The Hidden Geography of Mesothelioma: How America's Industrial Past Is Still Killing Workers in 2026
The maps don't lie. Overlay a chart of America's historic shipyards, power plants, and naval bases against the CDC's state-by-state mesothelioma mortality data, and the pattern emerges with uncomfortable clarity: the places where men spent their working lives building the country are the same places where mesothelioma is still taking them, decades later. This isn't a coincidence. It's the biological ledger of an industrial era that treated asbestos as an invaluable material and treated workers like they were expendable.
From an occupational health perspective, the geography of mesothelioma is one of the most underreported stories in American public health. The disease doesn't cluster randomly. It clusters around shipyards, around power generation facilities, around Navy bases and insulation plants and brake-lining factories. And in 2026, as the latency period for asbestos exposure from the 1970s and 1980s continues to run its course, the mortality numbers in specific states and specific industries remain stubbornly high.
This article maps that geography in detail. It examines the industries that drove the highest exposures, the biological mechanisms that make mesothelioma so lethal even when caught relatively early, and what patients and families in high-burden regions need to know about diagnosis, treatment, and legal recourse. The data is sobering. But the picture it paints is also one that can guide better screening, faster diagnosis, and more targeted advocacy.
What the Mortality Data Actually Shows
According to the CDC's mesothelioma mortality surveillance data, approximately 2,500 to 3,000 Americans die from mesothelioma each year, with the highest death rates concentrated in states that had the densest industrial and maritime activity in the mid-20th century. States like California, Pennsylvania, New York, Texas, and Florida consistently rank among the highest in absolute mesothelioma deaths. But when researchers adjust for population size, smaller industrial states like West Virginia, Montana, and Maine sometimes show even higher per-capita rates.
Montana presents the most extreme case study. The town of Libby, documented extensively by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, was the site of a vermiculite mine operated by W.R. Grace & Company that contaminated the surrounding community with tremolite asbestos for decades. According to ATSDR data, Libby residents experienced mesothelioma and asbestos-related disease rates far exceeding any comparable American community. The site remains one of the most significant environmental asbestos disasters in U.S. history, and health monitoring in the Libby area continues through 2026.
California tells a different but equally sobering story. According to a California Department of Public Health analysis of mesothelioma incidence and mortality, the state recorded some of the highest raw numbers of mesothelioma cases in the nation, driven by its enormous shipbuilding industry during World War II, its extensive naval infrastructure, and its decades of industrial manufacturing. The CDPH data shows that male workers in construction, manufacturing, and utilities account for a disproportionate share of California's mesothelioma burden. The disease's 20 to 50 year latency period means that workers exposed in the 1960s and 1970s are still being diagnosed today.
What the exposure data reveals is not just a historical footnote. It's an ongoing public health emergency affecting tens of thousands of families who don't yet know they're at risk.
The Industries That Drove the Highest Exposure
Picture a shipyard in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1943. The North Carolina Shipbuilding Company, according to historical records from NCpedia, was one of the most productive Liberty Ship manufacturers on the East Coast during World War II, employing thousands of workers who spent their days in the hulls of vessels being insulated with asbestos pipe lagging, asbestos gaskets, and asbestos fireproofing materials. Those workers went home each night with asbestos fibers in their hair and clothing. Their wives shook out those work shirts. Their children played in the same rooms.
The North Carolina Shipbuilding Company alone represents a microcosm of the broader exposure story. Shipbuilding was arguably the single highest-risk industry for mesothelioma in American history, because ships required asbestos insulation virtually everywhere: in engine rooms, boiler rooms, pipe systems, and sleeping quarters. Workers in confined spaces with poor ventilation inhaled fiber concentrations that would be unthinkable under modern occupational safety standards.
But shipbuilding wasn't the only vector. Workers in these industries faced similarly catastrophic exposures:
Power generation was another major source of occupational asbestos exposure. Duke Energy's historical power plant operations across North Carolina and South Carolina, for example, relied heavily on asbestos insulation in turbines, boilers, and steam pipes throughout the mid-20th century. Boilermakers, pipefitters, electricians, and maintenance workers who serviced those plants often worked directly with asbestos-containing materials without respiratory protection. According to Duke Energy's own historical documentation of its power plant infrastructure, many of these facilities were built during an era when asbestos was the insulation material of choice for high-heat applications.
