Only twenty years later, in 1906, the first medical diagnosis of death from asbestosis was made in England. The link between asbestos exposure and asbestosis, or lung scarring, was firmly established by 1930, and repeatedly confirmed in many studies after that. As early as 1918, American and Canadian insurance companies were no longer insuring asbestos workers because of the assumed health hazards of the asbestos industry. In 1935, researchers in both the - United States and England reported a suspected association between asbestos exposure and lung cancer. By 1955 this association had been confirmed, and the link to several other types of cancer had been made as well.
Asbestos fibres kill people very slowly.
They may kill anybody who has, at any time, been exposed to asbestos dust and that, in today's environment, is almost everybody. How many others with small or minimal exposures it has killed is anyone's guess, for when people die of cancer the cause of death is registered as 'cancer' and not what caused the cancer. However, workers who mine or mill asbestos or whomake and regularly use asbestos products are at greater risk because of their frequent exposure. This is the major hazard in terms of numbers affected. Of all asbestos diseases, this is the greatest killer, even of people who have low levels of exposure to asbestos.