Asbestos & Cancer Risk
- Malcolm Ledgar, a 64-year-old husband and father from Nottingham, England, was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a rare type of lung cancer, after he almost ignored an “annoying ache” under his right rib—now he’s sharing his story in an effort to push others to get checked and be aware of asbestos, a known carcinogen popularly used in commercial products in the U.S. until the 1970s.
- Mesothelioma is a rare cancer that impacts the thin tissue lining the lungs, chest wall, and abdomen. Asbestos is a significant risk factor for this type of cancer, the National Cancer Institute says.
- Clinical trials help doctors better understand cancer and discover more effective treatment methods. They also allow patients to try a treatment before it’s approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which can potentially be life-changing.
- For help finding a clinical trial that’s right for you, try our easy-to-use Clinical Trial Finder.
Ledgar, who worked as an apprentice joiner since his mid-teens and alongside asbestos for about eight years, told PA Real Life in a recent interview, according to the LAD Bible, “In the 70s and 80s, you always got the rough jobs in your first year as an apprentice. You were always knocking walls down or doing repairs.
Read MoreHelping You Understand How Your Environment Impacts Your Health
- Are the Toxins in Our Environment Making Us Sick?
- SurvivorNetTV Presents ‘How Not to Get Cancer: Environment’
- Understanding the Environment’s Role in Cancer Risk — Diet, Exposure & Genetics
- Recall of Ventilators, CPAP Machines Over Potential Cancer-Causing Toxins Raises More Questions Than Answers; What You Need to Know
- Waterproof Mascaras, Long-Lasting Lipsticks Contain Cancer-Linked Toxins, Research Finds; What You Need to Know About Your Risk
Mesothelioma is a rare and aggressive cancer with a survival rate of only one to two years, and it’s considered one of the deadliest cancers, Dr. Joseph Friedberg, thoracic surgeon-in-chief at the Temple University Health System, previously told SurvivorNet.
RELATED: Asbestos Causes Cancer, But Now the Government is Opening the Door to its Comeback
After moving and changing doctors in 2009, Ledgar admitted he stopped going for his scans, but he later underwent an X-ray in March 2023, which were clear.
However, months later, in September, he grew concerned about a new “little ache” under his right rib, which he described as “just an annoying ache.”
A checkup with his doctor led him to get an X-ray at Nottingham City Hospital, where he was told he needed a CT scan to check “concerns” in his lungs. The followup scans led to his mesothelioma diagnosis, rare form of lung cancer found in the lining of his lung.
The former builder was then informed he also needed a CT scan too due to some ‘concerns’ about his lungs. He has since started immunotherapy treatments this month.
He told PA Life, “There’s no cure for it and it’s covering my right lung at the moment. I’ve not dug into it too deeply, I’ve not gone into detail just yet and I’ve not really asked what stage it might be.
“If you feel any aches or you’ve taken in dust particles, ask for a check-up and say you feel something is wrong. If you feel any inkling something is wrong, ask for an X-ray. Only you know your own body.”
Ledgar has since set up a GoFundMe to raise money for two charities, EMAST (formerly Derbyshire Asbestos Support Team Charity) and
Mesothelioma UK.
He writes on his crowdfunding page, which has since raised more than $3,500, “I really don’t know how long I’ve got, but I have a positive mindset and healthy fit body otherwise and I plan on fighting this for as long as I can.
“All I ask is if you can spare some money to donate I would be so grateful as these now are two charities that are close to my heart and have helped me and will continue to help others in the future. Thank you for taking the time to read this and your donation.”
Understanding Mesothelioma
Mesothelioma is a rare cancer that impacts the thin tissue lining the lungs, chest wall, and abdomen. Asbestos is a significant risk factor for this type of cancer, the National Cancer Institute says.
Asbestos is a known carcinogen. It was widely used in commercial products and buildings in the United States until the 1970s, when indisputable data linked it to mesothelioma.
WATCH: The Link Between Asbestos and Mesothelioma Explained.
Dr. Joseph Friedberg, Head of the Division of Thoracic Surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said mesothelioma’s survival rate is generally no longer than one to two years.
“So maybe a few thousand cases a year in the United States,” Dr. Friedberg told SurvivorNet in a previous conversation. “It’s the cancer which is the overwhelming majority of the time–is caused by asbestos.”
Shortness of breath is the most prevailing symptom of mesothelioma.
“Most often, they’ll get diagnosed as having pneumonia or something else because someone listens to them, they have decreased breathing sounds, and they get treated,” Dr. Friedberg said. “So, because it’s such a rare cancer, it is often misdiagnosed for several months.”
Dr. Thomas Sporn, pathologist at Duke University Hospital, previously told SurvivorNet, “In order for [asbestos] to be dangerous, you have to be able to breathe it in — not just any kind of asbestos, but certain forms of long skinny fibrous asbestos.
