Asbestos Board – A Potentially Lethal Home Improvement

August 16, 2008

Aspen, CO Lolli is suffering from asbestosis, and she contracted it under very unusual circumstances. Her constant shortness of breath and sudden total breathlessness, coupled with persistent coughing, are signs that her exposure to asbestos has seriously harmed her health.



Over thirty years ago Lolli was a young, stay-at-home mother. She, and her young family lived in resort town in Colorado. One day Lolli's husband came home with a piece of cement board, which he wanted put up on the wall behind the wood burning fireplace. The problem was the board was the wrong size. "My husband sawed the ends to make it fit and didn't tape them up, so the edges were constantly flaking - for years," Lolli said. "This happened about 31 years ago."



It was a bone of contention between the couple because Lolli had a hunch that the board contained asbestos. "This was pre-internet days, so I couldn't look it up, to verify it," Lolli said. "Obviously since then I have been able to research the product online, and have found that it did contain asbestos. But at the time I couldn't verify it. And, I was the one exposed to it the most. Because of where it was placed in relation to the wood burning stove, it would flake constantly. I vacuumed the flakes up every day for twelve years." Sometimes she would have to get down on her knees with the vacuum hose to get all the particles up.



Then, about two years ago Lolli broke her wrist. "I had several CAT scans done, and as a result they found spots on my pleura," Lolli said. "Four years prior to this I had undergone x-rays and the doctors found spots. But this time, when I asked the doctor if the spots were related to asbestos exposure, he said they had nothing to do with asbestos. Then I saw the internal specialist who said it definitely is not asbestosis because if it were you'd be dead by now. This just isn't logical because asbestos mesothelioma has a 10 to 50 year period of latency."



Although Lolli's doctors weren't worried, she was becoming symptomatic. " I have done a lot of reading and research," she said." I understand a lot about this. For me, at the moment, finances are a problem, so I have taken a watch and wait approach. But I do have symptoms such as off-and on- again pain, and hoarseness and a dry cough. I used to be very athletic and I was also a singer. A number of years ago I began noticing that when I was singing I would suddenly be completely out of breath – no warning at all. I cannot sing any more, and you can hear the hoarseness in my voice. I wake-up many morning s with a very deep, croupy type of cough, that doesn't produce anything."



Unfortunately, Lolli does not have immediate access to top medical care where she lives, even though she desperately needs it. "I have had my house on the market for a year, and had planned to seek expert medical attention when it sold, but my house hasn't sold. At this point in time I'm completely stalled. I do need some kind of financial compensation to be able to take care of myself medically. " She's just 56 years old.