A woman who hand-washed her husband's dust-covered work clothes every day was diagnosed with a rare cancer decades later and died within a week. Her family believes the cause may have been asbestos on her husband's work clothes, and experts warned the case illustrates the dangers of so-called "secondary asbestos exposure."
According to Britain's The Mirror and Daily Mail on Friday, Veronica Kidman, 72, who lived in Wymondham, Norfolk, England, died just a week after being diagnosed with malignant mesothelioma in January this year. Malignant mesothelioma is a rare cancer that develops in the pleura surrounding the lungs, the peritoneum, or the pericardium, and is closely linked to asbestos exposure.
The bereaved family believes Veronica was likely exposed repeatedly to asbestos fibers over the many years she spent laundering the work clothes of her husband, Ian Kidman. From 1971 to 1989, Ian worked as a field engineer at British telecommunications company BT, traveling between homes, telephone exchanges, and repair centers to maintain and repair phone lines and switchboards.
According to the family, his clothes and hair were covered in dust every time he came home from work, and Veronica scrubbed these work clothes by hand several times a week. The clothes were so heavily soiled that she had to wash them three times in a single laundering session. The family explained that there were likely pipes wrapped in asbestos insulation or materials containing asbestos at the work sites at the time.
Veronica was normally an active person who enjoyed Pilates and took part in a local walking group. But about two years ago, she began experiencing unexplained fatigue, abdominal pain, back pain, and bloating, and late last year she visited the emergency room several times with symptoms of immune system abnormalities. A subsequent CT scan found an abdominal mass, and after a biopsy she was diagnosed with malignant mesothelioma on January 8 this year. She passed away just a week later, on January 15.
"We lost our mother without even having time to come to terms with the diagnosis," said her daughter Becky Irwin. "If my father were alive, he would have been deeply shocked to learn that his work may have been connected to my mother's illness." She added, "It's not my father's fault. At the time, many workers were not properly protected from the dangers of asbestos, and the consequences are still affecting families today."
The family made the story public to mark Mesothelioma Action Day and are seeking information from Ian's former colleagues. Their aim is to confirm the working conditions at the time and determine how Veronica was exposed to asbestos.
Natalia Rushworth-White, the family's asbestos disease specialist lawyer, said, "Veronica's case shows that the tragedy left behind by asbestos is not yet over," explaining that "cases of 'secondary exposure,' in which family members are indirectly exposed to asbestos through activities such as washing work clothes, have been consistently identified in recent years, with a significant number of female victims in particular." She stressed, "Since the dangers of asbestos were already known even in the 1970s, employers at the time had a responsibility to protect their workers."
Asbestos was once widely used in building materials, insulation, and pipe lagging, but when its fine fibers enter the body through the respiratory tract, they can cause malignant mesothelioma or lung cancer after a latency period of decades. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) also classifies asbestos as a Group 1 carcinogen, a substance that causes cancer in humans.
