Various forms of asbestos are widely used in building materials, car parts, paints, crayons and a lot of other things. That is why almost every person is exposed to asbestos. This mineral can cause various health conditions depending on a few factors:
- What form of asbestos a person contacted with
- How long was the exposure and in what concentration
- What lung diseases a person has or is predisposed to
The effect of asbestos exposure is accumulative. It is not a quick-action poison that causes the symptoms right after a short contact. People may experience health problems the decades after they stopped contacting with it. This highly complicates diagnostics and treatment, because the conditions often come to a serious stage before being identified.
Asbestos attacks lungs and airways. Therefore the symptoms are mostly related to respiratory function defects and problems with oxygenation. These are:
- Shortness of breath or tiredness without physical load
- Dry cough during a long period without cold
- Squeaking sound when breathing
- Chest pains
- Coughing up blood
- Cyanochroic skin tone (due to bad oxygenation)
First symptoms can be accepted as smoking by-effects. A lot of smokes do not consider them as serious. However, these are the symptoms of asbestosis – the scarring of lung tissue. Another symptom of this disease is the thickening of nail bones. The first stages of asbestosis can be identified only by roentgenogram.
Asbestos can progress into lung cancer – malignant tumor. The symptoms will worsen: weakness, severe cough with blood, chest pains, breathing problems. Asbestos causes specific lung cancer form – meaothelioma. It develops during 10 – 40 years after the contact with this mineral.
There is one asbestos-related disease that has no symptoms. It is pleural plaque. This condition develops into pleural thickening that also shows itself in chest pains and problems with breathing. X-ray diagnostics helps to identify these and other asbestos-related conditions on early stages, preventing their developing into cancer.
Today the risk of asbestos-related disease is overestimated for commercial purpose. The dust that contains serpentine asbestos is proved to be chemically inert, and its action to a human organism doesn’t differ from any other dust. In low concentration the dust particles are caught in upper airway and removed with begma. The particles that got into lungs are attacked by phagocytes, protective body cells. Amphibole asbestos is not sensitive to phagocytes and have acid-resistive nature. It can damage lungs seriously, and for this reason its extraction is forbidden all over the world.
That is why asbestos-related diseases are mostly the problem of older generations who contacted with highly concentrated asbestos before its influence on the body was properly studied. There are very low chances to get asbestos-related disease living in building with asbestos containing building materials. There is one case in 250 000 people