Mesothelioma is the signature disease of asbestos: a tumour of the pleura or peritoneum that arises predominantly from past asbestos exposure (more on this: → Asbestos and health). Because decades pass between exposure and illness, today's disease figures trace yesterday's asbestos use. Here we analyse the mesothelioma cases of the years 1990 to 2011 by district (data: Statistik Austria, Austrian Cancer Registry). The map that emerges is unambiguous, but surprising in one respect.
The rising curve
Across Austria, a total of 1,664 mesotheliomas were registered between 1990 and 2011. The annual case count more than doubled over the period: from 45 cases in 1990 to 108 in the years 2009 and 2010. This rise is not a contradiction of the asbestos ban but its delayed consequence: asbestos was processed in Austria in large quantities until 1990, and the illnesses appear only decades later. The curve is therefore still rising while the cause lies far in the past (Statistik Austria; cf. AUVA and occupational-medicine literature).
The highest rates: where asbestos was processed
If the cases are set against the population (cases per 10,000 inhabitants over the period 1990 to 2011), the Austrian average is around 2.1. Two districts stand out sharply, and both have the same reason:
- Sankt Veit an der Glan (Carinthia): 63 cases, rate 10.8, about five times the average. In the Görtschitztal valley, at the site of today's Wietersdorf cement works, asbestos was processed until 1977; many people developed lung cancer, and mesothelioma is also among the late effects of asbestos exposure (ORF Kärnten).
- Vöcklabruck (Upper Austria): 97 cases, rate 7.7, almost four times. This is the site of the Eternit works, where Ludwig Hatschek invented asbestos cement and produced it for decades (→ Eternit: the story).
This is the expected pattern where asbestos was industrially processed: around these sites, above all among the workers, the illnesses cluster.
Burgenland: elevated without that industry
The next ranks are striking. In southern Burgenland the rates lie clearly above the average:
- Oberwart: 25 cases, rate 4.7, around twice the Austrian average.
- Oberpullendorf: 17 cases, rate 4.5, likewise around twice.
These two districts thus rank directly behind the classic asbestos industrial sites, although Burgenland had no asbestos-cement works and no comparable processing industry. There is therefore no obvious local explanation of the kind found in Vöcklabruck or Sankt Veit, and the figures alone do not say where the elevation comes from.
What the figures say and what they do not
Any interpretation must begin with the limits of this analysis. First, the district rates rest in part on small case numbers; the smaller the district, the more the rate fluctuates by chance. The district of Rust, for instance, reaches a numerically high value with a single case among around 1,700 inhabitants, a value that means nothing statistically. Oberwart (25 cases) and Oberpullendorf (17 cases) are more robust, but likewise not large numbers. Second, the data end in 2011; after the long latency, the illnesses counted there go back to exposures of the 1970s to 1990s, not to recent events. Third, a district rate is an ecological measure: it says nothing about where and how the individual patients were exposed. An elevated rate does not prove any particular cause.
The elevated Burgenland rates therefore admit several explanations. They may reflect occupational exposures: for decades Burgenland was a region of heavy out-commuting (AK Burgenland); many of its workers were employed in industry outside the province, above all in Vienna and Lower Austria, where asbestos was processed in large quantities until 1990. They may go back to domestic or do-it-yourself exposures: in an agricultural region, asbestos-cement sheets were widespread on stables and farm buildings, and working, renovating or removing such sheets released fibres (→ Recognising asbestos). And they are compatible with a contribution from the environment, without proving it. We look at this third possibility more closely, not because it is the most likely, but because it is the only one specific to Burgenland and can be checked on the ground.
The geological trail and the gravel pathway
The environmental trail does have a basis: southern Burgenland lies in the area of the Rechnitz Window, whose serpentinite rocks can geologically carry asbestos (→ Serpentinite, asbestos and the geology of the Rechnitz Window). From several of these quarries gravel was extracted and spread over wide areas, a process that has come under scrutiny as an asbestos scandal since 2026 (→ Asbestos in Burgenland). Unlike at Eternit or Wietersdorf, here the asbestos does not reach the lung via the workplace, but via natural rock spread across the landscape.
None of this is proof. But unlike the occupational and the domestic explanation, the environmental trail can point to an early, documented local finding: that in southern Burgenland asbestos reached the non-occupational population via the environment was recorded medically as far back as the 1970s (→ The backstory). That does not make it the proven cause of the elevated district rates: the finding documents a past exposure, not mesothelioma, and it concerned individual places, not whole districts. There is also the temporal logic: only a burden that began long before can show up in the figures to 2011, not the scandal that has only come under scrutiny since 2026. Whether and how strongly the environment contributes to the elevated rates remains open. What the map achieves is more modest and at the same time clear: it shows that mesothelioma clusters in Austria where asbestos was, and it marks southern Burgenland as a region in which elevated disease figures, an asbestos-bearing geology and a documented gravel pathway coincide spatially. That is not proof, but a reason to look more closely.
Sources
- Statistik Austria, Austrian Cancer Registry: mesothelioma (ICD-10 C45), cases by year and by political district, 1990 to 2011 (1,664 cases in total; district rates per 10,000 inhabitants, population as of 1 January 2002). The cancer registry is maintained on a statutory basis by Statistik Austria; the district-level breakdown of individual diagnoses is not part of the standard publication but is accessible via the registry database (STATcube) or on request: statistik.at
- ORF Kärnten, "Suche nach Asbestaltlasten" (according to ORF, asbestos was processed in the Görtschitztal until 1977 and many people developed lung cancer; the report names mesotheliomas as a further late effect of asbestos exposure; the asbestos was processed at the Wietersdorf cement works, located in the municipality of Klein St. Paul in the district of Sankt Veit an der Glan): kaernten.orf.at
- AUVA, "Asbest": mesothelioma as an asbestos-related occupational disease, latency of several decades: auva.at
- On Burgenland's commuter structure (a region of heavy out-commuting, main destinations Vienna and Lower Austria): Arbeiterkammer Burgenland, "Pendeln im Burgenland" (analysis based on the 2019 full census): bgld.arbeiterkammer.at
- On the pathology and the asbestos-mesothelioma relationship see Asbestos and health; on the geology Serpentinite, asbestos and the geology of the Rechnitz Window; on the affair Asbestos in Burgenland.
Questions on the topic? Free Initial Consultation.