A worker who developed incurable cancer after 16 years at Camas’ paper mill is fighting to keep a $10.2 million jury verdict in his favor.
Henry Barabin, currently of Sun City, Ariz., was assigned to use compressed air to clean a large felt ribbon that contained asbestos, his lawyer said in an interview Tuesday.
Barabin, now 70, worked at the mill from 1968 to 1984. Then operated by Crown Zellerbach, the mill was the county’s largest employer in the 1970s.
In 2006, he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a rare cancer of the pleura, the thin covering that protects the lungs.
The disease is nearly always caused by exposure to asbestos, a mineral fiber widely used in construction and manufacturing for most of the 20th century.
Barabin’s family didn’t respond to a call for comment.
Today, Camas’ Georgia Pacific mill and other paper mills use synthetic fibers instead of asbestos in their ribbons.
But others who worked in paper mills before 1980 also risk developing mesothelioma or other, treatable cancers, said Barabin’s lawyer, James Nevin of Brayton Purcell LLP’s office in Novato, Calif., near San Francisco.
“Asbestos is very strong, durable,” Nevin said. “The problem is, those same propensities — it has them when it is inhaled into your body.”
That’s why Barabin’s condition might yet appear in other workers who had jobs involving asbestos.
“People like him, who were exposed years ago, are still going to be developing diseases, because they are such long-latency diseases,” Nevin said. “Most doctors don’t know to even ask about history of asbestos exposure. (At-risk workers) need to be assertively telling their doctor, ‘I need to be monitored for this.’ “
In the U.S., about 3,000 people are diagnosed with mesothelioma annually, Nevin said.
Barabin and his wife, Geraldine Barabin, sued Scapa Dryer Fabrics and AstenJohnson, manufacturers of the paper-making equipment. On Nov. 19, a federal jury in Seattle awarded the Barabins $10.2 million for medical expenses, lost income, suffering and lost years of their marriage.
The two manufacturers are jointly liable. They are currently preparing arguments to overturn the verdict, Nevin said.
Neither company could offer a spokesperson for comment Wednesday.
Crown Zellerbach’s liability was covered by the state workers’ compensation law. Nevin said the Barabins have already received payment through that system.
Barabin lived in Oregon when he worked at Crown, Nevin said.
To protect themselves from liability, Nevin said, the manufacturers should have stopped producing felts that included asbestos.
“They knew in the 1920s that asbestos dust released from products was causing asbestosis,” he said. “They knew in the ’30s that it was causing lung cancer. And by 1960 they knew it caused mesothelioma.”
