New Orleans CityBusiness, Richard A. Webster
Published April 10, 2005
Terry Cardaro thought he had a cold. Instead, his doctor told him he had four to eight months to live.
Cardaro, a Slidell resident, feared this day ever since he heard a woman at a 1983 pool party describe the deadly effects of asbestos and how she contracted mesothelioma.
Her husband, she said, worked with asbestos insulation every day and would dump his clothes in the laundry for her to clean when he came home.
"When the lady described the dust clouds that appeared from shaking the guy's clothes in the laundry room, it gave me a chill because I remembered seeing those dust clouds everywhere in the submarines when I was a hull technician in the Navy. I thought if she got it from shaking out clothes, I could be in trouble," Cardaro said.
Dr. Robert Jones, a professor of medicine in the pulmonary section at Tulane University School of Medicine, said a significant risk of asbestos exposure in Louisiana comes from the shipbuilding industry, cement manufacturing plants prevalent through the 1980s and the petrochemical refining industry.
"Mesothelioma is virtually always fatal," Jones said. "In more than 30 years I've only met one patient who was legitimately diagnosed and cured."
Mesothelioma is a cancer that attacks the membranes covering internal organs, typically the lungs. It is difficult to detect in its early stages and nearly 95 percent of mesothelioma victims die within one year of being diagnosed. Symptoms may not appear for up to 50 years.
Asbestos is believed responsible for causing the disease in almost 80 percent of mesothelioma cases, according to the National Cancer Institute.
From 1969 to 1977, Cardaro repaired piping systems wrapped in asbestos on nuclear submarines. Early last year, he began experiencing chest pains and having difficulty breathing.
On May 20, 2004, he was told he had mesothelioma.
A new form of chemotherapy helped him live beyond his doctor's initial prognosis but it wasn't cheap.
Cardaro had six chemotherapy treatments at a cost of more than $11,000 per treatment over three months. It's likely he will have to resume the treatments in several months.
Unless a miracle cure is discovered, Cardaro will soon join the 43,073 people killed by asbestos between 1979 and 2001, including 680 Louisianians, ranking the state No. 20 in the United States. California had the highest number of deaths with 4,273.
The link between asbestos and mesothelioma spurred a huge number of lawsuits and generated more than $70 billion paid on nearly 730,000 asbestos personal-injury claims through 2004, according to the Rand Institute of Civil Justice, a nonprofit based in Santa Monica, Calif.
Major corporations now involved in asbestos litigation include General Electric, Westinghouse, Dow Chemical, Owens Corning and National Gypsum.
Houston-based Halliburton, an oil field services company with extensive operations in Louisiana, paid out $4.2 billion in asbestos settlements in January to more than 400,000 people, allowing two subsidiaries, Kellogg Brown and Root and DII Industries, to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Many businesses are being forced into bankruptcy by asbestos payments. Thirty-four businesses went bankrupt over the issue in the 20 years between 1980 and 2000. Twenty-two businesses went bankrupt between 2000 and 2002 alone.
An estimated 60,000 people have lost their jobs as a result of bankruptcies caused by asbestos litigation, according to Progress for America, a conservative advocacy group based in Washington D.C.
But lost jobs and medical costs pale in comparison to the personal price paid by someone with mesothelioma.
"I'm dying because these companies wanted to make money off asbestos even though they knew it was killing people way back in the '40s," Cardaro said. "I've been told that basically I'll die from asphyxiation, that I won't be able to breathe anymore. The pain will increase over time and keep getting worse. I don't know if I'll ever see any of that money but maybe my wife or kids might."
He is participating in a class-action lawsuit against asbestos manufacturers but no amount of money will help remove the death sentence from around his neck, he said.
Cardaro will win his suit, according to the Environmental Working Group, an investigative organization based in Washington, D.C. EWG says it can prove the dangers of asbestos were well known as early as the 1930s.
In 1934, for example, Aetna Insurance published the Attorney's Textbook of Medicine, which defined asbestosis as "incurable and usually results in total permanent disability followed by death."
In the past 10 years, the Dallas-based law firm Waters and Kraus LLP settled more than $1 billion in asbestos and mesothelioma litigation. Partner Peter Kraus said asbestos manufacturers want to limit the extent of their own liability.
"These companies sold an incredibly dangerous and deadly substance, knew it was dangerous and deadly, but sold it anyway because they were making a lot of money off of it," Kraus said. "And now the Bush administration is trying to cap the rights of victims to pursue compensation in the courts to protect these companies."
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., has proposed a bill in the Senate, supported by President Bush, to create a defendant- and insurer-backed $140 billion trust fund to pay asbestos liability claims outside of the courts. The proposal has not yet come up for a vote.
Supporters point to a Rand study that indicates 65 percent of asbestos liability payments were "baseless" or made to people without significant injuries.
Kraus said many healthy people are making claims against asbestos manufacturers. But that's no reason to strip away the legal rights of people like Cardaro, he said.
"The only reason they want to change the system is to do away with the legal rights of true mesothelioma victims," Kraus said. "They don't want to be responsible for the harm they've caused. And for these victims, it's not about the money. If you asked most people if they would take $1 million in exchange for having their spouse of the last 40 years die a horrible death, not too many people would take the money."
Cardaro, now in his 11th month after being diagnosed with mesothelioma, said he would be happy if he manages to live another year. Jo Ann Cardaro, his wife of 14 years, wants more.
"I remember when the doctor first told me Terry was sick," she said. "I went home and my head felt like it was going to blow off. My teeth were hurting, everything was hurting. I wake up in the middle of the night and just look at him. Every time I think about it I cry."
