Asbestos and other toxins

Our plain-English summary of Asbestos and other toxins, by P. Lowinger (American Journal of Public Health, 1990).

The study

• Author: P. Lowinger
• Journal: American Journal of Public Health
• Published: 1990;80(10):1274
• Type of article: Letter
• Cited by: 5 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher · Free full text
• In J-M's library: Johns-Manville's company medical library held a copy (J-M no. 001890).

Summary of the article

In this letter, the author considered objections that notifying the estimated 20 million workers exposed to asbestos and other workplace toxins would create panic, inappropriate litigation and excessive medical costs. He described a National Institute of Mental Health-sponsored study at the Western Institute for Occupational and Environmental Sciences (WIOES) in Berkeley, California. In 1978, 2,270 former World War II San Francisco Bay Area shipyard and longshore workers volunteered for asbestosis screening by chest x-ray and interview. Three months later, 45 percent were told by letter they had a potentially serious pulmonary asbestosis abnormality, 30 percent a questionable abnormality and 24 percent no significant abnormality. In 1983, a five-year psychosocial follow-up of a 10 percent random sample (230 workers, mostly aged 60 to 80) used structured interviews with the worker and, in half the cases, a family member. The workers showed no increase in emotional turmoil, alcohol use, family or marital instability, depression, or inappropriate use of medical or legal resources after learning their risk status; there was appropriate anger and worry. Family, community and value systems were the most significant factors in behavioral stability and coping. The author concluded that telling exposed workers the truth about their health appeared to reinforce their usual patterns of behavior rather than create new or non-adaptive reactions.

PubMed has no abstract for this study, and the article doesn't print one. We wrote this summary from the full article with the help of AI. It is not the authors' wording.

In plain English

This item was a letter to the editor. The author noted objections that notifying workers exposed to workplace toxins might cause panic, inappropriate litigation and excessive medical costs. The letter described a National Institute of Mental Health-sponsored study at the Western Institute for Occupational and Environmental Sciences (WIOES) in Berkeley, California. In 1978, 2,270 former World War II San Francisco Bay Area shipyard and longshore workers volunteered for asbestosis screening by chest x-ray and interview. Three months later, letters told 45 percent of a potentially serious abnormality, 30 percent of a questionable one and 24 percent of no significant abnormality. In 1983, a 230-worker random sample was interviewed, with a family member in half the cases. The letter reported no increase in emotional turmoil, alcohol use, family or marital instability, depression, or inappropriate use of medical or legal resources. It called workers' anger and worry appropriate. The author concluded, "to the extent we can generalize," that telling workers the truth appeared to reinforce their usual behavior. The letter gave counts and percentages but no statistical tests, confidence intervals or numerical measures of the psychosocial outcomes.

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: Letter to the editor describing a five-year psychosocial follow-up, by structured interview, of workers who had been notified of their asbestosis screening results
• Who was studied: 2,270 former World War II San Francisco Bay Area shipyard and longshore workers who volunteered for screening in 1978. A 230-worker random sample was followed up in 1983. The letter describes this sample as mostly aged 60 to 80, 80 percent White male, 10 percent female and 10 percent Black male, with two-thirds still working.
• Exposure: Past asbestos exposure in World War II shipyard and longshore work; no fiber types are named. The factor studied was being sent a letter giving the worker's asbestosis risk status after chest x-ray screening.
• Main results:
  • Of the 2,270 screened workers, 45 percent were told of a potentially serious pulmonary asbestosis abnormality, 30 percent of a questionable abnormality, and 24 percent of no significant abnormality.
  • In the follow-up sample, the letter reported no increase in acute or chronic emotional turmoil, alcohol use, family or marital instability, depression, or inappropriate use of medical or legal resources after workers learned their risk status.
  • Workers showed anger and worry, which the letter described as appropriate.
  • According to the letter, the most significant factors in behavioral stability and coping were the workers' family, community and value system.
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that telling workers exposed to asbestos or other toxins the truth about their current physical health appears to reinforce their usual patterns of behavior rather than create new or non-adaptive reactions.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The author qualified how far the findings can be generalized.

Topics

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

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Chest X-Ray, Asbestosis.

Related studies

• Heme oxygenase-1 in environmental toxin-induced lung disease — M.L. Wu, M.D. Layne, et al. (2012)
• Asbestos-related diseases of the lung and other organs: their epidemiology and implications for clinical practice — M.R. Becklake (1976)
• Tobacco smoke: involvement of reactive oxygen species and stable free radicals in mechanisms of oxidative damage, carcinogenesis and synergistic effects with other respirable particles — A. Valavanidis, T. Vlachogianni, et al. (2009)
• Beta-carotene and other carotenoids as antioxidants — S.A. Paiva, R.M. Russell (1999)
• Mesotheliomata in rats after inoculation with asbestos and other materials — J.C. Wagner, G. Berry, et al. (1973)
• CDKN2A, NF2, and JUN are dysregulated among other genes by miRNAs in malignant mesothelioma -A miRNA microarray analysis — M. Guled, L. Lahti, et al. (2009)

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