Kissimmee, FLSteve was just 8 years old when he began his career as a mechanic. For 45 years he worked around asbestos, intensively. Now, at 53, he has a mass in his lungs and his bladder. He's waiting to find out whether the tumors are asbestos mesothelioma.
"I worked as a mechanic for my father when I was just 8," Steve said. "My father had a crippled hand so he taught me how to fix his cars. When I was older I worked in body shops: I owned a Texaco shop for a year; I worked on brakes and clutches, which contain asbestos. Then I worked for a fertilizer manufacturing company. One of my jobs involved using asbestos blankets, which we burned during our work."
Steve broke his back while working at the fertilizer company. After a 3 month recovery, he returned to the fertilizer plant, but something had changed. The employees–his colleagues–were now wearing fresh air respirators.
Steve remembers when he began working at the fertilizer plant he had to wear his own work clothes, and his wife washed those clothes, which would have been full of asbestos dust. Later, the employees were issued with uniforms which the company cleaned. Goggles and asbestos gloves also became standard issue.
And the workers needed them. Steve, for example, did all sorts of different things at the plant, but always around asbestos. "I worked in a shop, I did road service, I worked in the plant, I rewired the plant," he said. "It took 5 people to replace me, that's the only joy I took away from that job. I was working 16-20 hours a day."
Despite the fact that the company did take precautionary measures they may have come too late for Steve. "I was around heavy industrial asbestos products all my working life," he said. In fact, Steve actually knows what asbestos tastes like – "It's sweet. That's the irony. Asbestos has a sweet flavor." Sweet and potentially deadly.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Steve has suffered from health problems all his working life, including respiratory problems. "In the 1990s my breathing got so bad that I had to use asthma medicines," he said.
But it's only within the last year that the spectre of cancer has reared its ugly head. Medical tests have revealed tumors in his lungs, which have a very high chance of being cancerous. A mass has also been detected in his bladder, and possibly his colon. Both Steve and his doctor believe that all those years of asbestos exposure have played a large role in his ill health, and in the potential development of asbestos mesothelioma.
Unfortunately, the latency period for developing asbestos mesothelioma is not definitively known, but it can take anywhere up to 30 years, possibly more, to show itself. Now, Steve is concerned about his daughter, who, like her father, is a very capable mechanic. "My daughter is now working on my vehicles," Steve said. "She's done 3 brake jobs for me, and the last time she mentioned tasting something sweet. I told her that was asbestos and she had to stop. I bought her a fresh air respirator and goggles. But I'm worried for her.
We have to educate people, because asbestos will continue to be used. It's not going away. It's so important to wear the safety equipment. While it's too late for me, if my story helps one person it's been worth it."