• Question: If you buy a new house, and then find u have cancer, and then u sell the house, and the lady who buys it also catches the same type of cancer, is there something in that house, for example asbestos?

    Asked by anon-328018 on 17 Jun 2022.
    • Photo: Sophie Richardson

      Sophie Richardson answered on 17 Jun 2022:

      Interesting question! It could be a coincidence that both you and the next person have cancer after living in the same house. The current stat is that 1 in 2 of us will have cancer in our lifetime, which is pretty high.

      Let’s use asbestos as an example. A google search tells me that a certain type of cancer called Mesothelioma is associated with exposure to asbestos. Therefore, if you and the lady who both lived in the same house with asbestos had mesothelioma after living in the house, it could be due to the asbestos, definitely. I would hope that the asbestos would have been found before you bought the house though! However, it may be that you don’t get cancer after being exposed to asbestos, but the next person does. That’s because asbestos, and other things like smoking and alcohol, increase your risk of cancer. They don’t mean it’s 100% certain that you will get cancer.

      Hope that answers your question!

    • Photo: Karin Purshouse

      Karin Purshouse answered on 17 Jun 2022:

      Absolutely agree with Sophie’s answer!
      I think this is a really interesting question too – so I guess with asbestos the other thing is that apart from, as Sophie says, this being part of a home survey (so hopefully it would be picked up!), asbestos tends to be ok when intact. It’s when the fibres are allowed to ‘roam free’ e.g. if you did home renovations, disrupted the asbestos and therefore were able to breathe it in, that it becomes a problem. That’s why historically it tended to affect professions where they might be breaking through old building works before we were so diligent about testing for asbestos. AND historically why the partners of building workers got exposed, if they washed (and therefore handled) their asbestos-fibre-covered work clothes.

      So I think the chances are if it’s just in one house, it’s likely to be chance. But you are absolutely right that if there is a pattern in an area (more than just one single house) of more-than-expected number of cancer diagnoses, public health teams might start exploring whether there is something going on in that area that is causing that. When someone dies, we have to include their cancer on the death certificate (even if it wasn’t the cause of death), so this presumably allows public health teams to see if there are unusual patterns in a particular area.

    • Photo: Holly Hall

      Holly Hall answered on 17 Jun 2022: last edited 17 Jun 2022 9:20 am

      I’ll just add to the asbestos as mesothelioma is one of my pet projects!

      Mesothelioma takes decades to develop, and not all asbestos-related inflammation will result in cancer. Most people with mesothelioma today have worked with it decades ago, such as shipbuilders and construction-related fields. Mesothelioma is a weird cancer as it is not associated with active drivers of cancer, only a loss of tumour suppressors.

      House related is more likely if the estate has been built on contaminated land – like in the famous Erin Brockovich film!

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