{"entity":{"id":"asbestos","kind":"term","name":"Asbestos","aka":["asbestos exposure","asbestos fibres","amphibole asbestos","chrysotile","occupational asbestos"],"tldr":"A mineral once used everywhere in building, whose fibres lodge in the lung when they are breathed in and cause cancer decades later. It causes both mesothelioma, the cancer of the lining around the lung, and lung cancer itself, and the two are different diseases with different pathways.","summary":"Asbestos fibres are durable enough to stay in lung tissue for life, and the cancers they cause appear twenty to fifty years after exposure, which is why the disease burden of an industry peaks long after the material is banned. Cancer Research UK attributes 13 percent of UK lung cancer cases to workplace exposures as a whole, with an estimated 6 to 8 percent of UK lung cancer deaths each year linked to asbestos specifically; a meta-analysis put lung cancer mortality 77 percent higher in asbestos-exposed workers than in the general population. The effect combines multiplicatively with smoking, so an exposed smoker carries far more than the sum of the two risks, which is the strongest argument for stopping that such a worker will hear. Asbestos also causes mesothelioma, a cancer of the pleura rather than of the lung, and it is important not to run the two together: mesothelioma is a separate disease with its own classification, its own staging project and its own referral rule. NICE NG12 recognises the distinction in primary care by lowering the threshold for an urgent chest X-ray in people aged 40 and over with a single unexplained respiratory symptom when they have been exposed to asbestos, as it does for anyone who has ever smoked.","asOf":"2026-09-25","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos","links":[{"label":"CRUK: lung cancer risk factors (attributable fractions for the UK)","url":"https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/statistics-by-cancer-type/lung-cancer/risk-factors"},{"label":"NICE NG12: suspected cancer, recommendations by site (lung and pleural cancers 1.1.1 to 1.1.6)","url":"https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng12/chapter/Recommendations-organised-by-site-of-cancer"}],"tags":["lung"],"related":[],"cancers":["lung-cancer","nsclc","mesothelioma","pleural-mesothelioma"],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":["radon","never-smoker-lung-cancer","smoking-cessation","pleura"],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"category":"Epidemiology & prevention"},"route":"/terms/asbestos/","neighbours":{"cancer":[{"id":"lung-cancer","kind":"cancer","name":"Lung cancer (all types)","route":"/cancers/lung-cancer/"},{"id":"mesothelioma","kind":"cancer","name":"Mesothelioma","route":"/cancers/mesothelioma/"},{"id":"nsclc","kind":"cancer","name":"Non-small-cell lung cancer","route":"/cancers/nsclc/"},{"id":"pleural-mesothelioma","kind":"cancer","name":"Pleural mesothelioma","route":"/cancers/pleural-mesothelioma/"}],"term":[{"id":"never-smoker-lung-cancer","kind":"term","name":"Lung cancer in never-smokers","route":"/terms/never-smoker-lung-cancer/"},{"id":"pleura","kind":"term","name":"Pleura","route":"/terms/pleura/"},{"id":"radon","kind":"term","name":"Radon","route":"/terms/radon/"},{"id":"smoking-cessation","kind":"term","name":"Stopping smoking","route":"/terms/smoking-cessation/"}]}}