Often, mesothelioma takes 20 years or more to fully manifest and develop in the human body. In some cases, it can take as long as 50 years. While this deadly cancer often acts aggressively once it develops, taking lives quickly, it can be decades after the exposure that it really develops.
As such, most people who pass away from it are elderly, with some reports indicating that a lot of fatal cases involve those who are 85 years old and older.
However, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) did put out a report on the deaths between 1999 to 2015, and they found 682 different instances where people from 25 years old to 44 years old passed away from mesothelioma. That’s strikingly younger than average and a far larger number of deaths than many people expected.
With the typical manifestation times for the disease, this probably means that people were first exposed to asbestos when they were still children. If someone grew up in a home with exposed asbestos and contaminated air, he or she could theoretically develop mesothelioma by 25.
That’s rare, of course, since asbestos is now banned in most uses, but that does not mean it was removed from all homes and businesses at the same time. The statistics clearly show that exposure still occurs, despite the ban, and that even relatively young people could be at risk.
If you develop mesothelioma, no matter how old you are, make sure you know all of your legal options. This disease is often fatal and can be very expensive to treat.