High cases of lung cancer in UK linked to asbestos

Published on Tuesday 3 March 2009 21:11

ONE in 17 UK carpenters born in the 1940s will die of asbestos– related lung cancer, researchers said yesterday.

Experts writing in the British Journal of Cancer calculated the lifetime risk of mesothelioma among workers exposed to asbestos for more than ten years before they reached the age of 30.

They predicted that one in 17 carpenters would develop mesothelioma alongside one in 50 plumbers, electricians and decorators and one in 125 other construction workers.

The UK mesothelioma death rate is now the highest in the world, with 1,749 deaths in men in 2005, equivalent to one in 40 of all male cancer deaths below the age of 80. In 2005, there were also 288 deaths in women.

The projected lifetime risk of fatal mesothelioma in all British men born in the 1940s is about one in 170 of all deaths, the researchers wrote.

This research is the largest study of its kind and was funded by Cancer Research UK and the Health and Safety Executive.

More than 600 patients with mesothelioma and 1,400 healthy people were interviewed to examine UK rates of the disease linked to different jobs.

For every case of mesothelioma, asbestos also causes about one case of lung cancer, so the overall risk of asbestos-related cancer for carpenters born in the 1940s is about one in ten.

The authors also found that around two-thirds of all British men and a quarter of women had worked in jobs involving potential asbestos exposure at some time in their lives.

There was also a small increased risk in those who had lived with someone who had been exposed to asbestos.

Cancer Research UK said more than 2,100 people were diagnosed with mesothelioma in the UK each year.