Frank Lautenberg: “since time is limited, I am going to get down to the nuts and bolts. I come from a State in which asbestos was prominent…”

“since time is limited, I am going to get down to the nuts and bolts. I come from a State in which asbestos was prominent in manufacturing in many places. As a matter of fact, early in the 1950s, a doctor named Irving Selikoff, who was a researcher as well as a physician, discovered the lethality of asbestos. He is the one who raised the alarm about the dangers of that product. He saw mesothelioma and asbestosis. In my office in New Jersey, I had a man and his wife and his mature son, who was about 30 years old, come in to see me because they all had mesothelioma, but only the father worked in the manufacturing facility, the mill. His wife and child, his son, were made ill as a result of the mother washing her husband's clothes. That is how lethal, how dangerous asbestos is. This bill is an abstract exercise. There are real people involved, people who are going to die as a result of the exposure. I have seen it up front and personal. A friend of mine who was a lawyer, after practicing 20 years, got a call from a member of a union one day that had asbestos workers, and he was told to get a chest x ray. He did. After 20 years of no illness, nothing, suddenly they found that he had a spot on his lung, and it turned into mesothelioma and he was dead soon thereafter. I recently had a World War II vet--I am one as well--come into my office, sick from mesothelioma, from work he did 40 years ago.…”