How can you go 30-40 years without any illness and then suddenly you have cancer? What is the asbestos doing in that time? How does it activate?
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Asbestos can be *very* thin when it splinters, and will often keep splintering until it is as small as possible. In fact, they can be compared in size to your chromosomes! And being similar sizes, asbestos fibers can mess up chromosomes. This can be an issue anywhere (and can cause wart like scarring if it happens on the skin), but it becomes especially problematic if it happens during *mitosis*. Mitosis is when you cells gather up their DNA into chromosomes, doubles them, and then makes a new cell. It is also where cancer can happen; if the chromosomes are messed up, the new cell will have its instructions messed up. And if the instructions are messed up in a certain way, you get cancer.
So actually triggering cancer is all about random chance. And like all random chance, asbestos causing cancer might take a long time or a short time. If the cancer takes decades to manifest, then the person was just repeatedly lucky. Meanwhile, the asbestos is just going from cell to new cell as each one is being made, because it is too small to filter out.
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