City in Israel Has One of the Highest Concentrations of Mesothelioma Disease

The city of Nahariya, Israel, has been found to contain one of the highest concentrations of mesothelioma patients in the world. According to Israeli health official Dr. Micha Bar-Hana, 5.72 out of every 100,000 people in the district have mesothelioma.

The city of Nahariya was once the site of the only asbestos plant in Israel. The plant was closed in 1997. Heath experts believe that the number of mesothelioma patients will continue to increase, as people who worked or lived near the plant age. There is generally a latent period for mesothelioma, and it is not uncommon for victims to develop initial symptoms of mesothelioma until decades after the initial exposure to asbestos. In fact, one Israeli doctor went on the record, sharing a story about one 93-year old mesothelioma patient he was treating that had been exposed to asbestos when he was in his twenties.

The highest rate of mesothelioma reported in this study occurs in and around Genoa, Italy, where just about 6 out of every 100,000 people are afflicted with the disease. Between 1990 and 2008 there were a total of 606 cases of mesothelioma in Israel.

According to health experts the number of new mesothelioma cases has increased in recent years. Most of the patients are men who were exposed to asbestos while on the job. But health officials want people to know that mesothelioma can also manifest in people who never worked with asbestos.

According to Dr. Avi Weiner, family members of asbestos workers are also at risk. “We had two cases of wives who became ill because their husband’s clothes carried asbestos particles,” he said. The number of women who were exposed to asbestos in a secondhand manner in the United States has increased within the last decade, and a number of women – especially in the asbestos-riddled town of Libby, Montana – have died due to mesothelioma cancer in the last few years.