Exposure to asbestos is not in itself deadly. However it can cause specific fatal diseases. These diseases often have a high latency period from when the asbestos fibre is inhaled to when the signs of the lethal diseases it causes start to take affect.

Mesothelioma is one of the diseases most commonly caused by exposure to asbestos. This is an uncommon form of cancer that is almost always caused by exposure to asbestos. It usually forms in the lungs but can reach the heart or stomach. The symptoms may not appear until between 30 to 50 years after exposure to asbestos occurred.

Other diseases caused by asbestos exposure include lung cancer, asbestosis and pleural plaques. These can have an equally long latency period, yet once they start to show their symptoms, their victims have little hope of survival and the illness takes hold quickly. In the recent asbestos Scotland news item we published about asbestos in a golf club in Scotland it didn’t take long at all for symptoms. See that article below this post.