Mesothelioma Litigation Points the Way for Nanotech Suits

Asbestos, a 20th century hazard created when manufacturers first discovered asbestos' insulating properties and then proceeded to incorporate it into everything from boiler insulation to hair dryers, points out the dangers for nanotechnology, at least according to the Investor Environmental Health Network, or IEHN.
The Investor Environmental Health Network, a joint partnership between investment managers who administer more than $25 billion in assets, is directed toward creating more transparency in corporate policies vis-à-vis toxic chemicals and defective products. Their aim is to improve the health, safety and financial well-being of Americans.
Asbestos, a natural mineral that occurs as crystalline or needle-like fibers in rock formations, comes in six different types: actinolite, amosite, anthophyllite, chrysotile, crocidolite and tremolite.
Used regularly until about 1989, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, restricted its domestic use to one percent of product by volume, asbestos is known to cause a number of serious diseases, ranging from asbestosis - a debilitating respiratory illness - to lung and digestive tumors, including mesothelioma.
Unlike some other toxins, the human body has no way to rid itself of asbestos fibers. Once inhaled or ingested, they remain in tissue causing irritations, or lesions, that frequently lead to illness.
Mesothelioma, a largely fatal cancer of the mesothelial tissue lining, the lungs and abdomen, tends to lie dormant for decades. By the time it is diagnosed, patients are rarely given more than a year to live, though 10 percent of those affected may survive up to five years.
A 2002 RAND report, which describes asbestos litigation as "...the longest running mass tort in U. S. history", with more than 600,000 individuals suing 6,000 companies (often more than one company per suit) for asbestos-related damages through 2000, has resulted in upward of 60 corporate bankruptcies since 1980, for a total cost of more than $54 billion.
Damages were awarded largely based on what IEHN identifies as eight practices which leave companies liable for product-related injury. These are: shortsightedness; concealed science; disclosing only a minimum of potential liabilities; according privilege in attorney-client relationships to conceal the level of liability; inconsistent estimating liability costs to shareholders; using hidden assumptions to minimize liability estimates; refusing to benchmark liabilities; and refusing to allow stakeholders to question, via annual proxies, the specific risks.
These, says the IEHN, are loopholes the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Accounting and Standards Board (FASB) - two entities which regulate corporate risk and financial reporting - need to close to insure that nanotechnology doesn't get itself into the sort of quagmire now faced by former asbestos product manufacturers. In fact, says the IEHN, the loopholes reflect a long-established and pervasive attitude of "don't ask/don't tell" which has already demonstrated it dangers via asbestos litigation and corporate bankruptcies.
In the early 20th century, manufacturers, physicians and workforce managers didn't know the dangers inherent in asbestos. By the time they discovered its destructive capacity, much damage had already been done.
The same is not true of nanotechnology, which has only been around for a decade in commercial use. A recent report out of Europe, by the Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA), puts nanoparticles at the top of the list of substances which could pose new and even greater risks to workers.

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