Construction and insulation trades carried equally severe risks. Insulators, who applied asbestos-containing pipe covering and block insulation in industrial settings, had some of the highest fiber exposure levels ever measured in occupational hygiene studies. Carpenters, plumbers, and electricians who worked alongside insulators also received significant secondary exposures. The building trades remained heavily asbestos-dependent through the late 1970s, meaning workers who entered those trades as young men in the 1960s are now in their 70s and 80s, precisely the demographic currently being diagnosed.
The military compounded the problem enormously. Veterans, particularly those who served in the Navy between 1940 and 1980, were exposed to asbestos in virtually every setting aboard ship. According to data cited across multiple federal health agencies, veterans account for roughly 30 percent of all mesothelioma diagnoses in the United States. Navy veterans who worked as shipfitters, machinists, boiler tenders, and damage control specialists faced the most intense exposures. Resources for veterans navigating both VA benefits and legal claims are available through specialized veterans' mesothelioma support services, and many families don't realize the VA provides dedicated mesothelioma care pathways.
The Biology of Latency: Why Mesothelioma Takes Decades to Appear
One of the cruelest features of mesothelioma is the gap between exposure and diagnosis. A pipefitter who inhaled asbestos fibers at a power plant in 1968 might not receive a mesothelioma diagnosis until 2026. That 58-year gap isn't unusual. The latency period for pleural mesothelioma, the most common form of the disease, typically ranges from 20 to 50 years, according to diagnostic and treatment literature from the National Institutes of Health.
Here's the biological mechanism in plain language. When asbestos fibers are inhaled, the body's immune system cannot break them down. The fibers lodge in the pleura, the thin membrane surrounding the lungs, and remain there indefinitely. Over decades, the persistent irritation from these fibers triggers chronic inflammation, DNA damage, and ultimately malignant transformation of mesothelial cells. The cancer that results, pleural mesothelioma, grows along the pleural surface rather than forming a single tumor mass, which makes it extraordinarily difficult to detect early and difficult to remove surgically.
Peritoneal mesothelioma, which affects the lining of the abdominal cavity, follows a similar biological pathway, typically developing when asbestos fibers are swallowed rather than inhaled, or when fibers migrate from the lungs through the lymphatic system. According to research published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology examining cytoreductive surgery and perioperative intraperitoneal chemotherapy for peritoneal mesothelioma, this form of the disease has seen meaningful improvements in survival outcomes with aggressive surgical and chemotherapy approaches, with some patients achieving survival measured in years rather than months.
The long latency period creates a diagnostic trap. By the time symptoms appear, including shortness of breath, chest pain, and pleural effusion (fluid accumulation around the lungs), the disease is typically at an advanced stage. According to survival statistics from the American Cancer Society, the five-year relative survival rate for mesothelioma across all stages is approximately 12 percent, though patients diagnosed at earlier stages and those who receive treatment at specialized centers can achieve significantly better outcomes.
Understanding the full range of mesothelioma diagnosis and treatment options available in 2026 is essential for any newly diagnosed patient or family member.
"The geography of mesothelioma is not random. It follows the industrial map of 20th-century America, and the communities that built the ships and power plants are still paying the price."
— Anna Jackson, Occupational Health Advocate
Surgical Approaches: What the Research Actually Says in 2026
For decades, the surgical treatment of pleural mesothelioma was dominated by a single aggressive procedure: extrapleural pneumonectomy, or EPP, which involves removing the affected lung, the pleura, part of the diaphragm, and the pericardium. The procedure was designed to achieve maximum cytoreduction, meaning the removal of as much tumor tissue as possible. But it carried an enormous physiological toll.
A significant body of research has shifted the surgical calculus. A comparative outcomes study examining pleurectomy/decortication (P/D) versus extrapleural pneumonectomy, published in peer-reviewed oncology literature and indexed through PubMed Central, found that lung-sparing pleurectomy/decortication achieved comparable or superior survival outcomes in many patient populations while preserving pulmonary function and reducing perioperative mortality. The study's findings have influenced treatment planning at major mesothelioma centers, where surgeons now more frequently evaluate whether a patient's disease distribution makes P/D a viable alternative to EPP.
