Toxic contaminants: the other scourge
1 min read
As the world focuses on the impact of climate change, little attention is being paid to yet another environmental bane: increasing contamination of air, water and soil.
The combined effects of this environmental scourge have contributed to global epidemics of cancers, lung and other degenerative diseases, and costing health systems across the world millions of dollars, experts say.
Forty-two years after she was exposed to asbestos in the Pambula beach hamlet, 470 kilometres south of Sydney, Jeanette Hennessy Wright, 51, was diagnosed with mesothelioma in July 2008.
“Asbestos was used in the construction of my neighbour’s house while I helped my parents make additions to our own home with fibro sheets that contained asbestos too,” explains Wright.
Two years ago, she began to “feel breathlessness while walking uphill and couldn’t keep up with friends,” she says. After X-rays, a needle biopsy followed by a surgical biopsy, I was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer associated with breathing in asbestos dust and fibres. Being afflicted with the disease is seen as an immediate death sentence, as victims die within 12 to 24 months.
