Diagnosed With Lung Cancer from Asbestos but Also SmokeAttorney Joeseph Williams

You've been diagnosed with lung cancer but
you also smoke cigarettes. You may be wondering can you do anything in a legal case about
your exposure to asbestos. Hi. I'm Joe Williams.

I'm an asbestos trial attorney in New York
City and I'd like to talk to you about the synergistic effect between smoking cigarettes
and being exposed to asbestos and how it relates to the cause of lung cancer. Now, we can certainly
agree that everyone knows that smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer. I know that, you know
that, everyone knows that. What some folks don't know is that being exposed to asbestos
also causes lung cancer and what really most people don't know at all is that the two risks
factors have a synergistic effect with each other.

So let me explain what I mean. A person
who smokes cigarettes has a 10 times greater risk of getting lung cancer, that's a very
significant risk for lung cancer. A person who was exposed to asbestos -- an industry
worker, a trade worker who worked with asbestos products during the course of their lifetime
-- has a 5 times greater risk of getting lung cancer just from that exposure to asbestos.
Now what an epidemiologist or a physician reviewing these exposures when trying to determine
cause would do is they'd say well there's a 10 times greater risk for smoking. There's
a 5 times greater risk for asbestos.

So if we have a patient who's been a smoker and
who was exposed to asbestos, an epidemiologist or a doctor or scientist reviewing this matter
to determine case would take the two risks factors (10 multiplied by 5) and they would
find that particular patient had 50 times greater risk for getting lung cancer. Cause
you see it's not, when it's reviewed by doctors and scientists, they don't say what was the
cause? They say what were all of the causes of a particular cancer? Because they know
that's it's not just one thing that causes the cancer, it's the cumulative dose of all
of the known carcinogens that that person was exposed to in their life. So it's important
to realize that both things contributed to cause the cancer. And certainly in any legal
case, that's how we prosecute these cases.

We talk about the lung cancer being caused
by cigarette smoke and asbestos exposure because they're both concurrent causes of the cancer.
And when someone has a 50 times greater risk of getting lung cancer, if you think about
what that means, it means they had a 5000% elevated chance of getting lung cancer. And
what I often tell my clients in my practice, those who've been diagnosed with lung cancer,
I often tell them you know with these kind of risk factors basically if you lived long
enough you were going to get lung cancer. You didn't really stand a chance with these
kinds of odds against you. Now I'm sure you have many other questions about the different
causes of lung cancer and how they relate to each other and we can answer your questions.
I'm Joe Williams.

At my office, we handle cases for asbestos victims every day. It's
what we do. I encourage you to call the number on the screen below, that's my office number,
and we'll answer your questions. Thank you for watching..