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Written by one of the leading asbestos experts for both plaintiff and defense attorneys, occupational and environmental health professionals, as well as others in the field of toxic substances control, Asbestos: Medical and Legal Aspects has become the definitive resource on the medical and legal aspects of asbestos.

Asbestos: Medical and Legal Aspects provides a comprehensive examination of the public health history of asbestos, from the origins of industrial use to the present. It includes in-depth coverage of prior and ongoing litigation; extensive evaluation of the legal arguments put forth by plaintiff and defense counsel; and provides crucial information, materials and resources on the evolving corporate knowledge of asbestos hazards. The book covers in detail: asbestosis and cancer; compensability of asbestosis and cancer as occupational diseases; thresholds and standards used to determine safe or acceptable levels of asbestos exposure in the workplace; and company knowledge of asbestos hazards, gleaned from countless depositions, company records, industry consultants and trade associations.

Some items new to the Fifth Edition include:

extensive discussion of corporate knowledge and responsibility for asbestos hazards
extensive examination of the international struggle over asbestos, whereby some countries have banned asbestos while others have continued to expand their usage of asbestos in building materials
detailed discussion of alternatives to asbestos.

STILL LEGAL, STILL LETHAL
Most Americans mistakenly believe asbestos was banned long ago. In fact, it is still legal and can still kill you. Its microscopic fibers cause painful and incurable diseases.

Despite being outlawed in nearly every other industrialized country, asbestos remains a legal component of more than three thousand common products in the United States. These include toasters, washers/dryers, ovens, building supplies, and automobile brakes. Our confusion about asbestos is no accident.

Fatal Deception is a chilling exposé of the asbestos industry’s successful seventy-year campaign to hide the deadly effects of its products from the American people. The stakes are high — tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. Michael Bowker rips the cover off the decades of deceit, including the treachery in Libby, Montana, site of the most deadly environmental disaster in U.S. history. He also unveils a startling and ongoing cover-up at Ground Zero — where thousands of New Yorkers may still be suffering from exposure to dangerous levels of asbestos fibers.

Compelling, enraging, and very timely, Fatal Deception is not just a fascinating story, it is a plea to the government and to the American people to help sponsor research into asbestos-related diseases — and a call to arms to ban asbestos now.

This volume presents a rigorous account of statistical forecasting efforts that led to the successful resolution of the Johns-Manville asbestos litigation. This case, taking 12 years to reach settlement, is expected to generate nearly 500,000 claims at a total nominal value of over $34 billion. The forecasting task, to project the number, timing, and nature of claims for asbestos-related injuries from a set of exposed persons of unknown size, is a general problem: the models in this volume can be adapted to forecast industry-wide asbestos liability. More generally, because the models are not overly dependent on the U.S. legal system and the role of asbestos as a dangerous/defective product, this volume will be of interest in other product liability cases, as well as similar forecasting situations for a range of insurable or compensable events.

The volume stresses the iterative nature of model building and the uncertainty generated by lack of complete knowledge of the injury process. This uncertainty is balanced against the Court’s need for a definitive settlement, and the volume addresses how these opposing principles can be reconciled. The volume is written for a broad audience of actuaries, biostatisticians, demographers, economists, epidemiologists, environmental health scientists, financial analysts, industrial-risk analysts, occumpational health analysts, product liability analysts, and statisticians. The modest prerequisites include basic concepts of statistics, calculus, and matrix algebra. Care is taken that readers without specialized knowledge in these areas can understand the rationale for specific applications of advanced methods. As a consequence, this volume will be an indispensable reference for all whose work involves these topics.

The authors analyze the costs and compensation paid for asbestos personal-injury claims, and discuss such issues as the current state of asbestos litigation in the United States, the costs of compensation, the effects of litigation on businesses, and the evolving character of litigation.

This book provides a study of past, present and emerging mass torts with practical information drawn from examples such as asbestos. A must read for plaintiff and defense attorneys, judges, insurance and reinsurance company claims managers, risk managers, brokers, actuarials and executives, this book will help them:

- Identify key data and assumptions necessary at each stage of the estimation process;

- Learn how the incidence and prevalence of a condition is converted into claims;

- Forecast liability exposure for risk management and conveyance of assets;

- Assess reserve and settlement trusts for financial planning and company insulation; and

- Review historical and new estimation techniques.