Senior Partner Matthew Morton recently appeared on AM Buffalo, and discussed how family members can be exposed to asbestos from secondhand exposure.  Workers would come home with asbestos dust on their work clothes, and spouses and children would do laundry, shaking the dust from the clothing, sitting in the same chairs and even hugging their loved ones.

Mr. Morton offers advice on what you can do if you have been exposed to asbestos fibers, and how Lipsitz, Ponterio & Comerford can help if you or a loved one has been diagnosed with mesothelioma or lung cancer.  Contact our office for a free consultation – we can help.

We are seeing more and more women and even children of workers who are exposed asbestos who are developing mesothelioma and lung cancer, and they’re frankly shocked. They say to us, hey, we’ve never worked around asbestos a day in our lives. How has this happened? So we tell them, and it’s actually the same story over and over again. My husband went to work, he brought home his dirty clothes, and I washed them.

So what do they do? I know there’s a lot of concern about whether or not they can have a case, because they say, well, I didn’t work at those places. What do you tell those folks?

Sure, they always have a case. There’s always something we can do for them. It always helps if their husband, or if it was their father who was the one who exposed, is still alive. That’s always step one. And he would actually come in and talk about how he was exposed at Bethlehem Steel or Durez or Hooker Chemical, wherever it may be. And then the wife or the daughter would also come in and say, hey, this is what I did. I took his dirty clothes, I shook them out, I turned out the pockets. There was so much dust. We’ve even had experts do studies. There are millions of fibers released from these guys work clothes when they shake out the clothes at home. And the problem with asbestos, the reason it was so good in industrial settings is the reason it’s so bad at home. It doesn’t disappear. You can’t get rid of it. Once it’s in your house, it’s in your car, it’s in your rugs, it’s in everything, it’s everywhere. So people are constantly being exposed at home and they don’t even realize it.

So what do you tell folks about making sure that you talk to an expert? What is the best advice you can give them?

One, make sure you’re even your family physician. Make sure they know that your husband, your father, that they were exposed to asbestos that you know of, and that you were therefore exposed. That’ll kind of trigger them to get a chest x-ray every year, something like that. Because the earlier you catch this, the better it is for you and the better chances you have of survival. So on top of that, talk to the guy who worked, talk to your husband, talk to your father. What did you do? Where did you work? Who are some of your coworkers? Because God forbid they pass away. That’s the type of information we’ll need down the road.

What if they are no longer alive. Your family members who might have worked at these places, what do you do?

Sure. So, thankfully, we’re the only law firm in the area doing this work. And we have a whole network of connections of past cases. We put these things together. So even if your husband or father is gone, we can still help you, and we’ll help you solve this problem.

What is the best place to find that information contact wise? Should they just walk in?

Walk in. Give us a call. We have so many features on our website. You can email us, you can call us, you can text us. Whatever it takes, we’ll be there. Some of these kids might not get sick for another 10, 20, 30 years, but they’ll still have legal remedies, and we’ll be able to provide those services for them. We can’t prevent this disease, but we can help you.

We hope that you will never be diagnosed with mesothelioma, lung cancer, or suffer a catastrophic injury, but if you are, contact us today so we can begin the fight.