The choice between these procedures is not one-size-fits-all. It depends on the stage of disease, the pattern of tumor spread, the patient's cardiopulmonary reserve, and the surgical team's expertise. Patients with epithelioid mesothelioma, the most common cell type, tend to respond better to surgical intervention than those with sarcomatoid or biphasic subtypes. According to NIH diagnostic and treatment literature, epithelioid mesothelioma accounts for roughly 50 to 70 percent of cases and carries the best prognosis among the three major cell types.
For peritoneal mesothelioma, the surgical story has been more clearly positive. The combination of cytoreductive surgery with heated intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) has become the standard of care at specialized centers for eligible patients. Research published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology documented median survival times exceeding five years in carefully selected peritoneal mesothelioma patients treated with this approach, a dramatic improvement over the historical median of less than one year with systemic chemotherapy alone.
Patients researching their options can find detailed breakdowns of current treatment protocols and surgical criteria through the mesothelioma treatment answers resource, which aggregates current clinical guidance.
Immunotherapy's Role in the Current Treatment Landscape
Surgery is only one piece of the treatment picture. The emergence of immune checkpoint inhibitors has fundamentally altered the systemic treatment of mesothelioma over the past several years. The combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab, two checkpoint inhibitors targeting the PD-1 and CTLA-4 pathways respectively, received FDA approval for first-line treatment of unresectable pleural mesothelioma based on trial data showing improved overall survival compared to traditional chemotherapy with pemetrexed and platinum compounds.
This matters enormously for patients who are not surgical candidates, which is the majority of mesothelioma patients given the typically advanced stage at diagnosis. For these individuals, the question isn't which surgery to pursue but which systemic therapy offers the best balance of efficacy and tolerability. The immunotherapy data, while not producing cures, has extended median survival in clinical trial populations and has produced durable responses in a meaningful subset of patients.
From an occupational health perspective, the immunotherapy advances are particularly significant because they offer options for older patients with comorbidities who cannot tolerate the physiological demands of major thoracic surgery. A 72-year-old retired boilermaker with emphysema from years of welding fume exposure isn't a candidate for EPP. But he may be a candidate for checkpoint inhibitor therapy, and the survival benefit in that population is real.
The Cancer interdisciplinary journal has published multiple analyses examining the intersection of mesothelioma biology and immunotherapy response, noting that tumor mutational burden, PD-L1 expression, and histological subtype all influence which patients are most likely to benefit from immunotherapy. These biomarker-driven approaches to treatment selection represent one of the most active areas of mesothelioma research in 2026.
"A 72-year-old retired boilermaker with emphysema isn't a candidate for major surgery. But he may be a candidate for immunotherapy, and that distinction is saving lives."
— Anna Jackson, Occupational Health Advocate
The California Model: What High-Burden States Can Teach the Rest of the Country
California's mesothelioma burden is instructive not just as a data point but as a policy case study. The state has the largest absolute number of mesothelioma cases in the nation, driven by its enormous World War II shipbuilding industry, its extensive petroleum refining sector, its naval installations, and its decades of industrial construction. According to the California Department of Public Health's mesothelioma incidence and mortality analysis, the counties surrounding major shipbuilding and naval facilities consistently show elevated mesothelioma mortality rates.
But California has also developed some of the most sophisticated mesothelioma treatment infrastructure in the country. Major academic medical centers in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego have dedicated thoracic oncology programs with experience in both EPP and P/D, and several California institutions participate in national clinical trials for novel mesothelioma therapies. The concentration of expertise matters: research consistently shows that outcomes are better at high-volume mesothelioma centers than at general oncology practices, because the surgical techniques are complex and the multidisciplinary coordination is demanding.
The California model also illustrates the importance of occupational health surveillance. The CDPH data tracking mesothelioma incidence by industry and occupation has helped researchers identify which worker populations remain at elevated risk and which historical exposures are still generating new cases. This kind of systematic surveillance is what allows public health officials to project future case volumes and plan treatment capacity accordingly.
What the exposure data reveals in California and other high-burden states is that the disease pipeline isn't empty. Workers exposed in the 1970s and early 1980s, before the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's asbestos permissible exposure limits were tightened significantly, are still within the latency window for new diagnoses. The peak of mesothelioma mortality in the United States has not yet fully passed.
