Eagan Minnesota Mesothelioma and Asbestos Law Blog

If you work, attend school or live in Minnesota, you may, at times, be at risk for injuries without necessarily realizing it ahead of time. Especially in a working environment, as a paid employee, you rely on your employer to not only be aware of the risks associated with your duties but also to provide proper training, information and safety equipment to keep you as safe as possible on the job. When an injury risk involves asbestos exposure, it can often be too late by the time you learn about the danger.

Perhaps you worked or lived in a building some years ago where construction or renovation was happening nearby. You may not have known that you were exposed to asbestos during that time. Now, years later, you may be experiencing adverse health symptoms that have prompted you to seek a medical diagnosis.

Learning that you have been walking around for years with a latent disease inside your body might as well be compared to receiving a sudden punch to the gut. If your doctor has diagnosed you with mesothelioma, he or she has also no doubt explained that, at this time, there is no cure for this disease. There are numerous ways this illness can affect the body. Your Minnesota medical team and care providers will help you determine which course of treatment might be best.

If, at some point, you also learned that your employer was negligent in his or her duty to keep you safe in the workplace, you might also want to speak with someone well-versed in asbestos litigation laws. In fact, there are many class action lawsuits pending regarding such issues. An employer must warn workers about known health risks present on the job.

Many Minnesota buildings and homes contain asbestos. It is nearly impossible to know when the substance is present in a particular location unless proper testing is done. However, in places where there is a known asbestos risk, employers and other officials are legally obligated to provide proper training and safety equipment for employees and to take whatever measures are necessary to help keep workers safe. Occupational asbestos exposure in a sheriff's department in another state recently prompted a building evacuation. 

Officials reportedly knew that the building contained asbestos. While studies show there is no safe amount of exposure to asbestos, it's also known that the risk for injury is not as high in places where the substance is left undisturbed. The reason the sheriff's department building was evacuated, however, is because a renovation worker who was removing carpet pulled up some floor tiles in the process, and those tiles contained asbestos.

The 2019 school year has not quite reached its end. However, more than 300 students and faculty members at a Montessori school in another state will be finishing out their year at a different location. Their school building has been shut down due to asbestos exposure concerns as well as other reported health risks. Employees and parents of students in Minnesota schools, in particular, schools where construction projects are ongoing, may want to follow this case.

A construction project had apparently been ongoing at the school when it came to light that plaster that had been drilled, scraped and otherwise manipulated might possibly contain asbestos. It is well known that asbestos is most dangerous in materials that are friable, meaning easily crumbled. Therefore, a risk of injury always increases in asbestos-laden materials that have been scraped, peeled, made wet, hammered, drilled, etc.