Financial Aid Offered for Mesothelioma Patient
It has been declared that a man who developed lung cancer after working near a Kubota Corp. factory in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, was eligible for government aid as per asbestos relief law. The factory used to make asbestos products, and asbestos is a substance that is a known carcinogenic.
The man from Osaka Prefecture had worked at a factory near the Kanzaki factory in the 1950s and '60s and, 10 years back, he was diagnosed with mesothelioma.
The Kansai Occupational Safety and Health Center said he was the first person with asbestos-related lung cancer to be made eligible for the aid. The health center supports victims of asbestos-linked diseases. Actually, there are dozens of cases in which residents near the former Kanzaki factory or employees who worked in the factory and suffered from mesothelioma were recognized as eligible for the financial aid.
A study had revealed that the asbestos related death rate among women living near a former Kubota Corp. factory is significantly higher than the normal. According to some researchers who carried out studies on people that had been living in the local area between 1957 and 1975, the death rate was over 50 times higher than normal. The levels of asbestos in the air around the factory was very high due to the nature of the products manufactured there when it was in operation.
The researchers studied mesothelioma patients who had lived near the factory but had never actually worked with asbestos and their conclusion was that women living within 500 yards of the factory when it was working could be 18 times more likely to contract the disease. The death rate for men who had never worked with asbestos was lower than for women however, the reason for this was that more men in the area became ill through working with asbestos.