The Legal Landscape: Asbestos Trust Funds and the Rights of Exposed Workers
The legal history of asbestos litigation in the United States is one of the longest-running mass tort stories in American jurisprudence. More than 60 asbestos manufacturers and distributors have established bankruptcy trust funds to compensate victims, with total assets across all trusts estimated in the tens of billions of dollars. For workers and families dealing with a mesothelioma diagnosis, understanding how to access these funds is as important as understanding treatment options.
The trust fund system was created because the volume of asbestos litigation threatened to overwhelm the court system and bankrupt defendants before all claimants could be compensated. Under the bankruptcy reorganization process, companies like Johns-Manville, W.R. Grace, and Armstrong World Industries established trusts that continue to pay claims decades after the original bankruptcies. Each trust has its own claims criteria, payment percentages, and review processes, and navigating multiple trusts simultaneously requires specialized legal expertise.
For a retired shipyard worker from North Carolina or a former power plant operator from California, the practical question is whether their specific exposure history qualifies them for trust fund compensation, a personal injury lawsuit against solvent defendants, or both. The answer depends on which companies manufactured the asbestos-containing products they worked with, whether those companies are still solvent, and the statute of limitations in their state.
Statute of limitations rules for mesothelioma claims vary significantly by state. Most states use a discovery rule, meaning the clock starts when the patient is diagnosed rather than when the exposure occurred. But the specific time limits range from one year to six years depending on the jurisdiction. Workers and families can check their state's specific deadline through the mesothelioma statute of limitations tool, and connecting with an attorney who specializes in asbestos litigation is strongly advisable given the complexity of multi-trust claims.
The mesothelioma lawyer directory provides access to attorneys with specific experience in asbestos trust fund claims and personal injury litigation, which is a meaningfully different practice area from general personal injury law.
"The trust fund system was built to ensure that even bankrupt asbestos companies couldn't escape accountability. But navigating it requires expertise that most families don't have on their own."
— Anna Jackson, Occupational Health Advocate
Veterans: The Population Carrying the Heaviest Burden
No discussion of mesothelioma's geography and demographics is complete without a focused examination of the veteran population. The numbers are stark. Veterans represent an estimated 30 percent of all mesothelioma diagnoses in the United States despite being a much smaller fraction of the overall population. The overrepresentation is almost entirely attributable to Navy service, though Army and Air Force veterans who worked on aircraft or in base maintenance facilities also faced significant exposures.
Navy veterans who served between 1940 and 1980 were surrounded by asbestos. It was in the insulation on steam pipes running through every compartment of every ship. It was in the gaskets on engine components. It was in the fireproofing materials sprayed on bulkheads and overheads. Navy ratings with the highest exposure levels included boiler tenders, machinist's mates, damage controlmen, pipefitters, and electricians, but even sailors whose primary duties kept them in administrative spaces were exposed to ambient fiber levels that would be considered unacceptable by modern standards.
The VA provides specialized mesothelioma care pathways, including access to treatment at VA medical centers with thoracic oncology programs and compensation through the VA disability system. Veterans with a mesothelioma diagnosis related to military service are generally eligible for 100 percent disability ratings, though the claims process can be complex. The VA benefits eligibility tool helps veterans and their families understand what they may qualify for, and the comparison of VA benefits versus lawsuit options is essential reading for anyone trying to understand how the two compensation systems interact.
Many veterans don't realize they can pursue both VA disability compensation and asbestos trust fund or lawsuit claims simultaneously. These are separate legal frameworks, and receiving VA benefits does not preclude civil litigation against the manufacturers of the asbestos-containing products that caused the exposure. This is a critical point that can mean the difference between financial stability and financial crisis for a family dealing with a terminal diagnosis.
Screening, Surveillance, and the Case for Earlier Detection
One of the most frustrating aspects of mesothelioma from a public health standpoint is that the disease is almost always diagnosed at an advanced stage, not because early-stage disease is asymptomatic in an absolute sense, but because the early symptoms are so nonspecific that neither patients nor physicians connect them to asbestos exposure. Shortness of breath with exertion, mild chest discomfort, fatigue: these symptoms could describe dozens of conditions common in older adults. By the time pleural effusion develops and imaging reveals the characteristic pleural thickening, the disease has typically progressed to stage III or IV.
