Asbestos and disease: an industrial hygienist's perspective

Our plain-English summary of Asbestos and disease: an industrial hygienist's perspective, by M. Corn (American Industrial Hygiene Association Journal, 1986).

The study

• Author: M. Corn
• Journal: American Industrial Hygiene Association Journal
• Published: 1986;47(9):515-23
• Cited by: 10 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher
• In J-M's library: Johns-Manville's company medical library held a copy (J-M no. 001140).

Abstract

I have traced a personal thirty year journey of involvement with asbestos in the workplace and the nonoccupational environment, one still in progress, in an attempt to extract selected lessons for the industrial hygienist. Lessons for other professions, namely medicine, law and management have been studiously avoided in the interests of the scope of this presentation and permissible time. There are certainly numerous other lessons to contemplate. The movement of asbestos from the occupational to the nonoccupational environment is a case study that will undoubtedly be followed in the future by other potentially toxic materials. We must determine our position as a profession with regard to the tools we utilize, the procedures we follow, and our understanding of our moral and legal obligations to prepare for the often scientifically and technically unsupportable positions assumed by others, including governmental agencies, in their zeal to bring about change. We must discourage the opportunistic distortion of professional practices in these matters, and must issue well considered statements as a profession, statements relevant to the way these matters are addressed by society. We have a responsibility to lend perspective to these issues, to not permit understandably emotional responses to documented past severe health effects in other areas, such as the case of asbestos in the workplace, to carry over into conditions of very low exposures in the public domain. We must remind people of the relevance of dose-response and toxicological principles to assessment of risk.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

In plain English

This 1986 Cummings Award Lecture is a personal perspective, not a research study, drawing lessons for industrial hygienists from thirty years of involvement with asbestos. The author noted that the early U.S. guideline of 5 million particles per cubic foot was set for pure chrysotile. It was based on a study of 541 employees in three asbestos textile plants and stood for 33 years without critical reappraisal. The author described consulting at the Tyler, Texas and Port Allegany, Pennsylvania plants, where earlier hygienists had counted only fibers against that particle limit. The author criticized the EPA for favoring a scoring algorithm over air sampling in schools and buildings. Later reports found the algorithm correlated poorly with airborne fibers. Citing Hughes and Weill, the author gave an estimated 15.1 lifetime excess deaths per million (range 7.5 to 30.1) for six years of school exposure to mixed fibers at 0.003 f/cc. The author argued that a 0.01 f/cc post-removal clearance standard could leave buildings more contaminated, though data had not been systematically collected. The author concluded that hygienists should remind people of dose-response principles in risk assessment.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Award lecture presenting the author's personal professional perspective (not an original research study)
• Who was studied: No study population. The lecture draws on the author's experience from 1955 onward with U.S. workplaces, including the Tyler, Texas and Port Allegany, Pennsylvania plants, and with asbestos in schools and buildings.
• Exposure: Airborne asbestos at work and outside work (schools and buildings). The early U.S. guideline was set for pure chrysotile but was applied to all airborne asbestos.
• Main results:
  • The 5 mppcf guideline was recommended by Dreesen and colleagues after a study of 541 employees in three asbestos textile plants using chrysotile, as described in the 1962 ACGIH Documentation that the author quotes.
  • The author stated that the guideline based on the Dreesen study stood for 33 years without critical reappraisal in the U.S.
  • At the Tyler and Port Allegany plants, the author found that earlier hygienists had misinterpreted the 5 mppcf guideline. They had counted fibers rather than particles and fibers, so their counts were low compared with the standard.
  • When measurement changed from the midget impinger to the membrane filter method, there was no period of dual measurement. The author said conversion factors were being guessed.
  • Two EPA contractors found poor correlation between the EPA algorithm scores and airborne fiber measurements. Water damage to the material was the only highly consistent factor.
  • In the author's Table IV, taken from Hughes and Weill, six years of school exposure to mixed fibers at 0.003 f/cc gave an estimated 15.1 lifetime deaths per million exposed, with a range of 7.5 to 30.1. The author's text calls this approximately fifteen, the 'upper estimate' among the scenarios shown, and equates it to about 0.25 deaths per million per year.
  • Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island had adopted a 0.01 f/cc post-removal clearance standard. The author argued this could allow more airborne fibers after removal than before, and that electron microscopy should be used instead.
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that the profession must remind people of the relevance of dose-response and toxicological principles to the assessment of risk.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The author said they knew of cases where buildings had more airborne fibers after removal, but that data on this had not been systematically collected.

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Asbestosis, Chrysotile.

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Dose-response relationship.

Related studies

• An industrial hygienist's perspective on generic standards — J.S. Lee (1989)
• New perspectives on basic mechanisms in lung disease. 5. Respirable industrial fibres: mechanisms of pathogenicity — K. Donaldson, R.C. Brown, et al. (1993)
• Industrial hygiene perspectives in control of asbestos exposure — W. Reitze (1979)
• Exposure of UK industrial plumbers to asbestos, Part I: Monitoring of exposure using personal passive samplers — G. Burdett, D. Bard (2007)
• In vitro cytotoxicity and transforming potential of industrial carbon dust (fibers and particles) in syrian hamster embryo (SHE) cells — C. Darne, F. Terzetti, et al. (2010)
• Prophylaxis of asbestos-induced diseases: studies and perspectives — F.M. Kogan, E.V. Polzik (1990)

Browse more research in American Industrial Hygiene Association Journal, or return to medical research.