“With cosmetic products, they contain talc, and talc is a naturally occurring silicate product. It’s just magnesium silicate, and it itself is not fibrous. For any of these to be dangerous, they have to fibrous, which means long skinny needles.”
New Treatment Options
The American Cancer Society describes mesothelioma as “difficult to treat” but improvements in treatment approaches are constantly being worked on.
“The exact roles of surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy in the treatment of mesothelioma are being studied. Combinations of these treatments are now being tested and may provide the most promising option for some patients. And newer types of treatment that are being tested in clinical trials may give patients and their doctors even more options,” the ACS says.
Treatments for mesothelioma have been slow over the years, but now there are a few options for those facing the disease. In October 2020, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a new first-line mesothelioma treatment called Opdivo-Yervoy Drug Therapy, which combines two immunotherapy drugs Opdivo (nivolumab) and Yervoy (ipilimumab) to help destroy cancerous cells. While evaluating results of this therapy, researchers found that these two drugs may be able to limit tumor growth by increasing the function of patients’ T-cells.
In a clinical trial, patients diagnosed with mesothelioma were divided into two groups where one set of patients received only chemotherapy while the others received the combination of drugs. According to results, patients who received by Opdivo and Yervoy survived an average of 18.1 months after diagnosis while the patients who received chemotherapy alone survived only 14.1 months.
In 2019, the FDA approved NovoCure’s NovoTTF-100L System, which is a wearable medical device about the size of a backpack that uses electric fields to disrupt solid tumor cancer cell division. This development marked the first treatment to be approved for mesothelioma in the last 15 years.
Before the NovoTTF-100L approval, the only FDA-approved therapy for patients with these types of mesothelioma was a combination of chemotherapy drugs called pemetrexed and cisplatin. The NovoCure system is also used in combination with chemotherapy. While testing this treatment, researchers found that the median survival rate for people treated with the new system plus chemotherapy was 18.2 months. However, it’s important to note that only 80 people participated in the trial.
“Typically, mesothelioma patients who cannot have surgery receive palliative care to mitigate their symptoms,” Mary Hesdorffer, former executive director of the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation, previously told SurvivorNet.
“NovoTTF-100L provides unresectable (malignant pleural mesothelioma) patients with a treatment option that may improve survival. We are encouraged by the FDA approval and hope it is just the beginning of innovation in the treatment of this aggressive disease.”
Understanding the Environment’s Role in Cancer Risk — Diet, Exposure & Genetics
Stories about a new food, drink, or substance being linked to cancer risk seem to arise every day. We’ve been told we should avoid red meat, alcohol, processed foods, and so many others. However, removing these suspected triggers doesn’t always stop cancer from developing — and indulging in them doesn’t necessarily mean a person will get cancer. There’s a bit more to understanding cancer risk than that.
SurvivorNet previously spoke to Dr. Robert Wright, chair of the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at Mount Sinai, about which environmental risks people should be aware of — and why some triggers may be dangerous to some people and completely safe for others.
When it comes to dietary advice that applies to everyone, Dr. Wright’s was pretty straightforward — eat more vegetables and stay active.
“What we haven’t figured out for cancer is, what is the combination of risk factors that end up leading to a particular person getting cancer,” Dr. Wright said. “The goal [in the future] is to identify those people who are more susceptible to cancer and to give them counseling and foods that they can eat and other habits like exercise that can reduce their risk. Right now, we’re not really good at predicting that.”
While some cancers do develop from inherited genes, most don’t, so researchers are working on ways to understand how lifestyle factors like diet, exercise, and chemical exposures put people at risk. With that in mind, Dr. Wright stressed that eating well and staying active are still important — for all of us.
“In the end, prevention is actually kind of simple,” he said. “It’s what we always know. It’s exercise and eat well. That means eating more vegetables and less meats, particularly red meats.”
How Do Environmental Triggers Cause Cancer?
Throughout our lives, we are continuously exposed to carcinogens, or substances that can can lead to cancer, however, many people will not go on to develop the disease.
“We create carcinogens all the time in our foods when we cook them, and very few of us get cancer because our bodies can handle them,” Dr. Wright explained. “But some people have susceptibilities to these environmental carcinogens, which might be genetic or might be caused by combinations of carcinogens.”
Remember, no one trigger is going to definitively cause cancer, Dr. Wright said, but it could be a combination of triggers in the environment.
“Cancer isn’t caused by one event, typically, it’s usually a series or combination of events,” he added. “So, it may be that you ate a lot of charred food, it may be that you’re also a smoker, it may be that you’ve inherited a genetic susceptibility to be a little bit more sensitive to those chemicals.”
Contributing: SurvivorNet Staff
Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.
