Letters to the Editor
Records fail and asbestos linked cancer cases
At their core, asbestos-related diseases—particularly lung cancer—are often perceived as relics of the industrial past. Yet their impact is still very much alive in Southern Nye County communities and throughout Nevada. Essentially, the economy was driven by mining, construction, transportation, and military activities, industries that relied heavily on asbestos-containing materials throughout much of the 20th century.
From the mining operations, mineral processing, construction, power generation sites, and commercial buildings throughout Pahrump and Nye County, workers consistently came into contact with this hazardous mineral favored for its remarkable versatility, tensile strength, and electrical conductivity. Many of those exposures are still producing serious health consequences decades later. The challenge now is piecing together exposure histories for a disease whose latency can span an extended period.
How Pahrump’s industrial legacy contributed to asbestos contamination
Essentially, Nye County’s rich mining heritage and decades of industrial activity played a significant role in shaping the local economy. Yet though these industries fueled economic growth, they also extensively employed asbestos—a natural mineral notorious for triggering lung cancer. With its ubiquity, workers routinely encountered the toxic material as part of their daily responsibilities. Veterans are likewise susceptible, especially since many were historically employed at military installations that relied heavily on asbestos, including Nellis Air Force Base, situated approximately 70 miles east of Pahrump. Even more alarming, Pahrump has a notably older population, representing roughly 15,000 seniors. The community is also home to more than 6,200 military veterans, many of whom later transitioned into civilian occupations where exposure risks often persisted.
The long-term toll of this crisis remains too apparent in public health data. Between 1999 and 2017, Nevada saw over 1,500 asbestos-linked deaths, including those attributed to lung cancer. These figures also mirror a broader national trend. Just from 1940 to 1979, an estimated 27 million American workers were exposed to asbestos, which potentially contributed to a 20.2% increase in associated fatalities between 1990 and 2019. This year, the country anticipates recording nearly 230,000 new lung cancer diagnoses—underscoring the prevalence of this life-threatening condition.
Asbestos-related lung cancer needs comprehensive tracking
Besides highlighting the gravity of the crisis itself, the persistence of asbestos-related lung cancer also reveals a structural weakness in how occupational exposure is documented over time. In reality, current record keeping systems were created to support workplace oversight and compliance during active employment—not to preserve exposure histories for diseases that may not appear until decades later. Consequently, when asbestos-related lung cancer is diagnosed, the records needed to identify where and how exposure occurred are often scattered across multiple employers, agencies, and industries—or have disappeared altogether.
This challenge is particularly significant for veterans whose exposure histories frequently span both military and civilian careers. Although the Honoring Our PACT Act represents an important acknowledgment of service members’ toxic exposure, it doesn’t address the broader challenge of documenting cumulative asbestos exposure across an individual’s working life. Consequently, affected workers are often left with an incomplete picture of occupational risk. If communities such as Nye County hope to understand the long-term burden of asbestos-related lung cancer, improving exposure documentation must become a priority.
Closing this gap it takes more than awareness — it requires a fundamental shift in how occupational exposure information is viewed. Rather than treating such critical records as temporary employment documents, they should be credited as long-term public health assets. Extending document retention periods for hazardous exposures, digitizing historical employment records before they are lost, and developing a centralized occupational exposure registry would help preserve the evidence that future patients, physicians, and researchers will inevitably need. Until occupational exposure records exist for as long as the latency periods of the illnesses they help explain, workers and veterans will keep facing a system where evidence of exposure vanishes long before its consequences arrive.
About the Author: Jordan Cade is an attorney at Environmental Litigation Group, P.C., a firm in Birmingham, Alabama, helping victims of toxic exposure.
