Asbestos dust caused woman's cancer

Asbestos dust caused woman's cancer

You've heard of second hand smoke but now here's second hand asbestos dust.

A former Los Angeles woman, the wife of a Los Angeles Department of Water & Power employee, was awarded by a jury $8.8 million because she developed mesothelioma or asbestos cancer from inhaling asbestos dust when washing her husband's contaminated clothes when he worked at DWP.

The jury also levied $200 million in punitive damages against CertainTeed, the asbestos cement water pipes company.

A jury awarded a woman more than $200 million after it found that her rare form of mesothelioma cancer was caused by exposure to asbestos from washing her husband's contaminated work-clothes.

During the trial, the jury learned CertainTeed had knowledge that asbestos caused cancer in the early 1960s but the company continued to manufacture the asbestos pipes and did not place a cancer warning on them until 1985.