Richard Doll, Mortality from Lung Cancer in Asbestos Workers (1955)

Richard Doll's six-page article from the British Journal of Industrial Medicine (1955), from the Statistical Research Unit of the Medical Research Council in London. Doll studied the necropsies of 105 people who had worked at one large asbestos works: "Lung cancer was found in 18 instances, 15 times in association with asbestosis." Among 113 men with at least 20 years in places where they were exposed to asbestos dust, there were 11 lung cancer deaths where 0.8 would have been expected, a risk he put at about ten times that of the general population.

What it shows

Doll found that everyone with both lung cancer and asbestosis had worked in the industry at least nine years before British dust control regulations took effect, and that the risk fell as the years worked under the old conditions fell. The study is one of the first to show statistically that lung cancer was a hazard of asbestos work. This copy is marked as plaintiff's exhibit P-298-B, with handwritten underlining.

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 "Mortality From Lung Cancer in Asbestos Workers," authored by Richard Doll, published in the British Journal of Industrial Medicine, 1955.

About this copy

This is document 298B 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-001400 to CRMC-Motley1000-Subj-001405.