Thailand is a country in Asia, near China and India. It has a population of 69.04 million people. Recently a study was done that concluded that almost half of the population of Thailand has asbestos in their lungs.

This was a post mortem study and 200 people participated in it. The study was a year-long and had an autopsy done to the lungs of all the participants. Out of the 200 people, asbestos was identified in 97 of their lungs. So 48.5% of the participants had asbestos identified in their lungs. In this study, age, sex, or occupation did not seem to make the participants more likely to have asbestos in their lungs. Neither did the cause of death change the outcome. The youngest person in this study to have asbestos identified in the lungs was a two-year-old whose cause of death was a congenital heart disease. And people with all sorts of causes of death participated in this study. Yet none of these causes was mesothelioma. In 1985 a different study like this was done in Thailand. The outcome of that study determined that 33% of the general population has asbestos in their lungs. The most recently a study like this was done was in Italy. In that study, 16.4% of the people tested had asbestos positively identified in their lungs. So what’s up with the high numbers in Thailand? It, as a country, uses a lot of asbestos. The only countries which use more asbestos yearly than it in the world are Russia, China, India, and Kazakhstan. According to this study for the past thirty years, Thailand has used a massive amount of asbestos, estimated to 60,000 to 180,000 metric tons yearly. Compare that to the United States, which in 2018 imported 750 metric tons. It was all used up by the chlorine industry. 750 tons of asbestos sounds like a lot, but not when you compare it to Thailand! And on top of that, Thailand’s population is one-fifth of that of the US. Thailand also doesn’t do a good job keeping track of asbestos-related diseases. There is no standardized nationwide database effectively tracking asbestos-related disease. Each year, only a few cases of mesothelioma are reported. Mesothelioma is cancer caused almost exclusively by asbestos. Thinking about all their use of asbestos, at least a fifth of how many cases of mesothelioma occur annually in the US should surely be occurring in Thailand. But it isn’t recorded. Evidently, Thailand doesn’t do a good job keeping track of asbestos-related disease! In 2001 Thailand did finalize a partial ban on certain types of asbestos. But it still uses a lot of chrysotile asbestos for industrial purposes. In this study, a lot of people had asbestos in their lungs. True, many of them didn’t have much. But according to the World Health Organization, no amount of asbestos is safe. Many countries have banned asbestos completely. Asbestos stays in the human lung for a really long time. People have gotten mesothelioma who have not been exposed to high levels of asbestos. Asbestos is really scary. Once it gets into your lungs, it can do anything. That includes giving you cancer called mesothelioma that could kill you. Evidently, it is very much preferred to prevent asbestos from coming into your lungs. If asbestos gets disturbed it can get in your lungs. If you don’t have asbestos in your home or building, it can’t get disturbed. We can remove it for you. Call us now at (312) 586-8713 for a free quote!