5th Annual Asbestos Awareness Conference Slated for 2009
Mesothelioma Expert | January 15, 2009The Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO), a non-profit volunteer organization dedicated to the advancement of asbestos disease awareness, education, treatment and prevention, will be hosting the 5th Annual Asbestos Disease Awareness Day Conference in March of 2009.
The conference is meant as a call to action for health professionals, legislators, workers and private citizens to recognize the still-present threats posed by asbestos-containing materials. Goals of the conference include calling for a total ban on the use of asbestos and similar materials, as well as inspiring scientists and medical researchers to discover better treatments for mesothelioma and other asbestos related diseases.
The Asbestos Disease Awareness Day Conference is scheduled for March 27 to March 29, 2009. The timing is meant to take advantage of the expected passage of a simple Senate resolution declaring the first week of April 2009 as National Asbestos Awareness Week.
In 2005 and 2006, the United States Senate passed similar simple resolutions declaring the first day of April as National Asbestos Awareness Day. These simple resolutions do not carry the force of law, but do clearly demonstrate the sentiments of the US Senate regarding mesothelioma and asbestos-related diseases.
The Asbestos Disease Awareness Conference 2009 will take place in Manhattan Beach, California. Previous conferences by the ADAO have been held at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit, MI, and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and have featured distinguished medical health professionals, research scientists and community action leaders from the United States, Canada and India.
The ADAO insists that more must be done in the fight against mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases. One goal of the ADAO is to push for more reliable early tests for asbestos-related cancers in the hope of providing more effective treatments for mesothelioma victims. No cure exists for mesothelioma and relatively little is known about the late stages of this deadly disease, so the ADAO is an active voice calling for more research.
Although the use of asbestos in America has been reduced, future generations are still at risk. In spite of the clear and present dangers inherent in the use of asbestos, over 7,000 metric tons of this known carcinogen are used in various products in the United States every year. The ADAO continues to push for a complete ban on the use of asbestos, and is expected to repeat this call at the 2009 conference.
