http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040130/hl_afp/health_disease_cancer_040130000558

Thu Jan 29, 7:05 PM ET

PARIS (AFP) - Lung cancer caused by asbestos will cause 100,000 deaths in the developed world alone over the next 25 years, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) says in Saturday's issue.

"This disease is increasing in frequency. There is nothing we can do now to prevent it in workers exposed to asbestos throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s," an editorial in the weekly says.

"Many countries are seeing the rising tide of an epidemic, and all doctors need to know how to recognize and diagnose this disease and what treatments are available," the editorial says.

The type of cancer is malignant pleural mesothelioma, in which irritation caused by inhaling asbestos fibres provokes a tumor in the lung lining.

Those most at risk are men who worked in the building industry, particularly carpenters and joiners, before asbestos was outlawed.

But wives and daughters who washed the overalls of asbestos workers have also developed and died from mesothelioma.

The substance became widely deployed from the 1940s as a heat insulator and fire retardant, appearing in partitions, filters, brake linings and cement.

In Britain, deaths from mesothelioma are running at more than 1,800 a year, accounting for about one in 200 deaths in men and one in 1,500 in women, the BMJ says.

The epidemic will peak in 2015-2020, both in Britain and Europe, although the peak has probably already passed in the United States, which acted faster to curb asbestos use.

The reports authors, all leading authorities in cancer treatment and epidemiology, are led by Tom Treasure, a professor at Guy's Hospital, London.

*** POSTED ON FEBRUARY 4,  2004 ***