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The expression "like father, like son," has tragic poignancy for Tom O'Donnell.

His father died nine years ago at age 76 from lung cancer caused by asbestos.

The cause of death was not entirely surprising. He had worked for nearly 25 years at a now defunct Johns-Manville plant in eastern Toronto that was called a "world-class occupational health disaster" by a 1980s royal commission investigating the plant's use of asbestos.

Now the son, who is only 48, is dying of mesothelioma, a painful cancer whose only known cause is contact with asbestos.

Mr. O'Donnell's diagnosis might seem unusual, given that he never worked with the substance. But he is not the only one in his family to have been afflicted since his father died. An older sister and older brother succumbed to the same cancer, which affects the lining of the chest wall, in their 50s.

Medical authorities suspect Mr. O'Donnell and his siblings are victims of a seemingly innocuous asbestos exposure: traces of asbestos dust carried unknowingly home on their father's work clothes.

Those traces, a testament to the killing power of the mineral, provided enough of a dose to place his children in mortal peril decades later.

Mr. O'Donnell said his father was a loving man for whom "the kids came first" and he remembers him with fondness as "such a nice guy all around. There is not a bad thing you could say about that guy."

His father had no inkling that the asbestos he worked with was hazardous, and that unknowingly he had started a nightmare for his six children.

"He's up there," Mr. O'Donnell said, referring to heaven, "thinking all this work he did and raising the kids and we're dying because of what was on his clothes."

Cases such as Mr. O'Donnell's, once thought to be extremely rare, are starting to crop up more frequently in Canada. There are enough cases that they have been given the formal name of "bystanders," people who never worked with asbestos yet are at risk of its illnesses.

They are falling ill now because they were exposed during the 1960s and 1970s -- the peak years in Canada of asbestos use -- as children and spouses of asbestos workers. Because certain cancers have a decades-long latency period, the bystanders are only now starting to be seen in significant numbers.

The bystander cases hold a special cruelty. Many of those exposed to asbestos as children are dying young, robbed of far more years than were their fathers, who were exposed as adults and had a crack at reaching old age because of the latency period.

And despite their greater losses, there is little financial compensation. Because bystanders were not exposed in workplaces as employees, they are not eligible for redress under workers-compensation plans. Union efforts to have them included have failed.

Their only recourse is to sue the defunct companies where they were exposed to asbestos, but there are so many other asbestos victims that the settlements are generally puny, typically less than $1,000 for each year of lost life.

"It's a tragedy that this material could so adversely affect not just the wage earner's health, but the health of their family. It's pretty unique," said Jim Brophy, executive director of an occupational health clinic in Sarnia, Ont. He calls these cases "a major injustice."

There is no exact national figure on the number of bystanders, but it is in the hundreds and perhaps higher.

Mr. Brophy contends that Canada, because it continues to mine and promote the use of asbestos abroad, is one of the few industrialized countries that has no national registry of workers with asbestos-related illnesses, primarily mesothelioma, lung cancer and asbestosis; even less information exists on the spouses and children suffering from indirect exposures.

"We don't keep track of this stuff. It's a huge public-health issue," Mr. Brophy said.

Some indications of the potential magnitude of the bystander tally are available at his clinic, the Sarnia branch of the Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers. In the Southwestern Ontario city alone, it has tracked 109 people since 1998 who either have diseases or scarring in their chests suggestive of contact with asbestos, but for whom no workplace exposure existed.

Mr. Brophy said that figure does not come close to the full toll in Sarnia, where asbestos was once widely used in petrochemical and auto-parts manufacturing. The clinic's main clientele are workers injured on the job, and no figures are available for the period before 1998.

There are likely to be bystander cases in Quebec, where asbestos has been mined and statistics have shown higher than expected rates of asbestos cancers in women, and in British Columbia and Alberta, where the material was used in industries ranging from petrochemicals to shipping.

In B.C., which has some of the most complete asbestos-disease statistics in the country, about 600 people were diagnosed with mesothelioma from 1990 to 2003, but fewer than half received workers compensation. Medical researchers believe the vast majority of those cancers stem from asbestos.

Dr. Paul Demers, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia's school of occupational hygiene, said bystanders might be in the uncompensated group. However, they are hard to study because they die so quickly. "Mesothelioma is so rapidly fatal that the ability to actually interview patients is pretty limited," he said.

Tight controls on asbestos were not in place until the early 1980s, so the bystander toll is expected to rise, perhaps for another decade, before peaking.

There is evidence that asbestos, like many cancer-causing compounds, can be far more dangerous to children than to adults.

That is not news to Maria LaCount, whose son, Donald Fitzsimmons, died in Sarnia in 1989 of mesothelioma, just before his 16th birthday. As a toddler, he had been in contact with his father's work clothes at home.

Donald's death at such a young age was heart-rending. "Being a teenager, he really didn't know what was happening. He was looking at me for answers, like 'Mom, you can help me. You can take this away,' " Ms. LaCount said.

In an era where the common perception is that tragic deaths command large legal settlements, Donald's parents received just $16,000 from a U.S. asbestos suit about 18 months ago. Frank Fitzsimmons, Donald's father, said the amount "more or less paid for the burial and stuff like that."

Of his experience, he said, "You have no idea what the family goes through."

Kevin Long is 43 and also worried about childhood asbestos exposure. Doctors have found in his chest pleural plaques, which are scarred tissue masses that indicate asbestos exposure. Although the plaques are benign, those who have them should be screened for lung cancer and are at risk of mesothelioma.

Mr. Long became aware he might be at risk after his father, who worked in a Sarnia factory, died of an asbestos illness. Mr. Long remembers as a child helping his father pull off his work coveralls, and thinking the dust on the clothes "was kind of neat because it came off like snow."

Because of his plaques, Mr. Long could not get life insurance when he tried after getting married, and doctors are monitoring a recently detected black spot in his chest. He is short of breath even after modest exertion, such as walking up stairs.

Mr. Long said that when he was growing up, his father did not know asbestos was dangerous, but if the company he worked for did, that is a different story. "Then they should pay. It's pretty much like murder, isn't it?" he asked.

The horrors faced by those who were in contact with asbestos are often difficult to relate, and affect the entire family.

Mr. O'Donnell's sister, Judy Russell, fought back tears when she talked about witnessing the death of an older brother, Douglas, from mesothelioma 18 months ago.

While in hospital near the end of his life, he screamed in pain for hours because nurses could not pump medication into him fast enough to stop his agony. Ms. Russell said her brother begged her to kill him. "To not be able to get them out of pain, you just feel so helpless."

About the only succour she was able to give was to hold his hand.

Mr. O'Donnell, after seeing others in the family die because of asbestos, said he knows what lies ahead.

And because he knows the misery of cancer so intimately, he has started growing his brown hair long so it can be cut and made into a wig for a child undergoing chemotherapy. He is happy he is able to perform that small act of kindness, even though he no longer can work and is living in poverty.

Mr. O'Donnell received about $30,000 in an asbestos lawsuit, from which he paid debts and bought a large-screen TV that he hopes will occupy him when his disease leaves him housebound.

Given his poor financial status, he would be a prime beneficiary of legislation that would treat him like a worker exposed to asbestos. Mr. Brophy said bystanders should be given the same status as workers, if only to show that society acknowledges their ordeal.

But there will always be a wide gap between compensation and justice, he added.

"From my point of view, compensation is not the same thing as justice. There is no equivalent trade for your life."