Mesothelioma Lawyers, New York
Mesothelioma Rates
How many people have mesothelioma? This cancer has become more prominent over the last few years, but as far as cancer goes, this is one of the rarest. There are far more people with breast cancer, prostate cancer, skin cancer, lung cancer, etc. than with mesothelioma. And there are certainly far, far more people with heart disease.
Roughly one person in a million is afflicted with mesothelioma each year. That is to say, the incidence rate is one per million. However, it varies greatly from one country to the next, which is a common pattern seen among many diseases, cancerous or not.
The countries where the incidence rate is the highest are the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Australia. That might surprise you, but it's true. The incidence rate is as high as 30 per million per year, 30 times what it is on average across the world.
However, this is very low compared to some diseases that are similar to mesothelioma. For example, lung cancer. In certain populations with lots of big smokers, the incidence rate of lung cancer can surpass 1,000 per million. In this light, we can see that mesothelioma is indeed very rare by comparison.
In developed countries, the rates are much higher than average. You're looking at an incidence of roughly 7 to 40 per million in industrialized Western countries. It mostly has to do with how much asbestos is used there, and in particular how often people are exposed to it. Furthermore, since mesothelioma symptoms may not show for a few decades, incidence rates are more tied to how much asbestos exposure there was in the past, not necessarily how much there is now.
Statistics on New York mesothelioma rates aren't clear, but we do have some decent data for the United States in general. The peak rate may have been 15 per million, which was seen in 2004. Unfortunately, while rates may have peaked in the U.S., they're expected to keep going up in many other parts of the world. The risk goes up as you get older, and it is about four times more likely to affect men.
About 27.5 million Americans were exposed to asbestos in the job between 1940 and 1979, before we were aware of the hazards. Over the two decade period starting in 1980, the mesothelioma death rate jumped from 2,000 per year to 3,000 per year. Given that mesothelioma is often not diagnosed because it's mistaken for a different disease, this statistics might be artificially low.
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