The case for structured surveillance of high-risk populations, specifically workers with documented occupational asbestos exposure, has been building in the occupational medicine literature for years. The analogy to lung cancer screening is instructive. Low-dose CT screening for lung cancer in high-risk smokers is now a covered preventive service under Medicare and most private insurance plans, based on evidence that it reduces lung cancer mortality by detecting disease at earlier, more treatable stages. A similar logic applies to mesothelioma surveillance in asbestos-exposed workers, though the evidence base for specific screening protocols is less mature.
Some occupational medicine specialists advocate for periodic imaging surveillance of workers with significant documented asbestos exposure, particularly those with pleural plaques identified on prior imaging, as pleural plaques are a marker of asbestos exposure and indicate elevated mesothelioma risk. The challenge is that pleural plaques themselves don't cause symptoms and don't necessarily progress to mesothelioma, so surveillance programs must balance the benefit of earlier detection against the risks of radiation exposure from repeated CT scans and the psychological burden of ongoing monitoring.
According to diagnostic literature from the National Institutes of Health, the diagnosis of mesothelioma typically requires tissue biopsy for definitive confirmation, as imaging alone cannot distinguish mesothelioma from other pleural diseases including metastatic cancer, lymphoma, and benign pleural effusion. This means that even in a surveillance program that detects early pleural abnormalities, the path to diagnosis involves invasive procedures with their own risk profiles.
The comprehensive mesothelioma encyclopedia provides detailed information about diagnostic criteria, staging systems, and what to expect from the workup process for patients and families navigating these questions.
Regional Disparities in Access to Specialized Care
The geography of mesothelioma isn't just about where the disease clusters. It's also about where the expertise to treat it is concentrated, and those two maps don't always align. The major mesothelioma treatment centers are predominantly located in large metropolitan areas: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago. A retired shipyard worker in rural North Carolina or a former miner in western Montana may live hundreds of miles from the nearest physician who has performed more than a handful of mesothelioma surgeries.
This geographic disparity in access to specialized care has real consequences for outcomes. Research on high-volume versus low-volume surgical centers for complex thoracic procedures consistently shows that patients treated at centers with more experience have lower perioperative mortality and better long-term outcomes. For a disease as rare and surgically complex as mesothelioma, the volume-outcome relationship is particularly pronounced.
Telehealth has partially addressed this disparity by allowing patients in rural or underserved areas to consult with mesothelioma specialists at major centers without traveling for every appointment. But surgical procedures still require physical presence, and the logistics and cost of traveling to a specialized center for surgery and follow-up care can be prohibitive for patients who are already dealing with the financial shock of a terminal diagnosis.
From an occupational health perspective, this disparity is not just a healthcare delivery problem. It's a justice problem. The workers who built the ships and powered the grid and insulated the buildings were disproportionately working-class men in industrial communities that are now often economically distressed. They deserve access to the best available care, and the system doesn't always make that easy.
"The workers who built the ships and powered the grid deserve access to the best available care. But the best mesothelioma centers are in cities, and many of these men live hundreds of miles away."
— Anna Jackson, Occupational Health Advocate
What Families Need to Know: Navigating the System After Diagnosis
A mesothelioma diagnosis typically arrives after a period of diagnostic uncertainty, often weeks or months during which a patient has been evaluated for pneumonia, heart failure, or other conditions that explain pleural fluid accumulation. When the biopsy results come back and the oncologist confirms mesothelioma, families are suddenly navigating a medical, legal, and financial system they've never encountered before, under time pressure, while processing a devastating prognosis.
The first practical step is to seek evaluation at a specialized mesothelioma center, even if it means traveling. The difference in expertise between a general thoracic surgeon who sees two or three mesothelioma cases per year and a dedicated mesothelioma program that sees dozens is substantial. Many specialized centers offer case review by phone or video, and some will review pathology slides remotely to provide a treatment opinion before a patient commits to traveling.
The second step, running parallel to the medical evaluation, is to consult with an attorney who specializes in asbestos litigation. This isn't about being litigious. It's about understanding what financial resources are available to help the family. Asbestos trust fund claims can often be filed relatively quickly, and settlement funds can help cover treatment costs, travel expenses, and lost income during the treatment period. Many mesothelioma attorneys work on contingency, meaning there's no upfront cost to the family.
