‘Asbestos Litigation’ Category

Mesothelioma patients may benefit from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) recent approval of Keytruda (pembrolizumab), manufactured by Merck. Keytruda is an immunotherapy drug designed to treat advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Keytruda works by obstructing a cellular pathway that allows cancer cells to spread. Called PD-1/PD-L1, the pathway consists of proteins...

The town of Libby, Montana is probably best known for the unusually high number of its residents suffering from mesothelioma — a terminal cancer whose only known cause is asbestos exposure. According to health workers, asbestos disease has claimed the lives of 400 people in Libby and has caused injury to another 3,000 people.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has spent years...

Shorter mineral fibers — like chrysotile asbestos fibers — are toxic and should not be overlooked when studying the cause of mesothelioma and other lung diseases, believed Philip Cook, a former scientist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

In the 1960s when Cook worked for the EPA in Duluth, Minnesota, he became involved in research concerning thin mineral fragments...

Half of all mesothelioma patients could benefit from new studies by researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) in New York. The doctors are looking at mutations in a gene called BAP1. The mutations have been found in a number of cancers including mesothelioma, clear cell renal cell carcinoma and the hereditary form of uveal melanoma, a cancer of the eye. Marc Ladanyi, the MSK experimental...

How can it be that asbestos — a toxic substance known to cause mesothelioma — is now being found in children’s crayons? Perhaps because asbestos is cheap and the crayons are made in China. In fact, India and China are two of the world’s primary users of asbestos in manufacturing today.

For decades, asbestos was used by U.S. manufacturers to make a host of products from asbestos...