You worked hard all your life to support your family. The jobs you worked were labor-intensive and exposed you to the dangerous asbestos microfibers that infiltrated your lungs. Now, decades after working the jobs that exposed you, you’re diagnosed with mesothelioma.
But that’s not even the worst of it. One of your now-adult children is displaying the same set of worrying symptoms that led to your mesothelioma diagnosis. But how could that be? Your daughter never worked around asbestos.
Family members at risk of secondhand exposures
Thinking back to your working years, you remember your young daughter rushing to greet you every day when you walked in the door from work. Before you could ever shed your work clothes and grab a quick shower, your little girl wrapped herself around you in a big bear hug, proclaiming, “Daddy’s home!”
It is quite likely that those hugs and warm embraces were the unknowing vectors that transferred deadly asbestos fibers from your work clothes to your daughter’s lungs.
You didn’t understand the risk of secondhand exposure
Learning that you might have unwittingly facilitated the transmission of a dangerous disease to one of your children is a harsh blow. But don’t let misplaced guilt cloud your decisions now. You didn’t realize the risk asbestos posed to you and certainly not to your family members.
But the company for which you worked may well have understood that working around asbestos posed huge risks for their employees farther down the road. Many companies knew that and disregarded the risk because the ensuing mesothelioma occurred years later.
Learning more about secondhand asbestos exposure can help you make an informed decision on how you will proceed.