For veterans, the VA benefits process should begin immediately. The VA has specific fast-track processes for terminal illness claims, and a veteran with a mesothelioma diagnosis should not wait to initiate the disability claim. The VA benefits eligibility assessment tool is a useful starting point for understanding what documentation is needed.
Families should also be aware that the patient's occupational history is medically and legally important. A detailed work history, including every employer, every job site, and every type of material the patient worked with, is essential for both the diagnostic process and the legal claim. Many mesothelioma attorneys have investigators who specialize in reconstructing occupational histories and identifying which asbestos-containing products were present at specific job sites during specific time periods.
The Research Horizon: What's Coming in Mesothelioma Science
The mesothelioma research landscape in 2026 is more active than at any point in the disease's history, driven partly by the immunotherapy revolution that has energized oncology broadly and partly by advocacy from patient communities and occupational health organizations that have pushed for more research investment in this historically underfunded disease.
Several research threads are particularly promising. CAR-T cell therapy, which engineers a patient's own immune cells to recognize and attack cancer cells, is in early-phase clinical trials for mesothelioma. The approach has produced dramatic results in blood cancers and is now being adapted for solid tumors including mesothelioma. Early data is preliminary, but the mechanistic rationale is sound: mesothelioma cells express surface antigens that could serve as targets for engineered T cells.
Tumor-treating fields (TTFields) technology, which uses alternating electric fields to disrupt cancer cell division, has shown activity in mesothelioma in combination with chemotherapy. The approach is already FDA-approved for glioblastoma and has been studied in mesothelioma with encouraging results in terms of both efficacy and tolerability. For older patients who cannot tolerate aggressive chemotherapy regimens, TTFields offers a mechanistically distinct treatment option with a different side effect profile.
Biomarker research is also advancing. The identification of blood-based biomarkers that could detect mesothelioma at earlier stages, or predict which patients will respond to specific therapies, would address two of the disease's most critical clinical challenges simultaneously. Fibulin-3 and soluble mesothelin-related peptides (SMRP) have been studied as potential serum biomarkers, though neither has yet achieved the sensitivity and specificity needed for routine clinical use as a standalone screening test.
The convergence of these research threads, immunotherapy, cellular therapy, bioelectrics, and biomarkers, suggests that the next decade of mesothelioma treatment will look substantially different from the current standard of care. For patients diagnosed today, the most important implication is to seek care at centers that participate in clinical trials, because access to experimental therapies through trials may represent the best available option for some patients.
Workers in these industries, and the families of workers who spent careers in shipyards, power plants, and construction trades, have waited long enough for meaningful progress. The science is finally moving. The task now is ensuring that the patients who need these advances can actually access them.
A Final Word on Prevention and Accountability
It would be incomplete to discuss mesothelioma's geography, biology, and treatment without addressing the fundamental question of prevention and accountability. Asbestos is not banned in the United States. Unlike the European Union and dozens of other countries that have implemented comprehensive asbestos bans, the U.S. continues to allow limited asbestos imports and uses in specific industrial applications. The Toxic Substances Control Act reforms of recent years have tightened regulation, but a complete ban remains politically contested.
This matters because while the legacy exposures from the 1950s through the 1980s are the primary driver of current mesothelioma diagnoses, ongoing exposures continue to occur. Workers who disturb asbestos-containing materials during renovation and demolition of older buildings, workers who handle asbestos-containing friction products, and workers in industries that still use asbestos-containing talc or other minerals face real ongoing risk. The occupational health infrastructure to protect these workers, including medical surveillance, engineering controls, and personal protective equipment requirements, exists but is not uniformly implemented or enforced.
From an occupational health perspective, the most powerful intervention for future generations is the combination of a comprehensive asbestos ban, robust enforcement of existing exposure limits, and systematic medical surveillance of historically exposed worker populations. These aren't radical proposals. They're the logical conclusion of 70 years of epidemiological evidence showing that asbestos exposure causes mesothelioma, that no safe level of exposure has been established, and that the disease it causes is almost uniformly fatal.
The workers who are being diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2026 didn't choose to be exposed. They went to work, did their jobs, and trusted that the materials they were working with were safe. That trust was betrayed. The least we can do is ensure that the systems of care, compensation, and research are as robust as possible for the families still navigating the consequences of that betrayal.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Consult your healthcare provider for guidance specific to your situation.
