eight hours generally breathes about 10 cubic meters. So a worker could breathe 20 Milli on Asbestos fibres a Day under the current Osha Stan Dard. Many scientists believe that Standard is much too lenient. The National Institute for occupational health and safety has recommended tightening the Standard to .1 fiber per cubic centimetre one twentieth of what it is now. Selikoff said the current Standard was developed to prevent asbestosis and that a much tighter Stan Dard is needed to prevent Asbestos cancer. The Standard proposed by Nohs is so much lower than the current Osha Standard that hardly an Asbestos business in the nation could meet it without making changes. Most of those businesses feel their work places Are Safe enough now. John a. Mckinney president of Johns Manville said we re opposed to the lowering tightening of the Stan Dard because we Don t think it s  he said the newer Johns Manville plants at Stockton. Calif., for instance have had very Little Asbestos disease. Nearly half of the americans who have had heavy exposure to Asbestos during the past 40 years were working in shipyards at the time. Most of that shipyard work took place during world War ii when the Navy built thousands of ships with Asbestos insulation. Only in the past couple of years has the Navy stopped using Asbestos for insulation in ships. But almost every Navy ship still has Asbestos insula Tion and part of that insulation has to be ripped out when ships Are brought in for overhaul. The Navy has Asbestos regulations but a Navy inspection team found numerous violations at the Long Beach shipyard this March. One thing Many Asbestos victims want is compensation. They Are suffering and they figure somebody ought to pay for it. Vela won a $350,000 malpractice suit against a Johns Manville doctor. All across the country lawsuits Are being filed against the manufacturers of Asbestos by workers who say those companies were aware Asbestos was hazardous 30 years ago but did t bother to Tell people working with it. Johns Manville president Mckinney said he thinks the victims should be compensated but not through lawsuits against his company. We Don t feel we re any More at fault than the medi Cal profession or the tobacco Industry or the govern  Mckinney suggested compensation be funded by a tax on Asbestos products and a tax on tobacco and government paying its fair