Women Get It, Too

Among the victims of asbestos, they’re called the Third Wave.

The First Wave
First came the people who worked with asbestos with their bare hands, the miners who dug it from the earth, the women who carded it like fleece, and the millers who wove it into cloth. These early victims often worked with asbestos fibers in enclosed spaces, without ventilation or protection. They developed asbestosis or pleural diseases within ten years, a startlingly short time.

And they died by the thousands. The first recorded victim of asbestosis, an unnamed 33-year-old man who died in London’s Charing Cross Hospital in 1899, told doctors he was the only survivor among ten workers in his carding room. The first commercial asbestos mine had only been in operation for twenty years at that point.

The Second Wave
Second came the people who worked at one remove with the dangerous mineral. These were the ones who worked with the products that contained asbestos—the pipefitters, insulators, bricklayers, and electricians. Some of them were women, too, especially during World War II.

During the war, women flocked into the working world to free the men for the front lines. High-school girls, career seekers, and housewives who had never held a job in their lives learned to cut and form metal, pop rivets, and weld seams. They also worked with asbestos.

These are the people who are dying now. Because their exposure to asbestos wasn’t as concentrated and intensive as the victims of the First Wave, it took longer for these Second Wave people to absorb the fibers into their lungs. But now they have developed the diseases of asbestosis and mesothelioma. Now it’s their turn to die.

The Third Wave
Now there’s the Third Wave. These are the people who were exposed to asbestos by the ones they love. They are the spouses and children of the Second Wave workers. These people are just starting to show the signs of their affliction.

Workers brought asbestos fibers home with them. It was on their clothing and on the seats of the family car, in their hair and on their skin. No one warned them, so they didn’t know to shower and change before coming home. If they had, it would have protected their families.

Those asbestos fibers don’t just vacuum up. Thirty or more years later, if the carpet hasn’t been changed (and sometimes even if it has), those fibers are still there, too.

Imagine the scene: Dad stomps into the house after work, yelling, “What’s for supper?” In the bathroom, he strips off his work clothes, drops them on the floor or into the hamper if he’s been well trained, and steps into the shower. After supper, Mom or one of the kids grabs the dirty work clothes from the bathroom and takes them into the laundry, getting the dust all over themselves in the process.

There are many women who survived childbirth, lead paint, acid rain, the threat of nuclear annihilation, and all the other dangers of the 1950s through the 1970s. Some of these women are now dying of mesothelioma because they shook their husbands’ work clothes out before dropping them into the washer.

A recent study shows that, among long-time shipyard workers, 11.3% of their wives showed signs of asbestos damage on x-rays, and 7.6% of sons and 2.1% of daughters did, too.

Not to be forgotten are the service workers—the maids who cleaned houses and swept up asbestos dust, barbers who cut asbestos-dirtied hair.

The asbestos companies are responsible for their lives, too.