If Your Doctor Has Not Officially Diagnosed Your Disease As Asbestos Related

If you have been diagnosed with mesothelioma, you will qualify for asbestos trust payments because asbestos is the only known cause.  But if you have one of the other qualifying cancers, or impaired lung function, or have x-ray or CAT scan evidence of scarring in your lungs, your doctor may not have determined that the disease or radiology findings were caused by asbestos. This is not because you have a bad doctor. There are causes other than asbestos for non-mesothelioma cancer, impaired lung function, or lung scarring, and the latency period for asbestos (the time from exposure to disease) can be 40 years and more. Your doctor may have had no reason to think about asbestos as a contributing cause. Often enough, doctors do not even know the cause (the term “idiopathic,” meaning unknown cause, is used a lot in medicine).

The key in this situation is the evidence of your exposure to asbestos.  Absent mesothelioma, asbestos trusts generally require at least five years of total exposure to asbestos in addition to at least six months exposure to the specific company. As part of the trust application process, we will work with you to document your exposure to asbestos at any time in your life. Assuming the facts fit, we can compile thorough and convincing documentation of your exposure for you to provide to your doctor, who may not have considered this possibility previously. The doctor need only conclude that it is more likely than not that asbestos was a contributing (not the only) cause of your disease.

January 4, 2022