NASCAR Broadcaster Attributes Lung Cancer to Asbestos in Brakes
On August 11, the Sports Illustrated website posted an interview with retired NASCAR driver and longtime broadcaster Benny Parsons, who has just been diagnosed with lung cancer. The interview includes a discussion of his disease, in which Parsons says, "if I had to blame anything for this problem my guess is it would be asbestos. In the '60s I worked at a gas station on a fleet of taxi cabs. Brakes would not last very long on these cabs. We had to replace them every 5,000 miles. In the '60s friction lining on brake shoes was asbestos. So when I took those drums off that dust would be a quarter of an inch deep and I would take an air hose and blow all that stuff off. So every week I was exposed to asbestos dust."
Click here for full story: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writers/richard_deitsch/08/11/media.circusw/
*** POSTED ON AUGUST 14, 2006 ***