Mesothelioma Attorney Addresses Recent Asbestos Ban by the EPA

Hi, my name is Manny Cabrera, and I’m an attorney at the Lanier law firm. I just want to talk to you a little bit about the recent EPA rule that has come out banning asbestos. Now, specifically, the EPA is banning chrysotile asbestos, which is just one of 6 different types of asbestos, and the one that’s only being imported and used here in the United States. Now, lots of asbestos is still being used to make automotive friction blocks and clutches as well as gaskets, and it’s used in the production of chlorine bleach. So this is the kind of thing that is still being used out there and exposing people to asbestos. Now, the reason why this is important is because, while it’s still being used, it can still expose you to this carcinogen and make you sick in different ways. Now the different ways that you can get sick are of course cancer, such as mesothelioma, lung cancer, ovarian cancer. You can also get asbestosis, which is just a different kind of lung disease. Now one of the reasons why this is really important is because as attorneys we’ve been fighting this fight for a long time, and asbestos has been getting chipped away from the commercial market for a long time, but little by little by little. Now, of course, you know, we’re going to continue to do what we’ve been doing and trying to hold these companies accountable for what they’ve done. And of course, this doesn’t mean that just because asbestos has been phased out or it’s going to go away, doesn’t mean that people are going to stop getting sick, because one of the things that happens with asbestos is that there’s a latency in the sickness. So just because you got exposed yesterday doesn’t mean you’re going to get sick the next day. It’s going to take years if not decades, for you to show these symptoms. So it’s still gonna be at least 20, 30, 40 years before we see some sort of decline in those numbers that you would otherwise see had this not happened by the EPA now. We of course wish that this would be a complete and total ban, but that may be what’s coming next. Now the EPA is still looking into what’s called legacy uses. So sometimes what happens is that there’s a lot of buildings that are still really old and still have asbestos in them and then they haven’t been torn down or haven’t had the asbestos taken out, and they’re going to take a look at some of that uses. They’re also going to take a look at the asbestos contamination in talc. So this is not the last time we’re going to hear from the EPA in regards to asbestos. So we’re going to be on the lookout for that, to make sure that they’re going in the right direction and that this is something that they can finally and forever get rid of from this country and many, you know, and hopefully other countries will follow suit as well.