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A Big I-Team investigation exposes Wisconsin's deadly secret: a super-aggressive form of lung cancer with no cure. We've heard the warnings for years. Now, people are dying. The number keeps growing. And thousands of people in Milwaukee and throughout our area could be at risk and not even know it.

Shakespeare wrote, "The object of art is to give life a shape." Though, for Racine County artist Richard Herr, it was life that shaped his art.

"I don't really talk too much about my work, because then people can only see what I told them," explained Herr in a 2008 videotaped deposition. "I let them make up their own minds."

Herr preferred people use their lives to find meaning in his often mind-bending sculptures. However, in an ironic twist that would make even Shakespeare shudder, it was Herr's art that cut his own life short.

By the time Herr appeared in the deposition video, the once strong and healthy sculptor was already on borrowed time.

"I try to get up for a couple hours, sometimes three or four hours every day, but I am really very, very weak," said Herr, visibly exhausted.

A few months earlier, doctors diagnosed Herr with malignant mesothelioma, an aggressive form of lung cancer. The prognosis wasn't good.

"My oncologist said three months to three years," said Herr.

The news hit Herr's family hard.

"Oh, terrible," exclaimed Anya Herr, Richard's wife of 14 years. "It was like you don't believe it."

However, the illness that seemingly came out of nowhere had been brewing inside Richard Herr's lungs for decades. A series of grainy, black and white photos show the Sheboygan native in his Racine County studio back in the early 1970's. It's where he made hundreds of molds for his cast-aluminum sculptures out of asbestos.

"We would reach into the 50 pound bag and pull out a double handful of asbestos and mix it in with the dry materials," explained Herr. "As you're pulling it up, it creates dust, and you're holding it in your hands two feet away from your face."

He did it for years without any protective equipment or mask.

"We didn't think it was necessary," said Herr.

Back then, the public, from budding artists to builders, didn't know the risks.

"If I would have known any hazard, I wouldn't have used it," admitted Herr.

The main hazard: When asbestos gets inside your lungs, it stays there --forever-- and develops into mesothelioma 20 to 40 years later.

"Mesothelioma is a very difficult cancer to treat," explained Dr. Toby Campbell, and oncologist at the UW Carbone Cancer Center. "It's certainly something that's difficult to identify, because of the way it layers itself along the surface of the lung. It can take a quite a while before really symptoms develop."

And doctors can't always see the mesothelioma until tumors are thick enough to show up on a cat scan, but by then, it's usually too late.

"At this point, it is an advanced disease and usually has a poor prognosis for the patient," said Dr. Jeffrey Kanne, radiologist at UW-Hospital and Clinics.

Turns out, the yearly death rate in Wisconsin for mesothelioma is in the CDC's top tier -- around 18 per million people. That's about 25% higher than the national rate. And even though asbestos was basically banned back in the early 1970's, the number of mesothelioma cases in our area keeps going up. Why?

"It's still out there," said Kanne. "It's not going away anytime soon, because asbestos, even though it's not used as much, it's in our old buildings, it's still in old factories and with construction, there's still dust out there."

Plus, health experts say people just live longer now, long enough to develop mesothelioma decades later. Like Richard Herr, who finally succumbed to his cancer last October without any regrets.

"He said without the asbestos I wasn't able to be a teacher like I am, an artist," recalled Richard's wife Anya.

An artist whose legacy helps overcome the loss.

"He is still here in all this art." Anya Herr said. "There is his soul. His spirit is in it and that surrounds me, and that makes me that I am doing actually very well."

Sadly, mesothelioma is almost always a death sentence. A recent report from the CDC says the agency expects the number of mesothelioma cases nationwide to peak sometime within the next year. Though, other heath experts predict number of cases will keep going up for the next two to five years before leveling off.

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