Although reported incidence rates have enhanced in the past 20 years, mesothelioma is immobile a relatively rare cancer. The incidence rate varies from one countryside to another, from a low rate of smaller diagram than 1 per 1,000,000 in Tunisia and Morocco, to the highest rate in Britain, Australia and Belgium: 30 per 1,000,000 per year. For comparison, populations with high storeys of smoking can have a lung cancer incidence of through 1,000 per 1,000,000. Incidence of malignant mesothelioma now ranges from come seal 7 to 40 per 1,000,000 in industrialized Western nations, depending on the measure of asbestos exposure of the populations during the past some decades. It has been presumed that incidence may have peaked at 15 per 1,000,000 in the United States in 2004. Incidence is expected to reach enhancing in other parts of the world. Mesothelioma eventuates more regularly in men than in women and danger enhances with age, but this illness can arise in either men or women at any age. Approximately one fifth to one third of all mesothelioma is peritoneal.

Between 1940 and 1979, about 27.5 million populations were occupationally uncovered to asbestos in the United States. Between 1973 and 1984, the incidence of pleural mesothelioma among Caucasian males enhanced 300%. From 1980 to the late 1990s, the death rate from mesothelioma in the USA enhanced from 2,000 per year to 3,000, with men four times more probable to earn it than women. These rates may not be correct, since it is possible that many cases of mesothelioma are misdiagnosed as adenocarcinoma of the lung, which is difficult to demarcate from mesothelioma.