Lynch, McIver and Cain, Pulmonary Tumors in Mice Exposed to Asbestos Dust (1957)

An article by Dr. Kenneth M. Lynch and two colleagues at the Medical College of South Carolina, from A.M.A. Archives of Industrial Health (1957), reporting an experiment in which mice breathed dust from asbestos floats for up to 17 months, with research support from the U.S. Public Health Service. Lung tumors were found in 46% of the dusted mice and 36% of the controls, and multiple tumors in 18% against 8%. The authors could not prove that asbestos caused cancer "under the conditions of this experiment," but wrote that the increase "must be regarded as a possible accentuation by the inhalation of asbestos dust of an existing tendency to develop lung tumors."

What it shows

Lynch had reported the first American case of lung cancer with asbestosis in 1935, as the article itself notes. Here he tried to reproduce the link in animals. The authors called their result equivocal and said it did not answer "the questions raised by accumulating clinical evidence that asbestosis is strongly associated with, and therefore a possible cause of, pulmonary carcinoma in man." They cited unpublished data left by Dr. Leroy U. Gardner of the Saranac Laboratory, in which 3 of 22 mice that inhaled asbestos developed lung tumors.

In Johns-Manville's index

Johns-Manville's legal department indexed the Motley 1,000 in 1984. Its index describes this document as follows:

Article entitled "Pulmonary Tumors in Mice Exposed to Asbestos Dust," authored by K. M. Lynch, F. A. McIver, and J. R. Cain, published in AMA Archives of Industrial Health, 1957.

About this copy

This is document 308 of the Motley 1,000, from the set the Manville Personal Injury Settlement Trust's records facility certified as true copies, pages CRMC-Motley1000-Subj-001443 to CRMC-Motley1000-Subj-001449.