Malignant mesothelioma is a cancer of mesothelial cells, and affects the pleura and peritoneum in the 80% and 20% of the cases respectively. It usually occurs in people who have been exposed to asbestos in their workplace at least 15 years before the diagnosis, although sometimes the disease has been developed in people with very little to none exposures. In fact, the relationship between malignant mesothelioma and asbestos exposure was first described in 1960 by Wagner and colleagues in South African crocidolite miners.
The incidence of mesothelioma is known in countries where there is a national registry of this disease. Thus, the figure ranges between 14.2 and 2.5 cases per million in men and women, respectively, in the United States, 66 and 7 per million in Australia. In Spain for example there is no record of such occupational diseases. In a study conducted in Catalonia between 1983 and 1990, there was an attributable mortality rate of malignant mesothelioma
