Why Toxic Exposures are a Danger to Us All

About me: 

I have practiced law on behalf of cancer and occupational disease victims across the country for more than 10 years now.  This blog is an attempt to relate my experience as an attorney dedicated to toxic disease victims and the son of a former asbestos worker and highly respected lawyer to the community for the community to use and understand information in the medico-legal community.  

What do I mean by occupational disease victims?  

The answer is entirely contextual. By that I mean: If you worked around poisonous chemicals like asbestos or benzene and have mesothelioma or lung cancer (for asbestos) or leukemia or lymphoma (for  benzene) then you are an occupational disease victim.  But victims are also the family members who suffer seeing a family member sick from a disease or even losing a loved one.  For sure they are also victims.  Sometimes beyond the distress of seeing a family member sick with an occupational disease; a person who has never worked directly with a toxic substance can be sick from it.  How is that possible?  It is possible because some substances are so toxic and so deadly that if your dad or husband brought the substance (like beryllium or asbestos) home on his clothes—you can be exposed and get sick or die from it.  About workers’ families developing mesothelioma, Wagner wrote this in 1960 here: Mesothelioma and Non-Occupational Asbestos Exposure

And about beryllium workers’ families developing chronic beryllium disease, Sam Roe bravely wrote about them here: Beryllium Exposures Article from The Toledo Blade

The lessons: 1. Occupational disease touches us all; 2. You don’t have to be a worker for ccupational disease to kill you.

About the blog: 

Succintly; 1. what does science say about a certain disease?  2. What does the law say about a certain disease?  3. What is going on in the greater legal community at present?  These questions will be answered from the following perspectives: under a microscope, in the context of litigation in U.S. courts, and from a historical perspective of people who have litigated toxic exposure cases for over 40 years.

Medical and scientific occurrences will be looked at times scientific article by scientific article, judicial occurrence by judicial occurence and (hopefully) with anecdotes as to what was occurring in the industrial and legal communities at the time of the events.  To my knowledge, it will be the first blog of its kind, but it will allow for valuable experience to be recorded and preserved.  And writing it will be healthier than drinking excessively or engaging in destructive consumption—two banes of modern lawyers that are best avoided.  Plus I can look back and reference them anytime.

A link to the facebook blog on beryllium exposure is here: https://www.facebook.com/MadekshoLaw